Vygotsky drew people’s attention to the differences between the type of information and ways children learn before they go to school, or in activities outside of school, and the way in which learning is structured at school.

Before children go to school, they learn many things. They learn to speak their home language, and to know the names of objects; they learn to wash and clothe themselves; they learn to run and to play with a ball. These days many of them even learn to use a range of technology, including computers. Much of what they learn happens as a by-product of relating to other people or playong. Their knowledge is therefore based on their everyday experiences, and their learning does not happen in a planned way. Vygotsky called this type of learning ‘spontaneous learning’.

At school, learners are exposed to learning experiences which have been planned for them, and which are based on knowledge discovered beforehand. The educator’s role is to decide which previously discovered knowledge should be passed on to the learner, and how this should happen. Knowledge learnt in school is therefore often arranged in some type of system, and has rules and symbols attached. Vygotsky called this type of learning ‘scientific’.

There are a number of differences between these two types of concepts. (Read the above two paragraphs again, and see whether you can work out what these might be).

The differences are:

1. Spontaneous concepts are learnt through everyday activities and experiences, whereas scientific concepts are learnt through more formal school activities.
2. Spontaneous concepts are not learnt in a planned way, whereas scientific concepts are learnt through the way in which they are taught by the educator, or through planned for activities.
3. Spontaneous concepts are not arranged in any way, and may not be linked together, scientific concepts are arranged in some form of system, and will follow certain rules.
4. The thoughts in spontaneous concepts link an object or experience with a sign or symbol in the mind (a word or a picture), whereas scientific concepts often link two ideas - links are made between one sign and another sign.

Think about your ideas of day and night as a child. Children link daytime with the coming of light from the sun, and know that the night happens because there is no more light from the sun. When we were younger we might have believed that the sun moved across the sky during the day, and disappeared at night. So a spontaneous concept of linking ‘day’ with the sunlight and ‘night’ with no sunlight developed. However, after a few years at school, we would have been told about the fact that the earth rotates. We would have been told that day occurs as our part of the earth rotates towards the sun, that the day progresses as the earth continues to rotate, and that sunset occurs when we rotate away from the sun, and so on. Now, we have not been out into space to watch this happen from a distance, so it might have been shown to us in diagrams, or by the educator using a light shining on a globe representing the earth. The scientific concept develops by linking ideas together or symbols (sometimes in the form of pictures) together.

There are clearly differences between these two types of thought processes, however they are not unrelated to each other. Vygotsky (1962) believes that spontaneous concepts develop upwards, becoming more complex - thus as we mature, so our experiences enable us to learn more from what we observe or hear from others. He also believes that in school, scientific concepts should proceed downward, “to a more elementary and concrete level” (p. 108). This is the central challenge for us as educators - to simplify scientific concepts, and to try to link them to the spontaneous concepts that the learner has already developed. If we are able to do this, we can enable the learner’s understanding to develop more quickly than if the learner was not being schooled. Vygotsky (1962) thus says:

the development of spontaneous and nonspontaneous concepts - are related and constantly influence each other ... Instruction is one of the principal sources of ... concepts and is also a powerful force in directing their evolution; it determines the fate of ... total mental development (p.85).

Vygotsky is thus referring to the importance of schooling (‘instruction’). One of the main purposes of schools is to enable learners to learn some of the knowledge stored up over the centuries by the cultures. Our cultures have developed an enormous store of knowledge discovered by others, and then passed on to future generations, so that new knowledge can grow from knowledge that exists. It is the role of educators to decide what knowledge should be passed on to learners, how to pass on the knowledge, and at what stage a learner should undertake the learning. Educators are thus central to these processes.

One of the main difficulties with much teaching in the past is that scientific concepts have not been linked to what learners already know - so they learn the theory, but without understanding how it linked to their experience. How much have you learned in theory over the years, but then just forgotten, because you did not really understand it, or see its relevance to your life? Thus as educators we have a challenging task - we need to be translators of scientific concepts into language which learners understand, when they are ready to do the learning; and we need to be constantly communicating with our learners in an effort to help them link their learning to what they already know.