November 05, 1896 < ------------------------- Leve Semenovich Vygotsky ------------------------- > June 11, 1934
http://www.igs.net/~cmorris/vygotsky.html
A compendium of information about the Russian psychologist Leve Semenovich Vygotsky, including biographical information, descriptions of the zone of proximal development, the sociocultural approach developed by Vygotsky, and associated topics." (Woolfolk, A. E., Winne, P. H., & Perry, N. E. (Eds.). (2000). Educational Psychology: Canadian Edition Chapter 2: Cognitive development and language, Weblinks (p. 59). Scarborough: Allyn and Bacon.)
Simply said for here, Vygotsky seems to be saying that social interaction plays an essential role in the development of cognitive functioning. His view is that every human function in cultural development happens twice: first on the social level, that is, between people (inter-psychological) and ... later on at the individual level, or within the individual (intra-psychological). This function applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory and to the formation of daily concepts. In other words, all of our higher cerebral functions originate as actual relationships between individuals. Another aspect of Vygotsky's theory -- and one that I adopted as a teacher, principal and researcher -- is the notion that the potential for cognitive development depends upon the zone of proximal development (ZPD) ... that cerebral level of cognitive development attained when we engage in social behaviour. Full development of the ZPD depends upon full social interaction. The range of societal skill that can be developed with adult guidance or peer collaboration exceeds what can be attained alone.
Here are some of my favourite Vygotsky sites. They are not listed in any order of priority. Please excuse any duplication.
Image of Mr. Vygotsky throughout his Lifetime
Veresov, Nikolai See especially a copy of his excellent article, Marxist and non-Marxist aspects of the cultural-historical psychology of L. S. Vygotsky, printed in Outlines: Critical Social studies, 2005, 7, № 1, 31-50, and also @ http://nveresov.narod.ru/NewVersionLast1.htm
Critical and Vygotskian Theories of Education: A Comparison by Willem Wardekker
"1. Education and politics: It is a well-known implication of Activity Theory that the development of human beings cannot be adequately understood from a universalistic point of view (see e.g. Wertsch, 1991). Development means learning to participate in human activities, using the cultural resources available for the developing child. This is not only a process of learning culturally available meanings, but of personality formation. As D.A. Leont'ev (1994) says, personality means "being an autonomous agent, realizing in its life activity the forms of relation to the world that emerged in the course of human history." This means that both the quality of the development process and that of the final stage, of the personality, depend upon the quality of available resources."
Building an Understanding of Constructivism
"Written activities and exercises alone do not go to the heart of constructivism, but books have laid the groundwork for this approach to learning. The basic writings in this field are sometimes interesting and often illuminating, even though they cannot "give" anyone constructivism. Teachers, however, can use these works to build their own understanding of constructivism and its place in the classroom. Here are some representative selections of constructivist thinking and of useful guides to constructivist ideas."
Dot Robins website
"This homepage is dedicated to the life of Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (1896-1934), the father of Russian psychology. Vygotsky was a genius and an extremely humble person at the same time. His ideas bring psychology, philosophy, and aesthetics into a new way to view the world. His focus is one of unity (not identity) and synthesis, without the common pitfalls of reductionism. It is interesting that in Russia , psychology is wholistic by nature, maintaining a dynamic approach to the whole personality of each individual. Vygotskian thought is understood as height psychology, sometimes being compared with Freudian depth psychology, which views most problems within the subconscious level. There are many different interpretations of Vygotsky within Russia , and many directions internationally, some of which have different names. Vygotsky's approach is known as cultural-historical theory. It is interesting that internationally, Vygotsky's ideas have been used in education, perhaps more than in traditional psychology."
"The Mind, Culture, and Activity homepage is an interactive forum for a community of interdisciplinary scholars who share an interest in the study of human mind in its cultural and historical contexts. Our emphasis is research that seeks to resolve methodological problems associated with the analysis of human and theoretical approaches that place culture and activity at the center of attempts to understand human nature. Our participants come from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, cognitive science, education, linguistics, psychology and sociology.
Central to the organization of activities in the community is the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition at the University of California, San Diego. LCHC publishes the Mind, Culture, and Activity journal (MCA) and sponsors XMCA, an e-mail discussion group."
“Psychology is in need of its own Das Kapital – its own concepts of class, basis, value etc. - in which it might express, describe, and study its object”. Lev Vygotsky, The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology"
Vygotsky: The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology: A Methodological Investigation
Chapter 1 – The Nature of the Crisis
Chapter 2 – Our Approach
Chapter 3– The Development of Sciences
Chapter 4 – Current Trends in Psychology
Chapter 5 – From Generalisation to Explanation
Chapter 6 – The Objective Tendencies in development of a Science
Chapter 7 – The Unconscious. The Fusing of disparate theories
Chapter 8 – The Biogenetic hypothesis. Borrowings from the natural sciences
Chapter 9 – On Scientific Language
Chapter 10 – Interpretations of the Crisis in Psychology and its Meaning
Chapter 11 – Bankruptcy of the idea of creating an empirical psychology
Chapter 12 – The Driving Forces of the Crisis
Chapter 13– Two Psychologies
Chapter 14 – Conclusion
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (1896-1934) Russian Psychologist
"Vygotsky influenced modern constructivist thinking perhaps more that any other individual. Vygotsky contended that, unlike animals - who react only to the environment, humans have the capacity to alter the environment for their own purposes. It is this adaptive capacity that distinguishes humans from lower forms of life. One of his central contributions to psychological thought was his emphasis on socially meaningful activity as an important influence on human consciousness. Vygotsky's most controversial contention was that all higher mental functions originate in the social environment. His approach to intelligence emphasized intelligence as a process activity rather than a state entity."
Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (1896-1934): Encyclopedia of Marxism: Glossary of People
"Soviet psychologist who developed Genetic approach to the development of concepts in early childhood and youth, tracing the transition through a series of stages of human development, based on the development of the child's social practice. His works were published after his death in 1934 and suppressed in 1936 and were not known in the West until 1958.
In his student days at the University of Moscow, he read widely in linguistics, sociology, psychology, philosophy and the arts. His systematic work in psychology did not begin until 1924. Ten years later he died of tuberculosis at the age of only 38. In that period, with the collaboration of Aleksandre Luria and A N Leontiev, he launched a series of investigations in developmental psychology, pedagogy and psychopathology. Vygotsky ran a medical practice in his native Byelorussia, actively participating in the development of the Revolution under atrocious conditions and almost total isolation from the West."
"Born on 5 November 1896 Russia, Vygotsky was tutored privately by Solomon Ashpiz: perhaps this experience was at the root of his Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) which played a central role in his pedagogical ideas. ... Throughout his life he expressed a great love of the theatre and poetry but his main interest lay in defectology and psychology, especially problems in education against his background of Marxist philosophy. Vygotsky never received formal training in psychology but his interest in psychology may, in part, have been stimulated by his literary concerns. ...
According to Vygotsky, the child is able to take the basic cultural ideas and determine his/her own ideas (through language as a tool). The child is a determiner not determined. Vygotsky emphasised the cultural line of development because of social determination of mental activity. ... "
"We can formulate the genetic law of cultural development in the following way: any function in the child's cultural development appears on stage twice, on two planes. First it appears on the social plane, then on the psychological, first among people as an interpsyhical category and then within the child as an intrapsychical category".
"Ever since the publication of the first translation of Vygotsky's Thought and Language (reborn as Thinking and Speech 25 years later) there has been an ongoing debate about the relationship between the ideas of Vygotsky and Piaget. In the brief space available, we have no interest in arguing the virtues of one man's ideas over the other. Instead, we will suggest that by and large commentators on the differences between these two thinkers have placed too narrow an emphasis on their ideas about the primacy of individual psychogenesis versus sociogenesis of mind while neglecting what we believe is a cardinal difference between them: their views concerning the importance of culture, in particular, the role of mediation of action through artifacts, on the development of mind."
Comparing Piaget and Vygotsky by Ima Sample
"Methods and approaches to teaching have been greatly influenced by the research of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Both have contributed to the field of education by offering explanations for children's cognitive learning styles and abilities. While Piaget and Vygotsky may differ on how they view cognitive development in children, both offer educators good suggestions on how teach certain material in a developmentally appropriate manner."
The Educational Theory of Lev Vygotsky: An analysis was researched and written by M. Dahms, K. Geonnotti, D. Passalacqua. J. N. Schilk, A. Wetzel, and M. Zulkowsky
"Born in Czarist Russia in 1896, Lev Vygotsky lived a relatively short life, dying of tuberculosis in 1934. Because he was Jewish, the law limited his higher education options. He was, however, one of the 5% maximum of Jews permitted admission to a university. He was, however, not permitted to fulfill his ambition to pursue training as a teacher. In consequence, between the years of 1913 and 1917, Vygotsky studied medicine, philosophy, history, and law.
Vygotsky began teaching in his home city almost immediately after the 1917 Communist Revolution. However, he was disappointed if he anticipated that this upheaval would result in greater overall freedom. The ascension of Joseph Stalin to power in 1922 meant that all of Vygotsky's scholarly work was to be accomplished in an ever more repressive police state.
Vygotsky's investigations of child development and educational psychology were influenced by his own Marxism – a philosophy that emphasizes the importance of one's social origins and place in the scheme of production. Vygotsky's works, consisting of more than one hundred books and articles, were not published until after his death in 1934. Just two years later they were suppressed. This suppression endured for two decades during which time his works were held in a secret library that could only be accessed by permission of the Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs -- commonly known as the NKVD. Despite this prolonged attempt to suppress his ideas, Vygotsky's work survived and, particularly after the Cold War, came to wield considerable influence in the field of educational psychology."
Vygotsky Resources by Siobhan Kolar and Lisa D'Ambrosio
"Several valuable [Vygotsky] resources have "disappeared" from the web. We have attempted to keep broken links updated when locations change ..."
"Marxist’ psychology ... is developing before our eyes, ... it does not yet have its own methodology and attempts to find it ready-made in the haphazard psychological statements of the founders of Marxism, not to mention the fact that to find a ready-made formula of the mind in the writings of others would mean to demand ‘science before science itself.”. Consciousness as a problem in the psychology of behavior."
Vygotsky and Language Acquisition by Ricardo Schütz
"A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow.
Uma palavra que não representa uma idéia é uma coisa morta, da mesma forma que uma idéia não incorporada em palavras não passa de uma sombra.
Words play a central part not only in the development of thought but in the historical growth of consciousness as a whole. A word is a microcosm of human consciousness.
As palavras desempenham um papel central não apenas no desenvolvimento mental, mas também no crescimento histórico da consciência como um todo. Palavras são microcosmos de consciência humana.
Thought undergoes many changes as it turns into speech. It does not merely find expression in speech; it finds its reality and form.
As idéias passam por muitas transformações à medida em que se transformam em linguagem. Elas não apenas encontram expressão na fala, mas nela tornam-se reais e adquirem forma."
Dialogue, Difference, and the "Third Voice" in the Zone of Proximal Development by J. Allan Cheyne and Donato Tarulli
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development by Clifford J. F. Morris"Abstract: In recent years many similarities, especially centering on the notion of dialogue, have been noted in the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin and Lev Vygotsky. Although both attend to the dialogical character of speech and its role in the social constitution and genesis of mind, we argue that their understandings of dialogue are different in important ways. We then consider the implications of such differences for a broader cultural-historical view of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) by focusing on three issues: dialogue, otherness, and the need to consider a "third" voice. These issues lead us to consider expanding the ZPD to incorporate Magistral, Socratic, and Menippean dialogues. These dialogues constitute three regions on a continuum with centripetal Vygotskian and centrifugal Bakhtinian poles and emerge at different points of development of as well as within the ZPD. This expanded ZPD provides a medium for cultural and historical change."
"Alexander Romanovich Luria once commented that Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (but initially spelled 'Vygodsky') was a genius. After more than half a century in science, Luria stated that he was unable to name another person who even approached Vygotsky's incredible analytical ability and foresight. Luria felt that all of his work had been no more than the working out of the psychological theory which Vygotsky had constructed.
Writing now (2008) as a retired state-funded public school teacher who has also witnessed the influence of Vygotsky in the works of cognitivists (Howard Earl Gardner and Robert Jeffrey Sternberg, being just two), I continue to see how Vygotsky established an acceptable socio-political foundation for much of the recent psychological investigations. He did all of this by casting in befitting research from the Marxist-Leninist thesis that all fundamental human cognitive activities took shape in a matrix of social history and from the products of socio-historical development.
In other words, Vygotsky felt that the intellectual ways of knowing the world that a student displayed were not primarily determined by innate factors, that is, inherited intelligence or mental abilities. Instead, Vygotsky 'saw' patterns and levels of thinking as products of the activities practiced in the social institutions of the culture in which the individual was immersed."
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (1896 - 1934) as compiled by Christina Gallagher (May 1999)
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was born in Western Russia (Belorussia) in 1896. He graduated with law degree at Moscow University. After graduation, he started teaching at various institutions. Vygotsky's first big research project was in 1925 with his Psychology of Art. A few years later, he pursued a career as a psychologist working with Alexander Luria and Alexei Leontiev. Together, they began the Vygotskian approach to psychology. Vygotsky had no formal training in psychology but it showed that he was fascinated by it. After his death of tuberculosis in 1934, his ideas were repudiated by the government; however, his ideas were kept alive by his students.
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective
"Lev Semenovich Vygotsky was only 38 when he died, but his ideas about language, culture, and cognitive development were very mature. ... Vygotsky ... suggested that cognitive development depends much more on interactions with the people in the child’s world and the tools that the culture provides to support thinking. Children’s knowledge, ideas, attitudes, and values develop through interaction with others. Children learn not through solitary exploration of the world, but by appropriating or “taking for themselves” the ways of acting and thinking provided by their culture ... Vygotsky also believed that real and symbolic tools such as printing presses, pencils (today, we would add computers), numbers and mathematical systems, signs and codes, and language play very important roles in cognitive development. For example, as long as the culture provides only Roman numerals for representing quantity, certain ways of thinking mathematically -- from long division to calculus -- are difficult or impossible. But with a number system that has a zero, fractions, positive and negative values, and an infinite number of numbers, much more is possible. The number system is a cultural tool that supports thinking, learning, and cognitive development. This system is passed from adult to child through formal and informal interactions and teachings. In Vygotsky’s theory, the most important symbol system supporting learning is language." (Woolfolk, Anita, Winne, Philip, & Perry, Nancy. (2000). Educational Psychology: Canadian Edition Chapter 2: Cognitive development and language, (p. 43). Scarborough: Allyn and Bacon.)
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes (Michael Cole, Vera John-Steiner, Sylvia Scribner & Ellen Souberman, Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. The following three (3) reviews of this book were taken from http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu/final.paper.pub/BookRev_frm.htm
"Review # 1 by Kim Piper
Mind in Society is an edited compilation of the theories of Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist in the early 1900s. These theories may seem foreign to those whose studies of cognition and behavior have focused on information processing and stimulus-response. Vygotsky believes that it is not the case that the environment and the human being interact unidirectionally (that only the environment affects humans). He believes that the environment ("nature") affects the human, and that the human also affects the environment. Due to this interaction, development is viewed as a dynamic process, rather than as one of relatively linear maturation. Learning is not dependent upon previous developmental achievements, but is constantly occurring in the context of development. In this book, Vygotsky explores the nature of complex psychological processes (those processes that go beyond the cognitive domain of, say, perception of the immediate environment).Part I involves the importance that Vygotsky places on the integration of speech/symbolic use of signs, and thinking/higher psychological functioning. He considers the use of speech and tools for the purpose of practical activity as the two of the significant differences separating humans from other animals. He states that speech organizes activity; that in the early stages of development, complex cognitive functions are dependent on speech. Another factor that separates humans from other animals is their use of "sign operations" in "the internalization of cultural forms of behavior" (p. 57).
The second part of the book deals with the implications of Vygotsky's theories of development for education. He counters the idea that learning is dependent on already achieved stages of development; rather, he states that learning provides "an impetus for modifying [development's] course" (p. 79). He introduces his concept of the "zone of proximal development," and in doing so distinguishes between two developmental levels. The first he calls the "actual developmental level," which results from completed cycles of development (p. 85). The "zone of proximal development" could be described as the potential level of development. In this developmental level, children are able to complete tasks under the guidance of more capable people (adults or peers) that they are as yet unable to complete by themselves (p. 86).
Vygotsky also discusses the integral part that play serves in the developmental process. He says that play exhibits the ability of the child to move from a focus on the immediate environment and the instant gratification of desires to the more abstract ability to postpone gratification and to use imagination in place of gratification. And finally, he discusses the nature of written language, and how he feels children should be introduced to it. He feels that written language is akin to spoken language; children should learn it in a situation similar to that in which they acquire spoken language. Teachers should present the _necessity_ of learning the written language, much like spoken language is _needed_ for communication. They should not focus on the mechanics of reading and writing, but rather on its meaningfulness culturally and personally.
The theories presented here have great relevance to education. According to Vygotsky, the commonly accepted notion that children can only learn that which their level of development allows them to grasp is misguided. Schools should focus, instead, on providing students with the guidance necessary for them to develop the ability to do such tasks. Rather than waiting to teach math skills until the student exhibits the ability to understand them, teachers should provide the guidance that will initiate the child's development of such an understanding. He feels that the teaching of literacy should begin as early as preschool, and that it should not be merely the training of letter formation and sound production. Children should feel the _need_ to learn to read.
All in all, for a relatively short work, this book contains mountains of information and theory. So much, in fact, that I am rather uncomfortable writing a review of it at all. I'll need to read it at least one more time before I think I will feel that I understand it to the extent that I could discuss it confidently. From a strictly scientific perspective, the lack of detail regarding experimental design and results leaves the basis of Vygotsky's conclusions rather vague. He seems to make blanket statements with little or no empirical support (this issue is addressed by the editors). His style is very much philosophical, which is both good and bad, in my opinion. It is good in that during my reading I was constantly making associations to my own life experiences and my understanding of human development. It isn't so good in that it is difficult to understand immediately. But I did learn a great deal from reading it (and do plan to read it again). My understanding of human development has been forever altered; I don't think I'll ever be able to deny the relevance of his theory; no matter how much stress is placed on the importance of information processing models of cognition. I highly recommend this book not only to students of cognition, development, and education; anyone simply interested in what makes them tick will find Mind in Society valuable and interesting."
Review # 2 by Hyeon Joo Oh
Mind in Society is a representative selection of Vygotsky's theoretical essays. His theory claimed that higher mental processes in the individual have origin in social processes and that mental processes can be understood only if we understand the tools and signs that mediate them. It is helpful to remind that, as Cole mentioned, Vygotsky viewed Marxist thought as a valuable scientific resource, therefore, "a psychologically relevant application of dialectical and historical materialism" would be one accurate summary of Vygotsky's socio cultural theory of higher mental processes.In the first part, Vygotsky clarified the central role of language and symbolic thought in shaping the structure of higher psychological function which is the combination of tool and sign in psychological activity. Vygotsky believed that children's experience of language is social from the outset. Vygotsky saw the relationship between language and thought as changing over the course of development. Both language and thought develop, and so does the relationship between them. During the first two years of life, language and thought develop along more or less parallel, however, thought and language begin to intermingle from the beginning around two years of age. This intermingle fundamentally changes the nature of both thinking and language. Vygotsky concluded that the most significant moment in the course of intellectual development occurs when speech and practical activity converge.
In second part, Vygotsky introduced the idea of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) which is the potential for cognitive development. That is, the zone he referred to is the gap between "actual developmental level" which children can accomplish independently and "potential developmental level" which children can accomplish when they are interacting with others who are more capable peers or adults. In Vygotsky's view, interactions with social environment, including peer interaction and/or scaffolding, are important ways to facilitate individual cognitive growth and knowledge acquisition. Therefore, learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them. Vygotsky proposed that learning awakens a variety of internal developmental processes that are able to operate only when the child is interacting with people in his environment and in cooperation with his peers. Once these processes are internalized, they become part of the child's independent developmental achievement.
Vygotsky also emphasized the importance of the social nature of imagination play for development. He saw the imaginary situations created in play as zones of proximal development that operate as mental support system. Finally, he argued that natural methods of teaching reading and writing involve appropriate operations on the child's environment. Reading and writing should become necessary for child in her play.
I highly recommend this book because it is very valuable to understand Vygotsky's socio cultural theory although his style is more or less philosophical. However, if we remind his philosophical background roots, it will be easier to read and more helpful to acquire knowledge of his theory."
Review # 3 by Qingfeng Liang
This is a collection of essays by the late Russian psychologist Lev S. Vygotsky, best known to readers for his book Thought and Language. Vygotsky died of tuberculosis in 1934 when he was only 38 years old.Vygotsky ‘s work is of interest to biological, linguistic, historical and cultural psychology because he focuses on the higher (mediated ) psychological processes that distinguish human being and animal. The book discusses memory and intelligence, tool use, sign operations and speech in play, drawing, writing, etc. One of his most interesting ideas is that symbol use arises in play from the separation of meaning from action as occurs when a child uses one object (e.g., stick) to perform actions associated with another object (e.g., a rocking horse), and hence makes the first object represent or stand for the second.
Vygotsky argues for the developmental combination of two independent lines: thought and speech. At first, speech represents external activity and accompanies action; later, it precedes and directs action. Interpersonal communication is transformed during development into intrapersonal communication. Intrapersonal communication, talking to the self, allows the internalization of cultural values.
In the second part, Vygotsky discusses three major theoretical positions concerning about learning and development in children. Vygotsky did not agree with these three positions. He thought that learning should be matched in some manner with child's developmental level. So, he suggested that we determine at least two developmental levels. Thus, he proposed his new method: Zone of proximal development. Zone of proximal development refers to the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or collaboration with more capable peers. He uses the phrase, “zone of proximal development” to describe the arena of learning under training, in which children transcend their independent and spontaneous level of achievement under social stimulation. In Vygotsky’s view, interactions with social environment, including peer interaction, are important ways to facilitate individual cognitive growth and knowledge acquisition.
Vygotsky’s development theory comes from Marx’s philosophy, but he took Marxism very seriously. He considers development as: (1) qualitative transformations in logic and symbol use during stages of development. (2) the origin of thought in action, such as the internalization. (3) interaction between internal factors and external factors and the important of socialization in cognitive development. (4) the spiral-like recapitulation of achievements at higher levels during development.
I highly recommend this book because it gives us a different view of child development, learning and teaching. It is also important for us to know about Vygotsky’s theory systematically. However, due to reasons of translation, something are difficulty to understand and also confusing."
This Vygotsky page was last revised by Clifford Morris on Saturday, 15 November, 2008