What does Vygotsky provide for the 21st century language arts teacher?

Smagorinsky, Peter. (2013). What does Vygotsky provide for the 21st century language arts teacher? Language Arts, 90(3), 192-204.


This is a good refresher on the theoretical work of Lev Vygotsky. The article comes from a well-known researcher and writer, so the essay, though brief and accessible, has credibility and seems well-grounded. Even for those of us (me included) whose work has been heavily influenced by Vygotsky’s theories, this refresher is helpful. Perhaps it is especially helpful for us. When you work with a theory for a long time and teach about it, sometimes working with secondary sources, you can wander from the theorist’s original intent, perhaps focusing on things that may not even have been central in the original work. As Smagorinsky points out here, with Vygotsky, people tend to focus mainly on the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and the notion of scaffolding. We do that because these concepts are easy to wrap our minds around, relatively easy to explain to our university students, and seem to have obvious classroom applications. These concepts aren’t such a hard sell as some of the more abstract ones.

Smagorinsky points out that there is much more to Vygotsky’s amazingly huge body of work. When we read in Smagorinsky’s article that Vygotsky died of tuberculosis at the young age of 37, after completing an impressive body of work, it becomes even more remarkable. As a person who is interested in the effects of technology and innovation on history, I found myself wondering what Vygotsky might have produced if he had been born in 1985 instead of 1915. He might not have contracted tuberculosis in the first place, but if he had, it probably would have been detected earlier and would probably have been treated and cured. If he had published his dissertation around 2001 instead of 1921, his work would not have remained obscure for as long as it did, only becoming widely known by educators in the 1980s and 1990s. It would have been all over the Internet and would come up in search engines as it does today.

Even with a career truncated by untimely death, Vygotsky managed to leave us with a lot to think about. Smagorinsky here concisely and deftly summarizes what he thinks are the main contributions. There’s a section on how human speech functions as a tool for human thought. That theory base underlies a lot of the current reading and writing research. There’s a section on the union between human emotions and human cognition; Vygotsky believed these two things were inseparable, and that work underlies a good deal of the current research and theory on reading motivation and engagement. There’s a section on “mind in society”, which relates to the social nature of learning and development. So many theories claim that as a basis that it would take me pages and pages to name them. There’s a section on meaning construction, which underlies a great deal of the reading research in print today. Finally, there’s the good old Zone of Proximal Development we all know and love, which is covered in almost every professional education program in every university in the U.S.

Vygotsky’s reach has indeed been broad, deep, and long-lasting, short as his life and career was. It is worth forming a better understanding of his theories. This well-organized, concise article helps us realize that, and should be a good start toward that better understanding, no matter where an educator is on the career path.