The Minds Behind the Theories

A Soviet psychologist whose work laid the foundation for social constructivism. He argued that social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition. Unlike Piaget, who saw development as preceding learning, Vygotsky believed that social learning precedes development.

An American psychologist who expanded on Vygotsky's work. He introduced the term 'scaffolding' to describe the support given to learners. Bruner emphasized that learning is an active process in which learners construct new ideas based upon their current/past knowledge.

A prominent figure in Second Language Acquisition who proposed the Interaction Hypothesis. He argued that conversational interaction is an essential condition for second language acquisition because it connects input, internal learner capacities, and output in productive ways.

While his Monitor Model is distinct from social interactionism, his Input Hypothesis provides the necessary condition (Comprehensible Input) that interactionists seek to explain. He argues that acquisition occurs only when learners receive messages they understand (i+1).