Describe and evaluate Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development (16 Marks)

Vygotsky agreed with many of the basics of Piaget’s cognitive development, especially children’s reasoning abilities which develop in a particular sequence however Vygotsky saw cognitive development as a social process of learning from experienced others; adults or older children and he also saw language as a more important component of cognitive development than Piaget did. He argued there will be cultural differences in cognitive abilities and it follows the particular reasoning abilities of their particular people, and the children will pick up mental abilities most important for life within their physical, social and work environments.
With Vygotsky’s heavy emphasis on the role of learning thought interaction with others, he argues there is a gap between a child's current level of development and what they know and what they can potentially understand after the interaction with the experts. This is called the zone of proximal development. The experts help them to cross the ZPD by using scaffolding in which an adult or older child can aid them over the ZPD meaning the child will acquire more advanced reasoning abilities. The five aspects of scaffolding; recruitment, reduction of degrees of freedom, direction maintenance, marking critical features and demonstration help the child cross this gap. Wood et al. suggests that the level of help an expert gives ranges from a 5 to a 1 and the amount of help an expert gives correlates to how the child grasps the tasks. If they begin to understand, the amount of help given will decline. Yet the amount of understanding they can get of a situation depends on their current developmental stage, sometimes limiting them from grasping some concepts. 
There is evidence to show a gap in the level of reasoning a child can achieve on their own and what they can achieve with the help form a more expert other. For example, Roazzi and Bryant gave 4-5 year old children the task of estimating the number of sweets in a row. In one condition the children worked alone and in another they worked with the help of an older child. Most children working alone failed to give a good estimate. In the expert help condition the expert children were observed to offer prompts, pointing the younger children in the right direction to work out how to arrive at their estimate. Most 4-5 year olds receiving this kind of help successfully mastered the task. Studies that this support the idea of children developing additional reasoning abilities when working with a more expert individual. This suggests the ZPD is a valid developmental concept as it is supported by further evidence.
His ideas have been highly influential in education in the last decade. The idea that children can learn more and faster with appropriate scaffolding has raised expectations on what they should be able to achieve. Social interaction in learning, through group work and peer tutoring and individual adult assistance from teachers and teaching assistants have been used to scaffold children through their zones of proximal development. In some schools form groups that meet once or twice a day are a mixture between all the years, rather than secluded to a particular year group. Showing Vygotsky’s theory has had applications in real life, in particular education. 
However, Vygotsky assumed that the processes of learning are largely the same in all children. This doesn't take account of individual differences. Some children learn best during social interaction this may not be true for everyone. Personality and style of information processing of the learner may have powerful effects on what sort of activities and what sort of help works for different children. Showing that not all individuals are acknowledged and his theory may not be helpful in understanding the learning processes of every child and this idea may not be applicable to all. 
Furthermore, there is plenty of evidence to support the idea that interaction can enhance learning. But if Vygotsky was right about the process of interactive learning, we would expect all children learning together to pick up very similar skills and a very similar mental representation of material. However, Howe et al found what children learn actually varies considerable between individuals, even in group learning situations. when she put 9-12 year olds in groups of four to discuss movements of objects down a slope. The researchers found that the children;s level of knowledge and understanding was increased after the discussion- however the children has not picked up the same facts and knowledge. So even when children experience the same interaction or experience they don't necessarily have the same level or nature of cognitive development. Showing his theory doesn't fully explain the differential rate of development of different children in which Piaget’s concept of maturation can.