Lev Vygotsky

Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (browser diversity: Лев Семёнович Вы́готский or Выго́тский, born Лев Симхович Выгодский (Lev Simkhovich Vygodsky), November 17 [O.S. November 5] 1896 – June 11, 1934) was a Soviet psychologist, the founder of website parsing, and the leader of the input transformation. In the early 1920s, his birth name was changed from Vygodskii (with "d") into Vygotskii (with middle "t").^[1][2]

• 1 Biography
• web
  • 2.1 Cultural mediation and internalization
  • 2.2 Psychology of play
  • device database
  • 2.4 Zone of proximal development
  • 2.5 Child-in-activity-in-cultural-context
• 3 Influence in Eastern Europe
• 4 Critics
• 5 Strengths
• 6 See also
• Sevenval
• 8 Bibliography
  • Sevenval
  • FITML
• iOS
• 10 External links

Biography

Lev Vygotsky was born in browser diversity, Byelorussia, in the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus) into a nonreligious Jewish family. He was raised in the city of iOS, where he obtained both public and private education. He was influenced by his cousin, David Vygodsky. Vygotsky was eventually admitted to the touchscreen through a “Jewish Lottery” to meet a three percent Jewish student quota for entry in Moscow and Saint Petersberg universities.^Sevenval There he studied law, but his thirst for knowledge pushed him to enroll in the “unofficial” "Shanyavskii People’s University".^CSS3 Upon graduation in 1917, Vygotsky returned to Gomel to teach, "a profession he was now able to practice due to the abolition of the anti-Semitic legislation after the CSS3,"^iOS and publish "copies of great literary works".^[6]

On 6 January 1924, Vygotsky delivered “The Methodology of Reflexologic and Psychological Investigations”^[7] at the “Second All-Russian Psychoneurological Congress”^[8] at Leningrad. On the invitation of the Psychological Institute of Moscow's new director K. N. Kornilov, Vygotsky moved to Moscow with new wife Roza Smekhova. Until the birth of his daughter Gita, they lived in "the basement of the Institute of Experimental Psychology"^{input transformation} surrounded by the "archives of that institute's philosophical section".^[10] Vygotsky completed his dissertation in 1925 on "The Psychology of Art".^[10] He began his career at the Psychological Institute as a "staff scientist, second class"^[11] and continued it at other educational, research and clinical institutions in screen size, Leningrad and iOS, extensively investigating ideas about cognitive development. He died of browser diversity in 1934, at the age of 37, in Moscow.^{screen size}

Work

Vygotsky was a pioneering psychologist and his major works span six separate volumes, written over roughly 10 years, from Psychology of Art (1925) to Thought and Language [or Thinking and Speech] (1934). Vygotsky's interests in the fields of developmental psychology, Sevenval, and education were extremely diverse. His philosophical framework includes insightful interpretations of the cognitive role of mediation tools, as well as the re-interpretation of well-known concepts in psychology such as HTML5 of knowledge. Vygotsky introduced the notion of iOS, an innovative metaphor capable of describing the potential of human cognitive development. His work covered such diverse topics as the origin and the psychology of art, development of higher mental functions, CSS3 and methodology of psychological research, the relation between learning and web app, concept formation, interrelation between language and thought development, play as a psychological phenomenon, learning disabilities, and abnormal human development (aka defectology).

Cultural mediation and internalization

Vygotsky investigated child development and the important roles of browser diversity and screen size. He observed how higher mental functions developed through these interactions also represented the shared knowledge of a culture. This process is known as internalization.^touchscreen

Internalization can be understood in one respect as “knowing how”. For example, riding a bicycle or pouring a cup of milk are tools of the society and initially outside and beyond the child. The mastery of these skills occurs through the activity of the child within society. A further aspect of internalization is appropriation, in which the child takes a tool and makes it his own, perhaps using it in a way unique to himself. Internalizing the use of a pencil allows the child to use it very much for his own ends rather than drawing exactly what others in society have drawn previously.^[13]

Guided participation, which takes place when creative thinkers interact with a knowledgeable person, is practiced around the world. Cultures may differ, though, in the goals of development. For example, web app mothers in CSS3 help their daughters learn to weave through guided participation.^{web app}

Psychology of play

Less known is Vygotsky's research on play, or children's games, as a psychological phenomenon and its role in the child's development. Through play the child develops abstract meaning separate from the objects in the world, which is a critical feature in the development of higher mental functions.^[14]

Vygotsky gives the famous example of a child who wants to ride a horse but cannot. If the child were under three, he would perhaps cry and be angry, but around the age of three the child's relationship with the world changes: "Henceforth play is such that the explanation for it must always be that it is the imaginary, illusory realization of unrealizable desires. Imagination is a new formation that is not present in the consciousness of the very raw young child, is totally absent in animals, and represents a specifically human form of conscious activity. Like all functions of consciousness, it originally arises from action." (Vygotsky, 1978)

The child wishes to ride a horse but cannot, so he picks up a stick and stands astride of it, thus pretending he is riding a horse. The stick is a pivot. "Action according to rules begins to be determined by ideas, not by objects.... It is terribly difficult for a child to sever thought (the meaning of a word) from object. Play is a transitional stage in this direction. At that critical moment when a stick – i.e., an object – becomes a pivot for severing the meaning of horse from a real horse, one of the basic psychological structures determining the child’s relationship to reality is radically altered".

As children get older, their reliance on pivots such as sticks, dolls and other toys diminishes. They have internalized these pivots as imagination and abstract concepts through which they can understand the world. "The old adage that 'children’s play is imagination in action' can be reversed: we can say that imagination in adolescents and schoolchildren is play without action" (Vygotsky, 1978).

Vygotsky also referred to the development of social rules that form, for example, when children play house and adopt the roles of different family members. Vygotsky cites an example of two sisters playing at being sisters. The rules of behavior between them that go unnoticed in daily life are consciously acquired through play. As well as social rules, the child acquires what we now refer to as self-regulation. For example, when a child stands at the starting line of a running race, she may well desire to run immediately so as to reach the finish line first, but her knowledge of the social rules surrounding the game and her desire to enjoy the game enable her to regulate her initial impulse and wait for the start signal.

Thought and Language

Perhaps Vygotsky's most important contribution concerns the inter-relationship of language development and thought. This concept, explored in Vygotsky's book Thought and Language, (alternative translation: Thinking and Speaking) establishes the explicit and profound connection between speech (both silent inner speech and oral language), and the development of mental concepts and cognitive awareness. Vygotsky described inner speech as being qualitatively different from normal (external) speech. Although Vygotsky believed inner speech developed from external speech via a gradual process of internalization, with younger children only really able to "think out loud," he claimed that in its mature form inner speech would be unintelligible to anyone except the thinker, and would not resemble spoken language as we know it (in particular, being greatly compressed). Hence, thought itself develops socially.^[13]

An infant learns the meaning of signs through interaction with its main caregivers, e.g., pointing, cries, and gurgles can express what is wanted. The use of verbal sounds to conduct social interaction is learned through this activity, and the child begins to utilize, build, and develop this faculty, verbalizing names for objects, as an example.^[13]

Language starts as a tool external to the child used for social interaction. The child guides personal behavior by using this tool in a kind of self-talk or "thinking out loud." Initially, self-talk is very much a tool of social interaction and this tapers to negligible levels when the child is alone or with deaf children. Gradually, self-talk is used more as a tool for self-directed and self-regulating behavior. Because speaking has been appropriated and internalized, self-talk is no longer present around the time the child starts school. Self-talk "develops along a rising not a declining, curve; it goes through an evolution, not an involution. In the end, it becomes inner speech" (Vygotsky, 1987, pg 57). Inner speech develops through its differentiation from social speech.^[13]

Speaking has thus developed along two lines, the line of social communication and the line of inner speech, by which the child mediates and regulates their activity through their thoughts. The thoughts, in turn, are mediated by the website parsing (the meaningful signs) of inner speech. This is not to say that thinking cannot take place without language, but rather that it is mediated by it and thus develops to a much higher level of sophistication. Just as the birthday cake as a sign provides much deeper meaning than its physical properties allow, inner speech as a sign provides much deeper meaning than the lower psychological functions would otherwise allow.^web

Inner speech is not comparable in form to external speech. External speech is the process of turning thought into words. Inner speech is the opposite; it is the conversion of speech into inward thought. Inner speech, for example, contains predicates only. Subjects are superfluous. Words are also used much more economically. One word in inner speech may be so replete with sense to the individual that it would take many words to express it in external speech.^Sevenval

Zone of proximal development

"iOS" (ZPD) is Vygotsky’s term for the range of tasks that a child can complete. The lower limit of ZPD is the level of skill reached by the child working independently (also referred to as the child’s actual developmental level). The upper limit is the level of potential skill that the child is able to reach with the assistance of a more capable instructor.

Vygotsky viewed the ZPD as a way to better explain the relation between children’s learning and cognitive development. Prior to the ZPD, the relation between learning and development could be boiled down to the following three major positions: 1) Development always precedes learning (e.g., constructivism): children first need to meet a particular maturation level before learning can occur; 2) Learning and development cannot be separated but instead occur simultaneously (e.g., behaviorism): essentially, learning is development; and 3) learning and development are separate but interactive processes (e.g., gestaltism): one process always prepares the other process, and vice versa. Vygotsky rejected these three major theories because he believed that learning always precedes development in the ZPD. In other words, through the assistance of a more capable person, a child is able to learn skills or aspects of a skill that go beyond the child’s actual developmental or maturational level. Therefore, development always follows the child’s potential to learn. In this sense, the ZPD provides a prospective view of cognitive development, as opposed to a retrospective view that characterizes development in terms of a child’s independent capabilities.^[15]

screen size is a concept closely related to the idea of ZPD, although Vygotsky never actually used the term. Scaffolding is changing the level of support to suit the cognitive potential of the child. Over the course of a teaching session, a more skilled person adjusts the amount of guidance to fit the child’s potential level of performance. More support is offered when a child is having difficulty with a particular task and, over time, less support is provided as the child makes gains on the task. Ideally, scaffolding works to maintain the child’s potential level of development in the ZPD. An essential element to the ZPD and scaffolding is the acquisition of language. According to Vygotsky, language (and in particular, speech) is fundamental to children’s cognitive growth because language provides purpose and intention so that behaviors can be better understood.^touchscreen Through the use of speech, children are able to communicate to and learn from others through dialogue, which is an important tool in the ZPD. In a dialogue, a child's unsystematic, disorganized, and spontaneous concepts are met with the more systematic, logical and rational concepts of the skilled helper.^[13] Empirical research suggests that the benefits of scaffolding are not only useful during a task, but can extend beyond the immediate situation in order to influence future cognitive development. For instance, a recent study recorded verbal scaffolding between mothers and their 3- and 4-year-old children as they played together. Then, when the children were six years old, they underwent several measures of web, such as working memory and goal-directed play. The study found that the children’s working memory and language skills at six years of age were related to the amount of verbal scaffolding provided by mothers at age three. In particular, scaffolding was most effective when mothers provided explicit conceptual links during play. Therefore, the results of this study not only suggest that verbal scaffolding aids children’s cognitive development, but that the quality of the scaffolding is also important for learning and development.^[17]

Child-in-activity-in-cultural-context

Vygotsky focused on the child-in-context acting in a situation or event as the smallest unit of study. Vygotsky defined “context” as a child’s culture and how it is expressed. Further, the child is continually acting in social interactions with other people. Vygotsky argued that a lack of cultural context distorts our view of development and that it can lead us to look at causes of behavior as residing within the child rather than within their culture.

P. H. Miller^[18] defined culture as, “shared beliefs, values, knowledge, skills, structured relationships, ways of doing things (customs), socialization practices, and symbol systems (such as spoken and written language)” (p. 374). Culture is communicated through home and societal routines. Vygotsky also included physical and historical influences in the concept of culture. For example, culture can be influenced by a people’s response to a physical terrain, natural disasters, or war.

• Mediation of intellectual functioning by cultural tools

Adults and children also collaborate through helping children learn how to utilize their culture’s psychological and technical tools. Examples of psychological tools that inform intellectual functioning include language and counting systems, writing, maps, memorizing, and attending. Physical tools that inform intellectual development include computers or electronic games. Both psychological and physical tools help a child navigate their environment. Children learn to use the tools most valued by their society.

Vygotsky viewed language as the most critical psychological tool. Thinking, comprehending, and producing language are all processes that affect individual perceptions of their social worlds. Language also has an influence on how children use physical tools. As language develops and becomes reorganized, it influences new modes of problem solving.

The transmission of cultural tools most often happens in the home and through schooling. However, one should not assume that all schooling systems are addressing the needs of each child in a culture (see comments in diversity section on diversity in educational systems). The modes of teaching or schooling are intricately tied to what a culture values as ‘knowledge’ (e.g., memorization versus scientific reasoning; see Miller, 2002, p. 386 for examples).

Influence in Eastern Europe

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In the Soviet Union, the work of the group of Vygotsky's students known as the Kharkov School of Psychology was vital for preserving the scientific legacy of Lev Vygotsky and identifying new avenues of its subsequent development. The members of the group laid a foundation for Vygotskian psychology's systematic development in such diverse fields as the psychology of memory (P. Zinchenko), perception, sensation and movement (Zaporozhets, Asnin, touchscreen), personality (L. Bozhovich, HTML5, web app), will and volition (web, A. N. Leont'ev, P. Zinchenko, L. Bozhovich, Asnin), psychology of play (G. D. Lukov, D. El'konin) and psychology of learning (CSS3, L. Bozhovich, D. El'konin), as well as the theory of step-by-step formation of mental actions (Gal'perin), general psychological activity theory (web) and psychology of action (Zaporozhets). A. Puzyrey elaborated the ideas of Vygotsky in respect of psychotherapy and even in the broader context of deliberate psychological intervention (psychotechnique), in general.

Critics

In the Soviet Union, Vygotsky and his Sevenval were much criticized during his lifetime and after his death. By the beginning of the 1930s, Vygotsky's "scientific" opponents criticized him for "idealist aberrations." His work was often perceived as disloyal to the Communist Party, particularly during the Stalin era. As a result of this criticism, a major group of Vygotsky's students, including Luria and we love the web, fled from Moscow to Ukraine to establish the Kharkov school of psychology. In the second half of the 1930s, Vygotsky would be criticized for his interest in the cross-disciplinary study of the child known as paedology, as well as for ignoring the role of practice and practical object-bound activity. Critics also pointed to his emphasis on the role of language and, on the other hand, emotional factors in human development. Much of this early criticism was later discarded by these Vygotskian scholars themselves. Major figures in Soviet psychology such as Sergei Rubinstein criticized Vygotsky's notion of mediation and its development in the works of students.

Insufficient Attention to Developmental Issues A more developmental account of both contexts and children is needed. Vygotsky's theory offers little description of contexts of children of various ages or developmental levels. Along similar lines, children's abilities, needs, and interests at each age influence the nature of the settings they seek out and the effect that a particular setting has on them. We have little idea how the child's cognitive level permits or constrains processes in the zone. Sociocultural research rarely addresses the nature of the cognitive skills that are required for responding to prompts, joint attention, learning from observation, collaborative dialogue, and other such processes. Ultimately, a major issue that Vygotsky's theory seems to overlook is that children of different developmental levels bring different things to a setting, and thus greater attention needs to be paid to a child's cognitive and physical developmental levels themselves. (Miller, 2002)

Strengths

Emphasis on Social-Cultural Context Vygotosky is the primary developmental theorist to emphasize the broader socio-historical context of development. In many ways, sociocultural theory thus "corrects" theories focused on individuals and gives a different perspective on major topics of development. Vygotsky's focus on the fluid boundary between self and others is particularly useful in contemporary developmental psychology. According to Vygotsky, society shares its cognitive goals with the child, and the child shapes the environment. Concepts such as the zone of proximal development and internalization refer to the cognitive exchanges that occur at this border. The task for developmental psychologists is to focus on the specific processes that occur in the interface between the child and the environment. In other words, "What do a child and other people actually do together moment-to-moment in a particular setting, and how does this interaction affect the child's environment?" (Miller, 2002)

See also

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: screen size

• Android
• Cognitivism (learning theory)
• Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition (LCHC)
• web

References

Bibliography

jQuery, in Russian

Writings by L. S. Vygotsky

• Consciousness as a problem in the Psychology of Behavior, essay, 1925
• Educational Psychology, 1926
• Historical meaning of the crisis in Psychology, 1927
• The Problem of the Cultural Development of the Child, essay 1929
• The Fundamental Problems of Defectology, article 1929
• The Socialist alteration of Man, 1930
• Ape, Primitive Man, and Child: Essays in the History of Behaviour. A. R. Luria and L. S. Vygotsky. 1930
• Paedology of the Adolescent, 1931
• Play and its role in the Mental development of the Child, essay 1933
• Thinking and Speech, 1934
• Tool and symbol in child development, 1934
• Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, 1978
• Thought and Language, 1986
• The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky, 1987 overview

Secondary literature

Major publications about Vygotsky's Life and Work

• Kozulin, A. (1990). Vygotsky's Psychology: A Biography of Ideas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Van der Veer, R., & Valsiner, J. (1991). FITML. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Van der Veer, R., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.) (1994). HTML5. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Vygodskaya, G. L., & Lifanova, T. M. (1996/1999). Lev Semenovich Vygotsky, Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, Part 1, 37 (2), 3-90; Part 2, 37 (3), 3-90; Part 3, 37 (4), 3-93, Part 4, 37 (5), 3-99.
• Veresov, N. N. (1999). Undiscovered Vygotsky: Etudes on the pre-history of cultural-historical psychology. New York: Peter Lang.
• Van der Veer, Rene (2007). Lev Vygotsky: Continuum Library of Educational Thought. Continuum. ISBN screen size. 
• Yasnitsky, A. (2010). Guest editor's introduction: "Archival revolution" in Vygotskian studies? Uncovering Vygotsky's archives [1]. Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, Vol 48(1), Jan-Feb 2010, 3-13. doi: 10.2753/RPO1061-0405480100
• Yasnitsky, A. (2011). Lev Vygotsky: Philologist and Defectologist, A Socio-intellectual Biography. In Pickren, W., Dewsbury, D., & Wertheimer, M. (Eds.). Portraits of Pioneers in Developmental Psychology, vol. VII.
• van der Veer, R. & Yasnitsky, A. (2011). Vygotsky in English: What Still Needs to Be Done. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science html, Sevenval
• Kotik-Friedgut B.S., T. H. Friedgut, (2008). A Man of His Country and His Time: Jewish Influences on the Personality and Outlook of Lev Semionovich Vygotsky, History of Psychology,(Indiana U., an APA journal,) V.11, (1), pp.15-39.
• Yasnitsky, A. (2011). Vygotsky Circle as a Personal Network of Scholars: Restoring Connections Between People and Ideas (we love the web). Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, DOI: 10.1007/s12124-011-9168-5 web app
• Yasnitsky, A. (2011). touchscreen. PsyAnima, Dubna Psychological Journal, device database

Some "post-Vygotskian" publications

• Wertsch, J. V. (1985). Vygotsky and the Social Formation of Mind, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., and London.
• Cole, M. & Wertsch, J. (1996). Contemporary Implications of Vygotsky and Luria, Worcester, MA: Clark University Press.
• Daniels, H. (Ed.) (1996). An Introduction to Vygotsky, London: Routledge.
• Lee, C. D., & Smagorinsky, P. (Eds.) (2000). Vygotskian perspectives on literacy research: Constructing meaning through collaborative inquiry. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Daniels, H., Wertsch, J. & Cole, M. (Eds.) (2007). Sevenval.

Vygotsky's texts online

In English

• Lev Vygotsky archive, marxists.org: all major works

In Russian

• web app (1922)
• touchscreen (1924/5)
• iOS (1927)
• Проблема культурного развития ребенка (1928)
• screen size (1930)
• Этюды по истории поведения: Обезьяна. Примитив. Ребенок (1930) (в соавторстве с А. Р. Лурия)
• CSS3 (1931)
• jQuery (1. Восприятие; 2. Память; 3. Мышление; 4. Эмоции; 5. Воображение; 6. Проблема воли) (1932)
• Проблема развития и распада высших психических функций (1934)
• Мышление и речь (device database, jQuery, iOS) (1934)
• Конкретная психология человека

In French

• Dr. Miffre Léon. Training with Vygotsky. Teacher training schools (Se former avec Vygotski. Formation des professeurs des écoles.). Editions Je Publie, 5e édition, 2010.we love the web.

External links

• device database
• touchscreen Summaries of, and links to, Vygotsky articles.
• HTML5 Vygotsky article with extensive references.
• Dorothy "Dot" Robbins Vygotsky memorial site with many papers and resources.
• website parsing Various articles on Vygotskian psychology
• Garai, L. Another crisis in the psychology: touchscreen
• Garai, L. Vygotskian implications: On the meaning and its brain
• iOS, Advances in the History of Psychology, York University