Introducing Vygotsky

A Guide for Practitioners and Students in Early Years Education

Sandra Smidt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317834106
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

Sandra Smidt takes the reader on a journey through the key concepts of Lev Vygotsky, one of the twentieth century's most influential theorists in the field of early education. His ground-breaking principles of early learning and teaching are unpicked here using every-day language, and critical links between his fascinating ideas are revealed.

Introducing Vygotsky is an invaluable companion for anyone involved with children in the early years. The introduction of Vygotsky's key concepts is followed by discussion of the implications of these for teaching and learning. Each chapter also includes a useful glossary of terms.

This accessible text is illustrated throughout with examples drawn from real-life early years settings and the concepts discussed include:

• mediation and memory
• culture and cultural tools
• mental functions
• language, concepts and thinking
• activity theory
• play and meaning.

Essential reading for all those interested in or working with children, Introducing Vygotsky emphasises the social nature of learning and examines the importance of issues such as culture, history, language, and symbols in learning.

Chapter 1
Beginnings

Towards a sociohistorical appreciation

In this opening chapter we look at who Vygotsky was in terms of where and when he was born and what influences he encountered in his short life. Those who have written about his work describe it as sociohistorical psychology and by this they mean that he was convinced that to study human beings means to study them both in terms of their social relationships and experiences and according to the cultural tools used. Social experiences include things like the way in which others direct people’s attention or model behaviour or praise or control or imitate or organise aspects of society like where and how people live (communally, in family units, and so on), how they eat, where they sleep. Cultural tools are the things or the signs or symbols that human beings within groups have developed over time in order to help them think about and reflect on their values, ideas, principles and practices. Cultural tools include, most importantly, language but also things like computers and music and art.

The life and times of Lev Vygotsky

Context and culture are two of the themes that underpin all his work. So to start our journey into his work let us learn something about his own life. He was born into an educated Jewish family in the small town of Orsha in what is now Belarus in 1896. A year later the family moved to the small and bustling city of Gomel, where his father, Semion, worked in a range of managerial positions and was at one time head of department in a bank. Semion was an important man in this small city, speaking several languages, and partly responsible for creating a library in the town. Much of what is known of Vygotsky’s life comes from a paper written by his daughter, Gita Vygodskaya, who described her grandfather Semion as a difficult and complex man – determined, demanding and concerned for his children, attentive to their needs, and loving. His wife, Cecilia, was also well educated; she spoke German and had a love of German poetry, which she passed on to her children. By training she was a teacher, but since she gave birth to eight children it is no surprise to learn that she never actually taught formally, although she was, of course, deeply involved in the education of her children. Lev was the second child in the family, but the first son. All the children worked hard to care for one another and to keep the family together. Gita says they were united by a shared interest in and love of history, literature, theatre and art. She says,

It was a family tradition to get together after the evening tea. By this time everyone was done with his or her activities, the father with business, the mother with housework and the children with their school assignments. They then talked amongst themselves about whatever came to mind, or read aloud either classic novels or newly released ones. Both the parents and children valued this time of family closeness and spoke warmly of it for many years to come.

(Vygodskaya 1995)

We get the sense of a loving and vibrant family life where discussion of ideas and events was part of the cultural habitus. Gita tells us that although money was tight there was always money for books. Lev was said to be sociable and popular, with a passion for stamp collecting, chess, reading adventure stories, swimming and boating. His first brush with education was in the home, being taught by tutors and studying on his own. He then went on to secondary school, the Jewish gymnasium, where he was taught by Solomon Ashpiz, a mathematician who had spent some time in exile in Siberia for taking part in what were called ‘revolutionary activities’.

Young Lev started his life in pre-revolutionary Russia, where the country was ruled by the tsars and the poor were exceedingly poor and ill educated. Antisemitism was rife and it is evident that the Vygotsky family were not exempt from the consequences of this. Kozulin (1990) tells us that after a trivial incident at a farmers’ market in Gomel there was a full-scale pogrom against the homes and businesses of some of Gomel’s Jews. It seems that, unlike Jews elsewhere who did not defend themselves, the Jewish community of Gomel resisted and in a few cases managed to defeat their attackers. A number of Jews were brought to trial after this terrible incident, and the trial became a platform for a public confrontation between those who wanted full rights for minority groups and pro-government groups who were keen to place all blame on the Jews. Vygotsky’s father was called as a witness to testify about the atmosphere in the town on the eve of the pogrom. In his testimony he talked about an earlier pogrom in Kishenev and suggested that terrible incidents like these were likely to continue as long as Jews insisted on their human dignity and civil rights. Lev was only eight years old at this time and it is certain that what he saw and heard influenced him throughout the rest of his short life.

It seems that he flourished at the gymnasium: his teachers were impressed with his abilities and predicted a brilliant future for him – some as a mathematician, others as a philologist. Favourable comments were made about his seriousness and his maturity. He did so well in the end-of-school exams that he graduated in 1913 with a gold medal. He applied to Moscow University knowing that the government imposed a quota system for Jews but confident despite this that his good grades would gain him entry. His parents hoped he would become a doctor because in doing so he would be able to live beyond the Pale – that is, outside the few provinces where Jews were allowed to live permanently. Having dutifully – and successfully – applied to study medicine, Vygotsky realised within less than a month of commencing his studies that he really did not want to study medicine and transferred to Moscow University’s Law School. Once again his studies did not please him. He was determined to follow up his interests in languages, literature, art and philosophy. He took the decision to transfer to Shanavsky’s University, also in Moscow, a progressive institution that paid no heed to the nationality or ethnicity of students but was not recognised as a legitimate organisation. Although the teaching was said to be excellent the degrees granted by this university were not officially recognised.

His time as a student in Moscow was a happy and busy one. And it was during these formative years that his keen interest in psychology developed and he began to study it in his own time and largely through his own efforts. Part of his work at university required that he submit a thesis. He chose to write his thesis on Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. He spent years analysing the play and examining its many translations. The resulting thesis was his first piece of scientific research. If you are familiar with the play you will know that it is primarily about the complexities of relationships between people, about power, about the past and about madness. Clearly his growing interest in psychology was instrumental in his choice of topic or, perhaps, his interest in Hamlet determined his passion for psychology. You may be interested to know that his thesis was eventually published fifty years later, appearing as an addendum to a 1968 edition of his Psychology of Art.

Vygotsky finished his education at university in the fateful year of 1917 and returned to Gomel. The impact of the Great War on Russia had been terrible: millions had died of starvation, and troops had been sent into battle too poorly equipped to combat either the enemy or the weather. He found Gomel occupied by German forces, and it was impossible for him to find a job at this time. He also found his family facing terrible traumas. His mother was recovering from a bout of tuberculosis, as was one of his younger brothers. The boy was in a critical state, and Lev was involved in nursing him until the boy died before his fourteenth birthday. His mother was still struggling to recover both from her own illness and her bereavement when a second brother died, this time of typhoid fever. The October Revolution in 1918 was a hugely significant moment in the history of the country – indeed, of the world. For Lev, the beginning of a socialist government allowed him to work and to study. He, like other members of minority groups, began to feel entitled to dignity and respect and although, over the years, he had his disagreements with aspects of Marxism, the impact of Marxism is evident in some of his views. In 1919 he began to teach literature, philosophy and Russian in a newly opened vocational school. He later taught psychology in a local teacher training college. He became head of art and aesthetic education in the town council and spent much of his life developing culture and education. These, together with literature and theatre, remained hi life’s passions. Some time later he was nominated as the best teacher in Gomel.

Later he turned his attention to research and in doing this came across Alexander Luria, with whom he found he had much in common. He also met Alexei Leontiev and the three men worked happily together in what they called a ‘troika’ or threesome. Soon after this he began to work in a centre for physically disabled children and those who were described as ‘mentally retarded’. In 1925 he had the honour of attending a conference in London to present his country’s work on the education of ‘deaf and mute’ children. He took full advantage of the chance to travel through Europe and spent time examining provision for special education in Holland, France and Germany. On his return to Russia he fell ill with tuberculosis and nearly died. But as he struggled to regain his health he continued researching and writing and some of his work was published. Some of this related to the education of children with special needs and what was remarkable about this was that he consulted the children themselves. It was this, perhaps, that made him turn his attention to pedagogy – the art or the science of teaching. What he was doing aroused so much interest that teachers, doctors, students and psychologists from all over Moscow rushed to the conferences and lectures he held – and those who could not fit into the lecture theatre listened from outside, held by his ideas and views. What made him so remarkable was the attention he paid to the views of the child and the respect he accorded all children. We also know that he married and had children and that his wife survived him by 45 years. His daughter, Gita, and granddaughter, Eleni, are both still alive.

The intellectual impact of others on Vygotsky’s thinking

We are all the sum total of our experiences and our interactions with the people and the ideas and the cultural tools we encounter throughout our lives. We are all influenced by other people and their ideas and values throughout our lives. Often the influence comes about through seeing some people as role models or through wanting to do something that someone we admire does. For many people the influence comes not directly through interactions with people but from learning of their thoughts and ideas through reading or listening. Perhaps in your life you have been influenced by the ideas of some of your teachers or your friends or members of your family. Perhaps a book you have read or a talk you have attended has made you think differently. Perhaps you have heard of the work of remarkable individuals and that has had some impact on your life.

Consider George Bizos, a South African lawyer. As a small boy, he and his father had to flee the country of his birth, Greece, while it was under Nazi occupation, rowing across the Mediterranean until picked up by a British destroyer. He was only 12 at the time but the memory stayed with him throughout his life, first in an orphanage and later in South Africa, where he completed his schooling and became an advocate. His early experiences enabled him to identify with the wrongs he encountered in apartheid South Africa, and he later became known as a passionate defender of the rights of the oppressed, including, among others, Nelson Mandela.

Or consider the experiences of Primo Levi when, as a young Italian in Auschwitz, he drew on what he had learned in his undergraduate chemistry degree to help him cope with the impossible demands and inhuman encounters in that camp. In The Drowned and the Saved Levi wrote:

Together with the baggage of practical notions I had got from my studies, I had brought along with me into the Lager an ill-defined patrimony of mental habits which derive from chemistry and its environs, but have broader applications. If I act in a certain way, how will the substance I hold in my hands react, or my human interlocutor? Why does it or he or she manifest or interrupt or change a specific behaviour? Can I anticipate what will happen around me in one minute or tomorrow or in a month? If so, which are the signs that matter, which those to neglect? Can I foresee the blow, know from which side it will come, parry it, elude it?

(1988: 113–14)

Later in the same passage, which looked at what happened to intellectuals in the Lager, Levi argued that the camp itself operated as a ‘university’ in the sense that it taught him (and others) to look around and to measure men. So Levi reflected on how his formal education and his desperate experiences both contributed to the sum total of who he became.

Vygotsky himself was, in some senses, an ‘outsider’. Growing up as a Jew, surrounded by anti-semitism, pogroms and racial laws, he devoted his life to ideas which, in essence, examined society and history, and whilst doing that led him to start to explore more closely how those around him learned and developed their own sets of values and beliefs and practices. The culture in which he lived was one which reflected the negative values and practices outlined above. What was particular about his approach was his focus on the social and the cultural.

Vygotsky lived through dramatic and stimulating times and became part of what is known as the Russian intelligentsia. This is a concept that does not translate easily into English because we do not have a comparable group of people. Kozulin (1999: 21) tells us that the intelligentsia did not comprise just educated classes or just intellectual people. Rather it was a group of people united not only by a common set of cultural values and a deep sense of social justice but also by the desire to work towards the betterment of society as a whole. In the intelligentsia at that time literature was held in extremely high regard and thought to be the ultimate expression of culture and of life itself. So literary characters were discussed and judged in terms of how those who read about these characters could use them and their actions as models for their own lives. You can see something of this in the thesis Vygotsky wrote on Hamlet referred to earlier.

Vygotsky completed his studies in 1917 when he graduated and returned to Gomel. As you may know this was the year of the Russian Revolution which transformed the nature of society within the then Russian empire, transforming the old tsarist autocracy into what became the Soviet Union. During that year there were two revolutions. The February Revolution was a spontaneous popular uprising in the city of Petrograd. This could not be sustained initially, largely because of the impact of the First World War on the economy and on the country. The October Revolution which followed was where the workers, led by Lenin, managed to take control. They introduced a programme designed to rid the country of the aristocracy, educate the populace, ensure that wealth was more equitably shared and give land to the poor. Those in power fiercely resisted and in the chaos that followed a bitter civil war took place.

Vygotsky thus returned to Gomel at a time of rifts and divisions all around him as the nation accommodated to a new way of organising society. The move from the feudal society of the tsars to a socialist order was one of the most rapid and dramatic changes in history. At the time there were thought to be two distinct groupings – those who wanted no change and were known as archaists and those who wanted as much change as quickly as possible, the innovators. Many of the innovators were interested in the concept of objectification. This is a difficult concept to explain and understand but important for us in terms of Vygotsky’s later work on mediation.

To try and explain it let us start with a concrete example. If someone shows you a table or a picture of a table you immediately know what it is and can name it. You don’t have to think about it. You just know. But perhaps you know what it is through your experience of seeing a table used for one purpose or another or using a table yourself for one purpose or another. You know what a table is according to the meaning the table has for you. For you it is perhaps the place where you eat your meals, or at which you sit with your laptop, or where you place a bowl of flowers. One way of coming to understand objectification is to consider whether something is merely an object or whether it is imbued with meaning as a result of why it was made and whatever its purpose is. A table, you might think, is just something made of wood. But then so is a wooden bowl or a wooden tray. We understand that the table is the table precisely because it was produced by humans for particular purposes. So a table or any other object becomes something imbued with meaning according to the purposes for which it was designed and made. The bowl was made to hold fruit or salad. The tray was made to carry things on. So objectification is the process by which people assign mea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Beginnings: towards a sociohistorical appreciation
• 2 On mediation, memory and cultural tools
• 3 More on culture, context and tools
• 4 On language, concepts and thinking
• 5 Learning and teaching
• 6 Activity theory
• 7 On play and meaning
• 8 On bridging the gap: more about the ZPD
• 9 What we have learned: a summary
• 10 Vygotskys children
• A final word
• Bibliography
• Index