Lev Vygotsky

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Lev Vygotsky

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) was a Russian developmental psychologist, discovered by the Western world long after his early death through tuberculosis at the age of 37. An important thinker, he pioneered the notion that the intellectual development of children is a function of human communities, rather than of individuals. It is now thought that Vygotsky's contributions have been paramount in furthering our understanding of child development, and that his ideas were not only ahead of his time but also ahead of ours.

Vygotsky's work includes several key concepts which have been influencing in the field of early childhood development. One of his most important concepts is the Zone of Proximal Development which relates to the gap or difference between what the child can learn unaided and what it can learn with the help of an adult. The ZPD is therefore all the child can achieve when given appropriate support. This concept was later developed by Bruner and is now known as scaffolding. Another important Vygotskyan contribution relates to the development of language as related to thought. This concept is explored in his brilliant book "Thought and Language".

Vygotsky's model of human development has been termed as a sociocultural approach. For him, the individual’s development is a result of his or her culture. Development, in Vygotsky�s theory, applies mainly to mental development, such as thought, language and reasoning processes. These abilities were understood to develop through social interactions with others (especially parents) and therefore represented the shared knowledge of the culture.

Vygotsky's work appeared largely forgotten after his death, and his work in early cognitive development does not appear to have influenced cognitive developmentalists such as Jean Piaget. However, early - albeit indirect - influence on growing cognitive science community in the States was already apparent in the late 1950s and early 1960s through the work of Vygotsky's student and later colaborator Alexander Luria which was read by early pioneers of cognitive science J. S. Bruner and George Miller.

By the 1980s Vygotsky's work became well known in the United States in part due to the opening of the Soviet Union due to glasnost. Vygotsky's work became extremely influential because it offered a way of reconciling the competing notions of maturation by which a child is seem as an unfolding flower best left to develop on their own, and behaviourism in which a child is seen as a blank slate onto which must be poured knowledge. His views are influential on Activity Theory and Distributed Cognition.

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