Describe how Vygotsky's ideas influence trends in education today

What will be an ideal response?

Vygotsky's theory offers new visions of teaching and learning—ones that emphasize the importance of social context and collaboration. Vygotskian classrooms accept individual differences and provide opportunities for children's active participation, but they go beyond independent discovery to promote assisted discovery. Teachers guide children's learning with explanations, demonstrations, and verbal prompts, tailoring their interventions to each child's zone of proximal development. Assisted discovery is aided by peer collaboration, as children work in groups, teaching and helping one another.
Vygotsky's educational message for the preschool years is to provide socially rich, meaningful activities in children's zones of proximal development and a wealth of opportunities for make-believe play—the ultimate means of fostering the self-discipline required for later academic learning. Once formal schooling begins, Vygotsky emphasized literacy activities.
Vygotsky-based educational innovations include reciprocal teaching, in which a teacher and two to four students form a collaborative group and take turns leading dialogues on the content of a text passage. Within the dialogues, group members apply four cognitive strategies: questioning, summarizing, clarifying, and predicting.
Today, peer collaboration is widely used, but evidence is mounting that it promotes development only under certain conditions. A crucial factor is cooperative learning, in which small groups of classmates work toward common goals. Conflict and disagreement seem less important than the extent to which peers achieve intersubjectivity—by resolving differences of opinion, sharing responsibilities, and providing one another with sufficient explanations to correct misunderstandings.
Teaching through cooperative learning broadens Vygotsky's concept of the zone of proximal development, from a single child in collaboration with an expert partner (adult or peer) to multiple partners with diverse forms of expertise stimulating and encouraging one another.