Lev Vygotsky and his Biography - Term Paper Example

?Running Head: Lev Vygotsky Lev Vygotsky Lev Vygotsky Born in 1896, L.S. Vygotsky was a Russian psychologist who succeeded withinthe thirty-nine years of his short life to irrevocably transform the way human thought and behavior were understood (Van Der Veer and Valsinger, 1994). Vygotsky was a charismatic leader whose contributions in the field of psychology continue to permeate contemporary thought seventy seven years after his death. Van der Veer and Valsinger (1991) describe Vygotsky as a Young Jewish literary scholar hampered by recurrent illness, a passionate talker enraptured by the fine arts, and an equally passionate critic of the mediocre thinking of his contemporary psychologists (p.2) Vygotsky was born into a large provincial Jewish family that valued education. Noticeably intelligent and articulate as a young boy, Vygotsky was dubbed the "little professor" (Wertsch, 1985, p.4). The family lived amidst an explosion of politics, philosophy, and art as well as prejudice, hunger, and disease. Growing up during the Russian Revolution, a time of tremendous social, cultural, and economic upheaval caused Vygotsky great personal difficulty at the same time it liberated him to look at philosophical and societal issues with fresh eyes. Tuberculosis struck Vygotsky at age twenty-six. Forewarned of an early death, Vygotsky worked at a feverish pace to produce over 180 studies, articles, and books (Blanck, 1990). Vygotsky was such an impassioned speaker that throngs of scholars, unable to gain entry into the crowded halls in which he spoke, gathered outside the windows in the hope of capturing his lectures. Wherever Vygotsky traveled in Russia, people left poetry and garlands of flowers by the wayside. Such accounts describe a unique mind and sensibility that affected and even cast a spell on thousands (Van der Veer and Valsinger, 1991). Today, Vygotsky is considered by many to have been a Renaissance man, a genius fifty years ahead of his time. Bruner & Haste (1987) has remarked, "Vygotsky…speaks to us from the future" (paraphrased by Blanck, 1990, p.31). Kozulin (1990) in his seminal book on Vygotsky concurs that [I]t is as if the invisible hand of a master had collected the central themes of intellectual life of the twentieth century and placed them in one biography, liberally adding elements of historical drama (p. 1). Vygotsky excelled academically, spoke eight languages, and was able to teach far ranging subjects such as literature, Russian, education, psychology, logic, aesthetics, and art history (Blanck, 1990). With close collaborators, Alexander R Luria and Alexei N. Leontiev, Vygotsky formed a famous "troika" (Kozulin, 1990), or what John-Steiner (1997) calls a "thought community" (p.207) that became a driving intellectual force in Russia. Vygotsky borrowed ideas from different disciplines to form his learning theory. Psychology and education are the fields in which he made his major contributions although he possessed no formal training in either. It may be that Vygotsky's unique vision was predicated on his ability to look at established ideas in a new way. This may also account for the wide appeal of his work. Blanck (1990) believes that ... it was precisely his newness to the field coupled with his strong insights from other fields (philosophy, linguistics, semiotics, historical materialism) that illuminated for Vygotsky fresh answers to perplexing questions (pp.38-39). Vygotsky was coincidently born the same year as Piaget, and like Piaget, his learning theory exerted a profound influence, even creating a paradigm shift, on the way in which we view human development and learning. Vygotsky was a deep thinker, capable of integrating complex philosophical ideas into a unique vision of his own. Vygotsky investigated how humans think, learn, and function within the context of society. Vygotsky's broad-ranging inquiry across discipline, methodology, and ideology, conceived so long ago and squarely situated within the social realm, continues to motivate and inspire the educational community to question and reflect on the philosophical basis of its practice today. Vygotsky's theory emphasizes the social construction of learning and cognition. It attacks the notion that humans learn in isolation and that we act separate and apart from society. His ideas derive :from the Marxist belief that individual functioning occurs within a collective framework (Wertsch, 1990) as well as from the recognition, as John-Steiner (1997) states, that "human development starts with dependence on caregivers" (p.2). Vygotskian scholar James Wertsch (1990) defines a sociocultural approach as one that focuses on the "institutional, cultural and historical specificity of mental function rather than on universals" (p.112). Wertsch (1991) further believes that Western psychological research has erred in viewing the individual in a "cultural, institutional, and historical vacuum" (p.2). Because Vygotsky focuses on the origin and history of human phenomena (i.e., what he called a "genetic" approach), he views development as an individual process within the realm of social change (John-Steiner, 1997). Weighing heavily on the side of nurture in the nature/nurture debate, Vygotsky believes that the cultural environment greatly impacts human growth and development. Unlike their predecessors, humans inherit and shape their biological heritage. As Vygotskian scholar Gordon Wells (1997) puts it, Human development is thus not simply a matter of biological maturation; it is immeasurably enriched and extended through the individual's appropriation and mastery of the cultural inheritance (p.3). From a sociocultural perspective, the environment in which one learns plays an important role in the educational process. Perkins (1994) contends that a learning environment is structured to include a reciprocal relationship between individual and social context. He (1994) considers human cognition "distributed intelligence" because learning is always contextually situated. Many contemporary educators increasingly appreciate the support that Vygotskian thought lends to their practice within a diverse and changing world, particularly because it values social interaction in context, an unusual view in traditional education. There are few educators today who would admit to ignorance of such accepted sociocultural approaches (predicated on the presence of multiple perspectives) as cooperative learning, collaborative instruction, semiotic mediation, and the co-construction of knowledge (a term originated by Piaget and that Vygotsky shares with Piaget). Vygotsky's thought has been universally imprinted on our conception of teaching and learning, and indeed, upon the way we think. A sociocultural perspective has gained prominence in educational and psychological circles in recent years. Lev Vygotsky constructed a cognitive development theory that he referred to as a cultural-historical theory of the psyche (Leontiev & Luria, 1968). This theory describes the behavior of modern, cultured adults as resulting from the integration of two distinct processes: biological evolution and historical development. In conjunction with these two processes of development, Vygotsky identified two levels of cognitive functioning characteristic of mankind. They are (I) the natural or primitive functions of perception, simple memory, and involuntary attention, and (2) the higher mental functions including, but not limited to, categorical perception, logical memory, conceptual thinking, and self-regulated attention (Vygotsky, 1930/1966, pp. 14-16). The immaturity of these higher mental functions at the beginning of the instructional process is "a general and basic law in all domains of school instruction"(Vygotsky, 1934/1987, p. 205). Education, or instruction in scientific, "true" or subject domain concepts is essential for the development of higher mental functioning. Vygotsky distinguishes between spontaneous or "everyday" concepts and non-spontaneous or "scientific" concepts (Vygotsky, 1934/1987, p. 178). Everyday concepts are those learned from daily experience (see Gredler & Shields, 2000). Scientific concepts are learned through formal instruction in school (Vygotsky, 1934/1987, p. 219). Vygotsky also identifies four phases in the development of an individual's concepts: (I) syncretic images, (2) complexes, (3) pre-concepts or potential concepts, and (4) "true" concepts. School-age children characteristically think in complexes, or concepts that function as family names of objects grouped together on the basis of any concrete similarity. According to Vygotsky, lower forms of concepts are not replaced but are transformed and exist at a higher level through a complex, dialectical process (Vygotsky, 1934/1987, pp. 229-231). Vygotsky theories provided different approaches to the understanding of the nature and essence of psychological development, attempted different periodization of developmental stages, tried to resolve the question of the role of the biological and social factors in individual development. In addition, these theories appeared promising from the educational standpoint as providing a necessary scientific insight to the relationship between development and education. Thus, Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory that understood psychological development as a product of historical, social, and cultural forces with its attempt of a periodization of developmental stages and an important message for educators reflected in the concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) occupies a legitimate place in the history of developmental psychology together with other developmental theories such as behaviorism, gestalt or cognitive psychology. Vygotsky seems to have operated as a kind of lightning rod for innovative ideas in his time. He gathered and sorted an amalgam of concepts to fashion an entirely new approach that conceptualized humankind as interdependent yet capable of great individual achievement. Perhaps, living during the birth of a budding socialist state allowed Vygotsky to "think outside the box" while partaking of the excitement of starting anew. And it may be that living in Russia separate from the west allowed Vygotsky to escape the confines of the behaviorist perspective that limited many of his western counterparts. In fact, Vygotskian theory still seems limitless in possibility and scope today. References Blanck, G. (1990). Vygotsky: The man and his cause. In Moll, L.(Ed.). Vygotsky and education: Instructional implications and social applications of sociohistorical psychology. (pp.1-58). New York: Cambridge University Press. Bruner, J.S., & Haste, H. (Eds.). (1987). Making sense: The child's construction of the world. New York: Methen. Gredler, M. E. (1997). Learning and instruction: Theory into practice. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. John-Steiner, V. (1997). Notebooks of the mind: Explorations of thinking. (Rev. ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Kozulin, A (1990). Vygotsky's psychology: A biography of ideas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Leontiev, A. N. & Luria, A. R. (1968). The psychological ideas of L. S. Vygotsky. In B. B. Wolman (Ed.), Historical roots of contemporary psychology (pp. 338-367). NY: Harper & Row. Perkins, D.N. (1994). The intelligent eye, Learning to think by looking at art. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Trust. Van Der Veer, R, & Valsinger, J. (1991). Understanding Vygotsky: A quest for synthesis. Cambridge: Blackwell. Van der Veer, R., and J. Valsinger, eds. (1994). The Vygotsky reader. Oxford, England: Blackwell. Vygotsky, L. S. (1930/1966). Development of the higher mental functions. In Leontiev, Luria, Smimol (Eds.), Psychological Research in the USSR, Vol. l. Moscow: Progressive Publishers. Vygotsky, L. S. (1934/1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wells, G. (1997). Dialogic inquiry in education: Building on the legacy of Vygotsky. In Lee, D., & Smagorinsky, P. (Eds.). (2000). Vygotskian Perspectives on literacy research (pp.51-85). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wertsch, IV. (Ed.). (1985). Culture, communication and cognition: Vygotskian perspectives. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (1991). Voices of the mind, A sociocultural approach to mediated action Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Wertsch, J.V. (1990). The voice of rationality in a sociocultural approach to mind. In Moll, L. (Ed.). Vygotsky and education: Instructional implications and social applications of sociohistorical psychology. (pp.111-126). New York: Cambridge University Press. Read More