Deconstruction in the Zone of Proximal Development

Abstract Our views of how children develop and learn have undergone many changes. Of these changes, the one most associated with the name of Lev Semenovitch Vygotsky is that of the social construction of the individual. Vygotsky argued that development is social because it involves more than the endowment of the child and more than the child can effect on her own. Development requires another person and is thus literally social. The child’s progress toward adulthood is effected through means that are shared by the collective group. Thus development is social in both aspects basic to its definition: involving another person and involving society as a whole.