Lev Vygotsky

Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (Russian: Лев Семёнович Вы́готский or Выго́тский, born Lev Simyonovich Vygodsky; November 17 [O.S. November 5] 1896 – June 11, 1934) was a Soviet psychologist, the founder of cultural-historical psychology, and the leader of the Vygotsky Circle.

Biography

Lev Semenovich Vygotsky was born in Orsha, Byelorussia, in the Russian Empire (today in Belarus) into a nonreligious Jewish family. He was raised in the city of Gomel, where he obtained both public and private education. He was influenced by his cousin, David Vygotsky. Vygotsky was eventually admitted to the Moscow State University through a “Jewish Lottery”. There, he studied law, but his thirst for knowledge pushed him to enroll in the “unofficial” Shaniavsky People’s University. Upon graduation in 1917, Vygotsky returned to Gomel where he married his wife, Roza Smekhova in the mid-1920s. After the birth of his first daughter, Gita, he relocated to finally begin his career at the Institute of Psychology and other educational, research, and clinical institutions in Moscow, Leningrad, and Kharkov where he extensively investigated ideas about cognitive development. He died of tuberculosis in 1934, at the age of 37, in Moscow.

Work

Vygotsky was a pioneering psychologist and his major works span 6 volumes, written over roughly 10 years, from his Psychology of Art (1925) to Thought and Language [or Thinking and Speech] (1934). Vygotsky's interests in the fields of developmental psychology, child development, and education were extremely diverse. The philosophical framework he provided includes not only insightful interpretations about the cognitive role of tools of mediation, but also the re-interpretation of well-known concepts in psychology such as the notion of internalization of knowledge. Vygotsky introduced the notion of zone of proximal development, an innovative metaphor capable of describing not the actual, but 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, philosophy of science and methodology of psychological research, the relation between learning and human development, concept formation, interrelation between language and thought development, play as a psychological phenomenon, the study of learning disabilities, and abnormal human development (aka defectology).

Cultural mediation and internalization

Vygotsky investigated child development and how this was guided by the role of culture and interpersonal communication. Vygotsky observed how higher mental functions developed historically within particular cultural groups, as well as individually through social interactions with significant people in a child's life, particularly parents, but also other adults. Through these interactions, a child came to learn the habits of mind of her/his culture, including speech patterns, written language, and other symbolic knowledge through which the child derives meaning and which affected a child's construction of her/his knowledge. This key premise of Vygotskian psychology is often referred to as cultural mediation. The specific knowledge gained by children through these interactions also represented the shared knowledge of a culture. This process is known as internalization.

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 draw exactly what others in society have drawn previously.

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, Mayan mothers in Guatemala help their daughters learn to weave through guided participation.

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.

The famous example Vygotsky gives is of a child madison manningride 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).

Another aspect of play that Vygotsky referred to was the development of social rules that develop, 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. It should be noted that 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.

An infant learns the meaning of signs through interaction with its main care-givers, e.g., pointing, cries, and gurgles can express what is wanted. How verbal sounds can be used to conduct social interaction is learned through this activity, and the child begins to utilize, build, and develop this faculty, e.g., using names for objects, etc.

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 it 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. Then, 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.

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 which in turn are mediated by the semiotics (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 signs provides much deeper meaning than the lower psychological functions would otherwise allow.

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 too are 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.

Zone of proximal development

"Zone of proximal development" (ZPD) is Vygotsky’s term for the range of tasks that a child can complete independently and those completed with the guidance and assistance of adults or more-skilled children. The lower limit of ZPD is the level of skill reached by the child working independently. The upper limit is the level of additional responsibility the child can accept with the assistance of an able instructor. The ZPD captures the child’s cognitive skills that are in the process of maturing and can be accomplished only with the assistance of a more-skilled person. Scaffolding is a concept closely related to the idea of ZPD. Scaffolding is changing the level of support. Over the course of a teaching session, a more-skilled person adjusts the amount of guidance to fit the child’s current performance. Dialogue is an important tool of this process in the zone of proximal development. In a dialog, a child's unsystematic, disorganized, and spontaneous concepts are met with the more systematic, logical and rational concepts of the skilled helper.

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 they express their culture. Further, the child is continually acting in social interactions with other people. Vygotsky argued that looking at child development without cultural context distorts our view of development, and often causes us to look at causes of behavior as residing within the child, rather than in their culture.

Miller (2002) 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 influence 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 re-organized, it influences new modes of problem solving.

For example, examine the effects of not using the language of mental health disorders to describe homosexuality. Taking homosexuality out of the DSM and shifting from talking about it as a 'disorder' rather than 'innate' or 'biological' created a huge shift in society, as evidenced by historical changes in attitudes towards and greater advocacy with LGBT populations.

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 (e.g., see comments in diversity section on diversity in educational systems). The modes of teaching/schooling are intricately tied to what a culture values as ‘knowledge’ (e.g., memorization vs. scientific reasoning; see Miller, 2002, p. 386 for examples).

Influence in Eastern Europe

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, A. N. Leont'ev), personality (L. Bozhovich, Asnin, A. N. Leont'ev), will and volition (Zaporozhets, A. N. Leont'ev, P. Zinchenko, L. Bozhovich, Asnin), psychology of play (G. D. Lukov, D. El'konin) and psychology of learning (P. Zinchenko, L. Bozhovich, D. El'konin), as well as the theory of step-by-step formation of mental actions (Gal'perin), general psychological activity theory (A. N. Leont'ev) 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, the school of Vygotsky and, specifically, his cultural-historical psychology was much criticized during his lifetime as well as after his death. By the beginning of the 1930s, the school was defeated in Soviet academic and political circles by Vygotsky's "scientific" opponents who criticized him for "idealist aberrations", which at that time equaled with the charge in disloyalty to the Communist Party (and, particularly during the Stalin era, frequently entailed serious consequences not only for academic work but also in terms of potential prosecution, detention, and/or execution). As a result of this criticism of their work, a major group of Vygotsky's students including Luria and Leontiev had to flee from Moscow to Ukraine where they established the Kharkov school of psychology. Later, the representatives of the school would, in turn, in the second half of the 1930s criticize Vygotsky himself for his interest in the cross-disciplinary study of the child that was developed under the umbrella term of paedology (also spelled as pedology) as well as for his ignoring the role of practice and practical, object-bound activity and arguably his emphasis on the research on the role of language and, on the other hand, emotional factors in human development. Much of this early criticism of the 1930s was later discarded by these Vygotskian scholars themselves. Another line of the critique of Vygotsky's psychological theory comes from such major figures of the Soviet psychology as Sergei Rubinstein and his followers who criticized Vygotsky's notion of mediation and its development in the works of students.

Some critics say Vygotsky overemphasized the role of language in thinking. Also, his emphasis on collaboration and guidance has potential pitfalls if facilitators are too helpful in some cases. An example of that would be an overbearing and controlling parent. Other critics argue that some children may become lazy and expect help when they can do something on their own.

Vagueness of Zone of Proximal Development The first main ambiguity within Vygotsky's concept of the zone is that only knowing the width of chidren's zones doesn't provide an accurate picture of their learning ability, style of learning, or current level of development compared to other children of the same age and degree of motivation. Having a wide or narrow zone can be desirable or undesirable, depending on its causes. Thus simply assessing children's zones provides a very incomplete developmental picture. (Miller, 2002)

A second major issue with the zone relates to the problem of measurement. No common, metric scale exists to measure an individual child's zone. Vygotsky sometimes measured the zone in terms of age, such as when a child with an age 6 actual level of functioning and an age 9 potential level of functioning could be said to have a zone of 3 years. However, this is a very global metric, and it cannot be assumed that the difference of 3 years between ages 2 and 5 is equal to that between ages 6 and 9.

Another problem with the zone is the fact that we know little about the generality and stability of an individual's zone. Is a child's zone for one domain equal across all domains? Does the size of a child's zone change over time? Is guided participation from adults necessary or only helpful for development? Is improvement within the zone long-lasting, or only temporary? While the zone is certainly a hallmark of Vygotsky's sociocultural approach, it is thus clear from even these brief critiques that our knowledge about this key concept must be broadened. (Miller, 2002)

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)

No Major Prototypic Tasks Associated with the Theory In comparison to Piaget's object permanence and conservation tasks or Gibson's visual cliff demonstrations, the sociocultural approach to development appears to lack any major prototypical tasks that others immediately associate with the theory. While Vygotsky did develop scenarios involving the use of the Vygotsky blocks and other double-stimulation methods, contemporary researchers seldom utilize these processes to examine sociocultural developmental theory. This may be in part due to the fact that when Vygotsky did conduct experiments, he typically provided very sparse descriptions of his procedures and little or no data, relying instead on general summaries. As a result, sociocultural psychologists today look at a vast array of topics in their research. For example, contemporary research has focused on collaborative problem-solving between parent and child or between two peers, cross-cultural research,and cultural narratives passed down to children by their parents. While this diversity of methods has its advantages, the lack of prototypic tasks and associated developmental findings may continue to make it difficult for contemporary sociocultural theorists to present a systematic, coherent, well-documented account of development. (Miller, 2002)

Strengths

Emphasis on Social-Cultural Context Vygotosky is the main 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. Particularly useful for contemporary developmental psychology is Vygotsky's focus on the fluid boundary between self and others. 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

• Social constructivism
• Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition (LCHC)
• Anna Stetsenko

Bibliography

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 Work

• Wertsch, J. V. (1985). Vygotsky and the Social Formation of Mind, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., and London.
• Kozulin, A. (1990). Vygotsky's Psychology: A Biography of Ideas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Lee, C. D., & Smagorinsky, P. (Editors) (2000). Vygotskian perspectives on literacy research: Constructing meaning through collaborative inquiry. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Van der Veer, R., & Valsiner, J. (1991). Understanding Vygotsky. A quest for synthesis. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Newman, F. & Holzman, L. (1993). Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary scientist. London: Routledge.Drove
• Van der Veer, R., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.) (1994). The Vygotsky Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Daniels, H. (Ed.) (1996). An Introduction to Vygotsky, London: Routledge.
• Cole, M. & Wertsch, J. (1996). Contemporary Implications of Vygotsky and Luria, Worcester, MA: Clark University Press.
• 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.
• Daniels, H., Wertsch, J. & Cole, M. (Eds.) (2007). The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky
• Van der Veer, Rene (2007). Lev Vygotsky: Continuum Library of Educational Thought. Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-8409-3.
• 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, pdf
• Yasnitsky, A. (2011). Vygotsky Circle as a Personal Network of Scholars: Restoring Connections Between People and Ideas. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, DOI: 10.1007/s12124-011-9168-5 pdf

Vygotsky's texts online

In English

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

In Russian

• Психология искусства (1922)
• Сознание как проблема психологии поведения (1924/5)
• Исторический смысл психологического кризиса (1927)
• Проблема культурного развития ребенка (1928)
• Орудие и знак в развитии ребенка (1930)
• Этюды по истории поведения: Обезьяна. Примитив. Ребенок (1930) (в соавторстве с А. Р. Лурия)
• История развития высших психических функций (1931)
• Лекции по психологии (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 (idem, idem, idem) (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.[2].

External links

• Complete bibliography of Vygotsky's writings and significant translations
• Documentary:One man's legacy through his life and theory Produced by Valerie Lowe Includes interviews and commentary by family members and renowned professors, archive photos, film footage and Vygotskian practice examples.
• The Vygotsky Project Summaries of, and links to, Vygotsky articles.
• Vygotsky Centennial Project Collected articles exploring Vygotsky's work.
• The Mozart of Psychology Vygotsky article with extensive references.
• Dorothy "Dot" Robbins Vygotsky memorial site with many papers and resources.
• East Side Institute Vygotsky-inspired research and training center in NYC.
• XMCA Research Paper Archive Various articles on Vygotskian psychology
• Garai, L. Another crisis in the psychology: A possible motive for the Vygotsky-boom.
• Garai, L. Vygotskian implications: On the meaning and its brain
• Sociocultural Theory wiki, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
• Video about Vygotsky
• Vygotsky's Developmental Theory: An Introduction 4-minute clip from a documentary film used primarily in higher education.
• Annotated bibliography of scholarly histories on Vygotsky, Advances in the History of Psychology, York University