Lev Vygotsky and His Cultural-historical Approach to Development
The impact of the Russian psychologist L. S. Vygotsky on the study of children’s development happened only very slowly because cultural and political events interfered with an exchange of ideas between Russian and Western theorists. After his untimely death, his worldwide impact was aided by the publication of his writings in English and other languages. He is increasingly cited as a key figure of the 20th century in developmental psychology and related disciplines. Vygotsky was born in 1896 and spent his childhood in Gomel as a much loved son of a large nonreligious Russian Jewish family. As a young man he experienced World War I and various occupations occasioned by the world war and the Russian civil war. He possibly witnessed pogroms and, at the end of his life, political repression. These traumatic events affected Vygotsky deeply. During his university studies, he became increasingly interested in psychology. Subsequently, he taught in a public school in Gomel and began to think systematically about a new approach to the field of psychology. In 1924, he and his wife moved to Moscow. During the following decade Vygotsky worked closely with a group of young psychologists who shared his interests. His theoretical focus included human cognitive processes and the construction of social artifacts, such as language. In his voluminous writings, Vygotsky explored the active nature of young learners, their play and creativity, the importance of the distinction between lower (biologically rooted) functions and higher (meaning-oriented) activities, the relationships between learning and development and between thought and language. Vygotsky distinguished himself in constructing a system of cultural-historical concepts (CHAT) that are still being developed. The CHAT approach is but one of many interpretations of Vygotsky’s legacy, which has taken somewhat different forms in Western and non-Western scholarly communities. Some of his work was schematic due to his recurrent illness of tuberculosis. His best-known books are Thought and Language, the edited volume Mind in Society, and his Collected Works (six volumes). He died on 11 June 1934 in Moscow. The contemporary impact of his work is due, in part, to his focus on the development of processes rather than the measurement of maturational-driven outcomes. This dynamic approach to learning has been of particular importance to educators, who have used his ideas to create programs that support children’s active construction of knowledge and in which language plays a central role in educational growth.