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Chapter One
Learning: Comparative theoretical models
9
objectivity, rationality and capacity to recognise and accommodate
the views of others, creating, thus, the “socialisation”. Therefore, the
“perception” of the small child switches to the “logical and rational
thinking” of the young man and adult. There is, for the Swiss psy-
chologist, a qualitative difference between the way a child thinks and
that of an adult. The concept of “cognitive ability” is related to the
ability to adapt to the physical and social environment: in the case of
a child, it is characterised by “assimilation” and “accommodation”.
Accepting the argument that the social interaction is the fundamen-
tal element in the process of cognitive development, the concept of
learning acquires a new and essential meaning: learning, far from
being a solitary activity, implies exchange, negotiation and cooper-
ation processes. It is, therefore, essentially, a
social fact
; this is an as-
sumption, in terms of learning, of the social-cultural constructivism,
rooted in the theories of Vygotskij. In the process of knowledge the
mind not only assimilates and accumulates information, but it active-
ly reassembles it. Unlike Piaget, for whom the child development pre-
cedes learning, in the view of Vygotskij social learning precedes the
development: every function in the cultural development of the child
takes place first at the social level (“inter-psychological”) and then at
the individual level (“intra-psychological”), in an incessant process of
mediation. For Vygotskij it is not important what the child knows, but
what the child can learn: learning then becomes a mutual experience
for peers and adults, a continuous active and constructive process.
Consciousness and cognition are the result of socialisation and so-
cial behaviour. In his theory of the “zone of proximal development”,
Vygotskij emphasised that the child’s learning grows with the help
of others: a relationship of help that is established, that is, between
a more competent person (adult or peer) and a less competent one,
so as to achieve a higher level of intelligence. The “zone of prox-
imal development” is, therefore, the distance between the current
development and the possible development that can be reached with
the help of others. Unlike Piaget, for whom the child passes through
various stages in the development process until he becomes “ready”
to learn new knowledge that he had not previously had, for Vygotskij
the child learns from those who have a higher level of knowledge.
Imagine what the incidences and consequences of this theory would
have had on the subject of learning and teaching, uncovering con-
texts in which the students play an active role in learning, beyond