Lev Vygotsky

"Learning is more than the acquisition of the ability to think; it is the acquisition of many specialized abilities for thinking about a variety of things."

- Lev Vygotsky

By Maria Daniela Garcia

Who was Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky?

Lev Vygotsky was born in Orsha, Belarus (Russian Empire) on November 17, 1896, the son of a banker and an aspiring teacher.

Vygotsky died in 1934 from tuberculosis at the age of 38.

His work lives on and is frequently researched to this day (Cherry, 2011).

Soviet psychologist, the founder of a theory of human cultural and bio-social development commonly referred to as cultural-historical psychology, and leader of the Vygotsky Circle.

Education Vygotsky graduated from Moscow University in 1917 with a degree in law and a specialization in

literature. While attending Moscow University, Vygotsky concurrently attended an unofficial, anti-czarist institution known as Shinyavskii University where he studied a number of disciplines including history, philosophy, and psychology. These experiences led him to return to his hometown of Gomel, Byelorussia, to teach at a local teachers' training college, where he also established his first psychology laboratory to study handicapped and mentally retarded children.

In 1924 Vygotsky accepted an invitation to join the Institute of Psychology at Moscow State University (formerly Moscow University) where he completed his dissertation in 1925. He then founded the Experimental-Defectological Institute at Moscow State University II, where he advanced the field of special education by incorporating Marxist and other psychological influences into his research.

Vygotsky was associated with a number of prominent Russian and Soviet researchers and theorists during his career, including his friend and colleague Alexander Romanovich Luria, and A. N. Leontiev.n 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.

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.

At the end of Vygotsky's career, political and cultural changes in the Soviet Union caused him to lose the directorship of the Institute, though he continued to remain on its faculty until his premature death in 1934.

What are Vygotsky’s

contributions?

Lev Vygotsky created two categories for Human Development:

Zone of Proximal Development

Sociocultural Theory

His works were published after his death in 1934 and suppressed in 1936 and were not known in the West until 1958.

Zone of Proximal Develpment Through his theories of cognitive development, Vygotsky (1978) proposed

that children develop most effectively and efficiently when they are engaged in tasks that are within their zone of proximal development which he defined as “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 in collaboration with more capable peers” (p. 86).

In other words, children often learn best when they are given tasks that are slightly beyond their ability to perform alone, but can perform when aided by someone who is more cognitively advanced.

ZPD

Zone of Proximal

Development

Zone of Proximal Development Vygotsky suggested that teachers

use cooperative learning exercises where less competent children develop with help from more skillful peers - within the zone of proximal development.

Vygotsky believed that when a student is in the ZPD for a particular task, providing the appropriate assistance will give the student enough of a "boost" to achieve the task.

The ZPD has become synonymous in the literature with the term scaffolding. However, it is important to note that Vygotsky never used this term in his writing, and it was introduced by Wood et al. (1976). Once the student, with the benefit of scaffolding, masters the task, the scaffolding can then be removed and the student will then be able to complete the task again on his own.

Sociocultural Theory: Sociocultural theory is a emerging theory in psychology that looks at the

important contributions that society makes to individual development. This theory stresses the interaction between developing people and the culture in which they live.

Lev Vygotsky suggested that human development results from a dynamic interaction between individuals and society. Through this interaction, children learn gradually and continuously from parent and teachers. This learning, however, can vary from one culture to the next. It is important to note that Vygotsky's theory emphasizes the dynamic nature of this interaction. Society doesn't just impact people; people also impact their society.

Sociocultural theory focuses not only how adults and peers influence individual learning, but also on how cultural beliefs and attitudes impact how instruction and learning take place.

Sociocultural Theory There are three ways a cultural tool can be passed from one individual to

another:

1. The first one is imitative learning, where one person tries to imitate or copy another.

2. The second way is by instructed learning which involves remembering the instructions of the teacher and then using these instructions to self-regulate.

3. The final way that cultural tools are passed to others is through collaborative learning, which involves a group of peers who strive to understand each other and work together to learn a specific skill (Tomasello, et al., 1993).

The chart to the right outlines the core principles of Vygotsky's Sociocultural theory of development. Consider private speech, where children speak to themselves to plan or guide their own behavior. This is most common among preschoolers, who have not yet learned proper social skills but rather explore the idea of it. Children often use private speech when a task becomes to difficult and the child doesn't know how to proceed. Private speech helps the child accomplish a task. Vygotsky believed private speech changes with age, by becoming softer or being just a whisper.

Comparison of Vygotsky and Piaget

Vygotsky's ideas and theories are often compared to Jean Piaget, especially his cognitive- developmental theory. They had a conflict explaining that development concepts should not be taught until children are in the appropriate developmental stage. Opposing Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, Piaget believed that the most important source of cognition is the children themselves. But Vygotsky argued that the social environment could help the child's cognitive development. The social environment is an important factor which helps the child culturally adapt to new situations when needed. Both Vygotsky and Piaget had the common goal of finding out how children master ideas and then translate them into speech.

Piaget found that children act independently on the physical world to discover what it has to offer. Vygotsky, on the other hand, wrote in Thought and Language that human mental activity is the result of social learning. As children master tasks they will engage in cooperative dialogues with others, which led Vygotsky to believe that acquisition of language is the most influential moment in a child's life.

In conclusion, Piaget emphasized universal cognitive change and Vygotsky's theory leads us to expect highly variable development , depending on the child's cultural experiences to the environment. Piaget's theory emphasized the natural line, while Vygotsky favored the cultural line of development.

Vygotsky and Piaget Diagramm

Vygotsky’s Ideas

Continous development (no stages)

Zone of Proximal Development

Socially Transmitted knowledge (cooperative learning and scaffolding)

Private speech helps internalize knowledge.

Piaget’s Ideas

Four discrete stages

Cognitive development is limited by stages

Young children are schematic

Motivation to maintain cognitive equilibrium

Development occurs when assimilation is not possible (adaptation)

Similarities:• Both were

constructivists• Both believed that

social forces set the limits of development

Sociocultural Development

According to Vygotsky, "Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals."

What a child can do in cooperation

today, he can do alone tomorrow!

Beliefs

Vygotsky believed that “the most significant moment in the course of intellectual development, which gives birth to the purely human forms of practical and abstract intelligence, occurs when speech and practical activity, two previously completely independent lines of development, converge” (Vygotsky, L. S., 1978, p. 24).

That is, when thought and language become one, the individual is able to analyze the world in more complex ways, to parse words and use them to form new meanings, and to organize thoughts.

Vygotsky stressed that it is through the tools provided by language that meaning is assigned to what the child perceives, an act that is infused with cultural relevance. The words people use and the ways in which they use them convey certain elements of culture that are passed from one person to the next.

Beliefs As Vygotsky sought to research various aspects of development, one of his

primary concerns was to use appropriate methodologies. He believed that laboratory experiments, for example, were not applicable to the real-world experiences of the participants. Instead, Vygotsky believed that it was important to study development within natural contexts. He also believed that the researcher should determine the most appropriate unit of analysis. In Vygotsky's research, for example, he often broadened his unit of analysis beyond the individual to include ecological factors.

Influences

Vygotsky was strongly influenced by Pavlov, the discoverer of the conditional reflex and leaned towards behaviourism, emphasising the requirement for science to adopt objective methods of investigation, in opposition to the introspective methods of Husserl, for example. Vygotsky did not live long enough to resolve the contradictions into which behaviourism is lead in coming to grips with the manifest reality of subjective consciousness.

Vygotsky’s Contemporaries B. F. Skinner (born March 20, 1904) from USA

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (born September 14, 1849) from Russia

Sigmund Freud (born May 6, 1856) from Czech Republic

While he was a contemporary of Skinner, Pavlov, Freud and Piaget, his work never attained their level of eminence during his lifetime. Part of this was because his work was often criticized by the Communist Party in Russia, and so his writings were largely inaccessible to the Western world. His premature death at age 38 also contributed to his obscurity.

Despite this, his work has continued to grow in influence since his death, particularly in the fields of developmental and educational psychology.

His work

His works were published after his death in 1934 and suppressed in 1936 and were not known in the West until 1958. More recently, linguists and educationalists influenced by Piaget's Genetic Psychology have been drawn towards Vygotsky's work, seeing in it a superior understanding of the relationship between the educator and the educated, in which the educator must "negotiate" with the child or student who is credited with an active role in the learning process.

Especially in the United States, Vygotsky has found a following among Community Development workers who value his concept of a "Zone of Proximal Development", in which leadership is able to facilitate intellectual and social development in struggles by communities to change their circumstances, leading to a subsequent benefit in an all-round development of conceptual ability.

Major works of Lev Vygotsky 1. Educational Psychology (Russian), Moscow, 1926.

2. Pedology of the School Age (Russian), Moscow 1928.

3. Outlines of the Development of Behavior (with Luria, Russian), Moscow 1930.

4. Pedology of the Juvenile. (Russian), Moscow 1934.

5. Principles of Pedology. Lectures (Russian), Moscow 1934.

6. Thought and Speech. (Russian), Moscow 1934.

7. The Meaning of the Present Psychological Crisis (In print).

8. Spinoza and His Theory of Emotions – Prologomena to the Psychology of Man (In print).

9. “The Problem of the Cultural Development of the Child,” Journal of Genetic Psychology, 1929, XXXVI, 413-434.

10. “Thought in Schizophrenia,” Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 31, 1934, 1063-1077.

The influence of Lev Vygotsky TODAY!

History of ‘Tools of the Mind’ The Tools of the Mind curriculum

began in 1993

Vygotskian Approach

Beliefs

Lev Vygotsky believed that just as physical tools extended our physical abilities, mental tools extend our mental abilities, enabling us to solve problems and create solutions in the modern world. When applied to children this means that to successfully function is school and beyond, children need to learn more than a set of facts and skills.

./According to Vygotsky, until children learn to use mental tools, their learning is largely controlled by the environment; they attend only to the things that are brightest or loudest, and they can remember something only if has been repeated many times. After children master mental tools, they become in charge of their own learning, by attending and remembering in an intentional and purposeful way.

References http://learninggroup2011.wikispaces.com/Most+Important+People

http://www.simplypsychology.org/Zone-of-Proximal-Development.html

http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/v/y.htm#vygotsky-lev

http://www.toolsofthemind.org/about/

http://www.education.com/reference/article/vygotsky-lev-semenovich-1896-1934/

http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/vygotsky.htm