A Sociocultural Theoretical Perspective on Teacher Professional Development

In this introductory chapter we argue that a sociocultural theoretical perspective, as a psychological theory of mind, has the potential to explicate the origins, mechanisms, nature, and consequences of teacher professional development at all phases of teachers’ careers and in all contexts where they live, learn, and work. In explaining the epistemological underpinnings of this perspective, most Vygotskian scholars start at its core: human cognition originates in and emerges out of participation in social activities. In stating “any higher mental function was external and social before it was internal” Vygotsky (1960/1997, p. 67) argued for the inherent interconnectedness of the cognitive and social, a more radical stance where behavior and consciousness are a single integral system. Readers of Vygotsky sometimes fail to recognize the significance of this stance. Without denying biological maturation that unfolds with time, Vygotsky (1978) clearly distinguished biological from sociocultural forms of development, suggesting instead that all higher-level cognition is inherently social. Put bluntly, it “is not that social activity influences cognition” as is argued by many social learning theorists “but that social activity is the process through which human cognition is formed” (Lantolf & Johnson, 2007, p. 878). This is significant because when human cognition is understood as inherently social, the critical question becomes how do external forms of social interaction become internalized psychological tools for thinking. Vygotsky (1978) proposed that this transformation, from external (interpsychological) to internal (intrapsychological), is not direct but mediated. Human cognition is mediated by virtue of being situated in a cultural environment and it is from this cultural environment that we acquire the representational systems, most notably language, that ultimately become the medium, mediator, and tools of thought. Consequently, cognitive development is understood as an interactive process, mediated by culture, context, language, and social interaction.