2.4 Interactionist/developmental perspectives: Learning from inside and out
• The time frame of this theory is 1980s, 1990s & early 2000.
• Main advocates are Piaget & Vygotsky
• Interactionists focused on the interplay between innate learning ability of children and the environment in which they develop.
• Language is part of child’s cognition. It is acquired through cognitive development.
For Piaget, language is a symbol system that could be used to express knowledge through interaction with the physical world.
For Vygotsky, interaction is the origin of both language and thought where
thought is an internalized speech, and speech emerged in social interaction