Vygotskiĭ Lev Semenovich - Vygotskys Developmental and Educational Psychology

Vygotskys Developmental and Educational Psychology

Lev Vygotsky (18961934) was one of the most significant and influential psychologists of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, true appreciation of his theories has been hindered by a lack of understanding of the background to his thought.

Vygotskys Developmental and Educational Psychology aims to demonstrate how we can come to a new and original understanding of Vygotskys theories through knowledge of their cultural, philosophical and historical context. Beginning with the main philosophical influences of Marxist and Hegelian thought, this book leads the reader through Vygotskys life and the development of his thought. Central areas covered include:

The child

Motivation and cognition

The relevance of Vygotskys theories to current research in developmental psychology.

This comprehensive survey of Vygotskys thought will prove an invaluable resource for those studying developmental psychology or education.

Peter E. Langford is a freelance psychologist, previously affiliated to Birkbeck College, University of London, the University of Tasmania, and La Trobe University, Australia.

Acknowledgements

I should thank the Psychology Department of the University of Tasmania for giving me time to pursue this research while on its staff. Some of my deepest debts are to the Psychology Press readers who provided invaluable advice on both the content and presentation of the book, particularly to Professor Elizabeth Robinson. Naturally, the remaining defects are my own responsibility.

I would also like to thank the librarians and staff of the following institutions for their unfailing helpfulness and courtesy. In Russia: Moscow State Library and East View, Moscow. In the UK: the British Library, Senate House Library, University of London and the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. In the USA: East View, New Jersey and Document Express, Stanford, CA. In Australia: the libraries of the University of Tasmania and La Trobe, Melbourne and Monash Universities and the State Library of Victoria.

Introduction

The reaction on labour and speech of the development of the brain and its attendant senses, of the increasing clarity of consciousness, power of abstraction and of conclusion, gave both labour and speech an ever-renewed impulse to further development. This development did not reach its conclusion when man finally became distinct from the ape, but on the whole made further powerful progress, its degree and direction varying among different peoples and at different times, and here and there even being interrupted by local or temporary regression.

(Engels, 1896)

This book is about L. S. Vygotsky, who, with Pavlov, was the most famous and influential Russian, or, strictly, Byelorussian, psychologist of the twentieth century. His influence has also tended to increase in the last 25 years, even though he died in 1934. However, introducing him is notoriously difficult, because there are a number of conflicting views about what his message was, as well as about what its merits were. This introduction outlines my interpretation of Vygotsky. A review of some other approaches to him is given in Chapter 8.

It was central to Vygotskys work that he began from principles that he found in Marx to build a form of Marxist psychology. Today, for many in the West and elsewhere, this may lead to the conclusion that he built on foundations of sand and the whole edifice is probably both unstable and undesirable. However, Vygotsky built on some of Marxs principles, not all of them. So, in thinking about Vygotskys Marxism, we need to think of some modified and extended aspects of Marxism, not about classical Marxism as a whole. Some of these are also aspects that Marxism has in common with some versions of the liberal philosophy of history (see Chapter 14).

Vygotsky: an interpretation

Vygotskys development went through several periods. During 191820, he was committed to what was then called reflexology, in the Soviet Union. This was similar to Western behaviourism, in that it argued that all human behaviour can be reduced to conditioned reflexes, but differed in giving attention to the physiology of such reflexes, as well as to behaviour. For the entire period 192127, he was engaged in moving away from this outlook, which proved a difficult task. Nearly all those who had, like him, set out to build a Marxist psychology in the Soviet Union, in this period, were committed to reflexology (most significantly Bekhterev, 1921, 1926a, 1926b) or to halfwayhouse versions, lying between it and Vygotskys last ideas. A good example of the latter was Kornilov, the head of the key Moscow Institute of Psychology from 1924 to 1930, under whom Vygotsky worked in that period. This atmosphere seems to have slowed his move away from reflexology.