Vygotskyan Theory and Adult Second Language Acquisition Research

What happens when we take a theory from the context of its origination and development and attempt to use it in another? Can it still be used, and is its use still meaningful? I am compelled to ask these questions when considering the work of Lev Vygotsky, whose theoretical constructs have been appropriated by researchers in a field I am familiar with, adult second language acquisition. In this post I briefly summarize some important aspects of Vygotsky’s theory of developmental psychology, then describe how researchers have grounded their own research in them. I then raise questions about the problems involved with applying theory to new contexts brought to light by these examples. My goal is to examine the relevance of Vygotsky to adult second language learners.

Essentially, Vygotsky believed that that children’s cognitive development proceeds as a result of social interaction, that individual knowledge is derived from knowledge co-constructed through interaction with another or others, and that language is the key psychological tool for learning. The most obvious example is the situation in which a more knowledgeable or skillful parent or caregiver and a child are engaged in a dialogue. Vygotsky postulated that externally articulated dialogue becomes internalized by the child and thus becomes new knowledge or learning. In Miller’s (2002) phrasing, “The intermental becomes the intramental; interpersonal communication becomes intrapersonal communication. (p. 389)

I believe that Vygotsky’s appeal to educators lies in the fact that not only did he present a theory of development – what has come to be called sociocultural theory - but also a teaching/learning concept teachers can relate to, and a technique or mechanism by which they perceive they can make learning happen. The concept – the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) - is a metaphor for the difference between a skill or knowledge area the child currently has mastery of and the skill knowledge area the child can attain with help from a more skilled or more knowledgeable other.

The ZPD is not simply the gap between what the child knows and what she needs to know; rather it is the gap between current knowledge or skill and what the child is capable of coming to know or do as a result of collaborative talk with an adult or more skilled or more knowledgeable other. Given the child’s current level of knowledge or skill, she cannot be made to learn just anything; she must be ready to advance to the new level of knowledge, traversing the Zone of Proximal Development.

The mechanism by which the child is brought to the new level of knowledge or skill has come to be called scaffolding, the second factor in Vygotsky’s appeal to educators, and a term widely used by teachers when they talk about classroom practice. Scaffolding is a metaphor, typically (because Vygotsky’s definition of the scaffolding environment included work, play, and other activities (Miller, 2002)) for the supporting language provided by an adult in conversation with a child in which the child’s development or learning is “under construction,” as it were. The child who has a broader ZPD to traverse is considered to require more scaffolding; when the ZPD is relatively narrow, less scaffolding is needed. When the child has achieved mastery of this knowledge or skill and no longer needs adult scaffolding, she is considered to have reached a new stage of development.

The two metaphors of the ZPD, and particularly, the scaffold provide educators with the basis of a “story” they can tell about in-class teaching and learning; they are terms teachers can use to describe their interaction with students and the perceived resulting effect on learning. The frequent use of the term ‘scaffold’ among the ESL teachers I am in regular contact convinces me that they find the term useful in describing classroom practice, and that they implicitly share a definition of the term.

Although Vygotskyan theory has not entered the mainstream of adult second language acquisition study, a number of researchers have grounded their work in aspects of Vygotskyan theory, and Mitchell and Myles (2004) devote a chapter of their book on second language acquisition theories to sociocultural theory. Here I briefly review some of these studies.

McCafferty (described in Mitchell and Myles (2004, pp. 202 - 204)) paid attention to the private speech of adult learners in a second language situation in which they were asked to re-tell a story. He found that the number of private utterances (such as “What do I see?” and “Ah. OK.”) the students incorporated into their speech while telling the story increased with the difficulty of the task. McCafferty concluded that this private speech was an example of the learners “self-regulating” – as opposed to being “other-regulated” – on the way to complete internalization of new knowledge. Other studies described by Mitchell and Myles, such as those of Anton and DiCamilla, and Ohta, observed adult learners engaging in private speech during class. In all these studies, students’ private speech was interpreted in Vygotskyan terms: it was regarded as being a transitional stage between the external speech of dialogue and the inner speech of individual knowledge.

The most striking studies, though, have focused on scaffolding and use transcribed classroom conversations between and among adults as their data. For example, in one of Hatch’s examples, a non-native English speaker elicits the phrase “last year” from her native-speaker interlocutor:
Rafaela: Excuse me…
This is the…
October 24.
The how you say…
The … (writes ‘1974’)
year, ah?
NS: 1974. Last year.
R: Ah! Last years!
NS: One. (Correction of plural form.)
R: Last year.
Last year a friend gave it to me.
(Mitchell & Myles, 2004, pp. 209 - 210)

Some studies have involved ESL tutors “scaffolding” adult learners through errors in their writing, with the researchers recording the apparent internalization of language forms over time; others, such as Ohta, have adapted the concept of scaffolding and applied it to the co-construction of language knowledge through the collaboration of language-learner peers rather than a more knowledgeable other, and she suggested that the cognitive load of producing spoken language represented a burden that learners sought to mitigate through collaboration. (Mitchell & Myles, 2004, p. 214) Donato, also studying scaffolding through peer collaboration, concluded that, “peer scaffolding results in linguistic development within the individual.” (Mitchell & Myles, 2004, p. 217) In a further peer-scaffolding study, Ko, Schallert, and Walters (2003) had learners tell a story to a group of peers, who then, guided by an instructor, asked clarifying questions and engaged in a feedback dialogue with the learner about the story. The learner then told the story to another group of peers, and the difference in the two tellings was recorded. The authors rated the quality of the group question and feedback sessions and found 1) that higher quality scaffolding in these sessions resulted in a more detailed and linguistically complex re-telling; and 2), that the level of engagement in the response of the learner to the questions was directly related to the quality of the re-telling. The teacher and peers were critical players, but the involvement of the learner was more important. The authors concluded that the learner plays an active role in the scaffolding process, even driving the process through his or her level of engagement in the dialogue.

What are we to make of these adult second language acquisition studies that claim to ground themselves in Vygotskyan theory? Based on my (admittedly limited) survey, I have some concerns:
• They draw on Vygotskyan theory without offering any critical evaluation of it: the reader is expected to assume that Vygotskyan theory is accepted.
• They lack a clear rationale for assuming that Vygotsky’s theory, which addressed psychological development in children, can be applied to adult learning and specifically to second language acquisition.
• When they describe peer scaffolding, they appear to be describing mechanisms of learning that are not especially Vygotskyan: the easing of the cognitive load that Ohta describes may or may not have anything to do with getting the student to traverse the Zone of Proximal Development through scaffolding.

I am left wanting more information on what makes Vygotsky’s ideas on psychological development in children relevant to the task of second language acquisition in adults. In particular, I am concerned that some of Vygotsky’s ideas – particularly the ZPD and scaffolding – have been uprooted from their original context and used in a superficial way to lend credibility to a research study; and that the definition of these terms, in particular that of scaffolding, has been extended beyond its original meaning to make it appear to be applicable to a researcher’s agenda. What I take from this is that as I begin to learn the rationale for grounding my own research in theory, is that I need to be comfortable that I can justify the theoretical area I select. I could in principle seek to locate my current intended area of research – cultural adaptation among international students and/or their instructors – in Vygotskyan theory, for example by analyzing classroom conversations between teachers and students which result in greater mutual cultural understanding. This might be an innovative field in which to apply Vygotskyan theory, and might be considered original; on the other hand, I can also imagine challenges to this use of Vygotskyan theory, and my own challenge therefore would be to build my case for appropriating it. Useful guidance is provided by Miller (2002): “It is not necessarily wrong to selectively assimilate a theory. Scientific progress often comes from taking only what is most useful from a theory. But it should be recognized that Vygotsky’s theory is often misunderstood.” (pp. 416 - 417) Incorporating a theory into my own research will require that I thoroughly understand that theory and am aware of its strengths and shortcomings in relation to my research area.

This short essay has raised more questions for me than given answers, but I have at least begun thinking in new ways about theory and its applicability to research.




References
Ko, J., Schallert, D. L., & Walters, K. (2003). Rethinking Scaffolding: Examining Negotiation of Meaning in an ESL Storytelling Task TESOL Quarterly, 37(2), 303 - 324.

Miller, P. H. (2002). Theories of Developmental Psychology. New York, NY: Worth.

Mitchell, R., & Myles, F. (2004). Second Language Learning Theories (2 ed.). London: Hodder Arnold.