Vygotsky’s Theory in Early Childhood Education and Research

Russian and Western Values

Nikolay Veraksa, Sonja Sheridan, Nikolay Veraksa, Sonja Sheridan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351579407
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Drawing upon in-depth analyses of Lev Vygotsky's theories of early childhood and investigating the ways in which his ideas are reflected in contemporary educational settings, this book brings into sharp relief the numerous opportunities for preschool learning and development afforded by Vygotskian approaches.

Discussion of recent developments in the understanding and implementation of Vygotsky's ideas in Western and Russian contexts facilitates comparison, and provides readers with fresh impetus to integrate elements into their own practice. Chapters are clearly structured and address the multitude of aspects touched upon by Vygotsky, including cognitive development, communication and interaction, play, literacy and the quality of preschool settings.

Providing a comprehensive exploration of current stances on Vygotsky's ideas in diverse cultural-historical contexts, Vygotsky's Theory in Early Childhood Education and Research will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, educators and politicians involved in early years education.

PART I

An introduction to Vygotsky’s legacy

1

OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK AND A STATEMENT OF ITS AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

Nikolay Veraksa and Sonja Sheridan

This book is devoted to the analysis of Lev Vygotsky’s cultural-historical approach in the contemporary international education practice of young children. The idea of the book is inspired by the desire not so much to compare as to see possible prospects for the development of Vygotsky’s ideas in educational culture. Vygotsky was not only a bright thinker and a researcher of childhood, ahead of his time, but also a scientist whose works continue to influence the development of contemporary preschool education. The complexity of developing Vygotsky’s ideas in early childhood education is determined by a number of tendencies connected with the comprehension of the problems of current childhood, which are reflected in the educational activity of teachers.

In past decades we have witnessed a growing interest in issues of early childhood education involving teachers, politicians – including country leaders – as well as researchers who are known as experts in the field (e.g., De Bono, 2009; Buzan, 2013; Gardner et al., 2013). Various experts are reviewing the core of early childhood education and are eager to find new ways of interacting and communicating with children, such as introducing participatory practices and ways of listening to and taking into consideration the voice of the child. This search reflects the process of the development of contemporary society and the need to overcome the limitations caused by traditional approaches. It is not only investments in early education that are financially attractive; a new attitude to children, in which they are viewed as subjects with rights of their own, and a new understanding of the ethics of the child’s personality is formed. It should be noted that special attention should be given to shaping ethics of interaction and communication between an adult and a child. This is reflected in a new approach to research: new ethics of interaction between researchers and children gives them the right to plan their own actions: for example, to decide whether to participate or not in the study, to know the content of research and actively develop programs of activity in preschool. New ethics requires a new methodology for research.

This challenge facing current preschool education seems to be associated with a sustained desire to overcome traditional views of the child as less capable. Some are largely due to the ancient Platonic tradition (Egan, 1981). According to Plato and his followers, the existence of any object is possible by combining two principles: the ideal (ideal form) and material (material). Since the material (according to Plato) is the basis for the destruction of a thing, and the ideal form is the basis of its being, ideal form begins to act as the supreme entity. The consequence of this understanding and view is the need for a reassessment of the role of the adult in child development and underestimation of the child’s abilities. The adult as a carrier of academic knowledge assumes the role of a higher being, and the child must in this case master the ideal forms offered by adults. The culture itself acts as a system of ideal samples, and cultural behavior presupposes conformity to these patterns.

In the context of the problem set, one of the tasks confronting the followers of the Vygotsky approach is related to the explanation of the child’s cognitive development. Contemporary cognitive studies show that the potential abilities of young children are much greater than was assumed in the traditional view (e.g., Meltzoff & Moore, 1983; Baillargeon & DeVos, 1991). The changes taking place today in the understanding of children’s capabilities are based on the results obtained in the course of cognitive research. It turns out that in the solution of many problems and issues, children are not always inferior to adults.

Research on children’s cognitive development, obtained with particular sharpness (Meltzoff & Moore, 1983; Baillargeon & DeVos, 1991), put the problem of interaction between the natural and cultural forms of the child’s psyche, as noted by Vygotsky. The task is to understand the extent to which the development of cultural means promotes the cognitive development of the child, the mechanisms for their development, and how it is possible to organize the educational process in preschool. In Russian pedagogy and psychology, the question was solved by ignoring the natural processes. It was argued that initially the child’s psyche has a culturally mediated character. But modern data testify in favor of a more subtle understanding of the problem of child development according to Vygotsky.

Vygotsky regards child development as a process of interaction between the child and the culture. In this process two sides are presented. On the one hand, an adult acts as a carrier of cultural tools, and on the other, the child learns how to use these tools. In education, the focus is often on one of these parties as well as either on the need to teach in order for the child to develop academic knowledge, or on the importance of spontaneous activity. As a consequence, there are two visions of educational processes: child-centered and teacher-centered. Each point of view has both its positive aspects and risks. However, the understanding that the child is not the material from which an adult sculpts his or her future is becoming clearer. Accordingly, an understanding of child development and teaching practice is not understood as a linear process; it is becoming more and more multi-dimensional and builds on the mutual interaction and communication between teacher and child.

A strong tendency that sets a certain educational context is due to the nature of social interaction. The fact is that in order to achieve the stable functioning of various social systems, social regulation tools are used. In other words, various social norms and regulations are introduced. A child who finds him- or herself in such a situation is forced to act not spontaneously but according to certain rules. In this case, his or her individuality is unclaimed, and he or she turns from a personality into an average social unit. Communication between people acquires a formal character. Formalization of social interaction causes the desire for personal communication and self-realization. With regard to preschool education, it began to manifest itself in the concept of “the voice of a child” which should be heard by teachers and parents. The nuance is that the teacher should not just react to the child, but the child should be interesting to him or her as a subject of communication. On the way of building such communication between the child and the teacher, a very important point is how the adult will think about the child. There arises a special problem of the representation of the child in the consciousness of an adult. We can say that there is a formal interpretation of the child’s understanding and a view of the child as a person who is searching for his or her own way of development. Such a vision of the child assumes the use of dialectical thinking by researchers of child development, and also allows the child to have a mechanism of dialectical thinking that allows the child to orient him- or herself in a changing world. It is no accident that Vygotsky was a supporter of the dialectical view of the child. He introduced a special space, which he called “a Zone of Proximal Development.” In this space, the adult and the child interact “on an equal footing.” The adult finds it difficult to stay within the framework of the children’s discourse. However, staying in the Zone of Proximal Development allows an adult to participate in the development of the child.

In this connection, there is an urgent need to approach Lev Vygotsky, who built a new methodology for the study of childhood. Vygotsky was one of the first to start to talk about the importance of social situations in which the child’s learning and development takes place. He defined social situations of development through special relations between child and adult, showing the frame for analyzing the child development. He showed the complexity of relations between child and development and formulated the law of the development, which stated that child and adult see the social situation completely differently: an adult tries to make it stable and the child aims to transform it through sometimes negative (from the adult’s point of view) forms of behavior. At this point ethics of interaction between child and adult appear on the stage: productive tendencies of child development stand behind challenging behavior of the child from an adult’s perspective.

In many countries, new steering documents for early childhood education which aim to guide and regulate the activity and approach of the teacher are promoted, viewing the child as an equal participant in the educational process, influencing the content of his or her own activities and the activities of the teacher. All these policy processes and approaches require an increase in competence of researchers and professionals. In order to meet the unknown, children need to develop abilities, skills and content/subject knowledge in a broad spectrum of areas together with adults who are supporting children’s independence, participation and personality development. As an example, we see opposing views on play: as being space for free action and as being structured by an adult, or as a shared action in which teacher and child play together.

In relation to these educational conditions, special attention is given to the work of Vygotsky. Today it is not so much a question of the discovery of his ideas as of their interpretation and application in the organization of education and care of young children. It is in this field where we can clearly distinguish two issues put forward by the researchers and practitioners of childhood. It should be recognized that some researchers have advanced the ideas of Vygotsky in relation to communication between child and adult in the organization of children’s learning (De Haan, 2012). Other teachers and psychologists use cultural tools successfully for child development (Barnett et al., 2008).

The task of evaluating the quality of preschool education in relation to children’s learning and development clearly shows that the world needs to develop a system of early childhood education at a new level, taking into account the achievements and knowledge of all countries involved in children’s early education. In this regard a change in the social situation of a child (or a crisis as Vygotsky called it) consists of two aspects of change that happen to a child: internal changes which mostly take place in a cognitive domain, and external changes that define communication of the child. We hope that bringing together views of different researchers and practitioners will enrich the picture of child development and improve the foundations of early years education.

The contemporary education of children cannot be the monopoly of a particular group of persons (e.g., the elite) or countries – it is a global democratic process, which captures all segments of the population in all countries. A paradoxical situation took place in Russia: though Vygotsky’s ideas became a foundation of educational programs in many countries, the Russian educational system itself lacked fresh views on different domains: quality assessment, emotional development, personality development, etc.

This book may be of interest to all researchers and professionals in the field of early childhood education as an attempt to jointly explore issues of child learning and development in the context of current education and culture in general, and the involvement of all who are interested in the reflection of its various aspects. One of the tasks which confronts the authors is not to provide the answer, but to discuss the diversity of perspectives that are opened up for the development of early childhood education based on the ideas of Vygotsky and his followers.

It is obvious that such fundamental statements by Vygotsky about the leading role of education in the development of a child and the importance of meeting child and adult in the Zone of Proximal Development need discussion and new understanding in the modern educational context. The year 2016 was marked by the 120th anniversary of Vygotsky and Piaget whose influence on each other and dialogue of their followers make this theme not a historical fact but a living question. Each view has its own future and it is important not to lose anything in the process of understanding.

The structure of the book is based on the established tradition: in the native land of Vygotsky the authors paid special attention to the cognitive development of preschool children, as it was the foundation for the analysis of the social situation of development in the context of the study of communication between children and adults. In part, Vygotsky himself initiated such a division: he linked social processes with the structure of the child’s consciousness. In other words, Vygotsky argued that behavior in the social development situation depends not only on the conditions imposed by the adult, but also on the features of her vision by the child. If we talk about an early age from the point of view of Vygotsky, the child’s consciousness is dominated by perception and therefore the whole system of understanding social interaction is conditioned by this process. At the preschool age, memory comes to the forefront, which radically changes the child’s attitude to the world. This means that the preschooler breaks free from the power of actual perception, and his consciousness is able to retain previously received impressions and to manage behavior based on those impressions. In fact, for Vygotsky, the social development situation turns out to be dependent on the specifics of the child’s consciousness, which characterizes the basic relationship underlying the interaction between the child and the adult.

Thus, the book includes several sections. In addition to the actual introduction and the first chapter, in which the analysis of Vygotsky’s legacy is conducted, the content is organized into three themes.

The first theme is devoted to the issues of the cognitive development of children in different contexts of the cultural-historical approach and the possibilities of applying them in the practice of preschool education.

The second theme contains chapters that reflect the interaction of children with each other and adults during the educational process from the standpoint of cultural-historical theory.

The third theme deals with the play of preschool children, since play is celebrated by all authors, following Vygotsky’s ideas, as an important component of children’s culture.

A separate chapter is devoted to the issue of assessing the quality of preschool education and the possibilities of applying a cultural-historical approach in this process.

In conclusion, a short summary and assessment of the prospects of Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory in the organization of the educational process at the preschool age is summarized. We discuss differences and similarities between Russian and Western approaches to Vygotsky’s theories.

This book aims to deal with these issues and it is constructed in such a way that every chapter represents reciprocal relations of two authors from at least two countries. The book offers new insights into Vygotsky’s theories and how they are used in research on early childhood education and in preschool practice. We hope that it will help readers to see new prospects for the practical application of the theory of Vygotsky to early childhood education.

References

Baillargeon, R. & DeVos, J. (1991). Object Permanence in Young Infants: Further Evidence. Child Development, 62, 1227–1246.

Barnett, W.S., Jung, K., Yarosz, D., Thomas, J., Hornbeck, A., Stechuk, R., & Burns, S.M. (2008). Educational Effects of the Tools of the Mind Curriculum: A Randomized Trial. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 23, 299–313.

Buzan, T. (2013). Mind Map Handbook: The Ultimate Thinking Tool. London: Thorsons.

De Bono, E. (2009). Thin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Foreword by Tony Bertram and Chris Pascal
• PART I An introduction to Vygotsky’s legacy
• PART II Children’s cognitive learning and development
• PART III Interaction and communication
• PART IV Play and physical activities
• PART V An environment for learning and development
• Index