Vygotsky's Developmental and Educational Psychology

Peter E. Langford

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781135426453
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Vygotsky is widely considered 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. Vygotsky's Developmental and Educational Psychology aims to demonstrate how we can come to a new and original understanding of Vygotsky's 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 Vygotsky's life and the development of his own psychology. Central areas covered include:

* The child, the levels and consciousness
* Motivation and cognition
* The relevance of Vygotsky's theories to current research in developmental psychology. This comprehensive survey of Vygotsky's thought will prove an invaluable resource for those studying developmental psychology or education.

1 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 Vygotsky’s 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 Marx’s principles, not all of them. So, in thinking about Vygotsky’s 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

Vygotsky’s development went through several periods. During 1918–20, 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 1921–27, 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 halfway- house versions, lying between it and Vygotsky’s 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.

Vygotsky became a Marxist, in a general sense, shortly after the end of the First World War, but it was not until after 1920 that he began to think that Marxists should develop a special kind of psychology. From around 1928, he adopted several ideas about the construction of a Marxist psychology that marked a radical break with his previous thinking on the topic. He took from Marx and Engels two main items: Their theory that the historical development of the individual is determined by their role in the historical development of production; and the challenge they posed to somehow connect the historical development of the individual with the development of the child (a challenge made explicit by Engels, 1886).

Vygotsky assumes that there are developmental tasks that exist in both the development of the species and individual development, but that these are met in different ways. For this reason we can talk about an underlying map of development that applies to both history and the individual. This is primarily a map of the individual as they exist inside a social system, not the asocial individual who appears, for instance, in Piaget’s approach to cognitive development.

The states of the developing social system are determined by three dimensions. The first is the levels of activity, that is to say the use of tools and practice, the social relations of work, signs and consciousness and the self. Signs here means anything that can communicate meaning, such as gestures, speech or writing. The first two of these levels show little consciousness, while as we move from these to the last, consciousness increases. The next dimension is motivation; the third is the relation between the inner and the outer, the main example of which is the relation between the inner and outer selves. The primary dimensions of developmental advance are the first two.

Each of the levels of activity contains four steps, ranging from least to most developed. Tools and practice, for instance, develop from the use of tools based on the human body and designed by imagination, to the scientific construction of machines based on abstract scientific concepts, with two steps in between these extremes. The development of motivation contains five steps. Four correspond to the steps in the levels, but there is an additional first step in infancy, before the levels appear, which is the appearance of the distinction between means and goals. The dimension of inner versus outer contains only two steps, as it only applies to the last two periods of development (after 7 years of age).

In both Vygotsky’s last periods (1928–31) and (1932–34), the forces that push us across this developmental map, that is the dynamic model, differ, in some areas, in history and in the child. However, for introductory purposes we can concentrate on aspects that are similar. In the period 1928–31 he stresses long-term interactions between the levels, in both historical and child development. In its early stages, development is driven forward by the use of tools and practice. After this initial period, signs and self-consciousness become the main dynamic forces (Vygotsky, 1930k, 1931b). Finally, towards the end of the period he analyses, tools, practice and signs are synthesised in advanced concepts, ending the divorce between signs and practice (Vygotsky, 1931a, Ch. 3). Now it is such concepts that provide the dynamic impetus for development.

Vygotsky justifies this model on the grounds that it is required by two aspects of development: That it is social and that it is cognitive (Vygotsky, 1930k, pp. 40–44, 1931b, pp. 60–63). His justification for thinking that development is social is that fundamentally new psychological functions and forms of thought cannot emerge from natural, innate, functions after the first periods of development, because it is only those first periods that have primarily resulted from biological evolution. There are only two kinds of evolution: biological and social. Therefore, once biological development is over in its essentials, development after that must be mainly social, although minor biological aspects persist.

He then argues that after its earliest stage production was cognitive, that is it required relatively sophisticated concepts and problem solving. Even to reproduce such a system of production we need something that can transmit this sophistication to the new generation. This must involve signs: especially speech; but also other ways of transmitting meaning, such as diagrams. Forms of social influence other than the sign, that could transmit the results of cultural development to the child, especially imitation and learning through conditioning, are not candidates, because they do not transmit a cognitive approach to problems, which is needed for production after its initial period. As the central parts of culture after that time involve such higher forms of cognition, it is only signs, which can transmit meaning, that are able to do this.

Vygotsky did not invent this argument, which was advanced earlier in outline form by Durkheim (1912) and Levy-Bruhl (1910) and in much the same form that Vygotsky did by Mead (1909, 1910). However, none of these was later viewed as a ‘real, i.e. specialist, psychologist, and so much of its later influence, within both developmental and general psychology, has been through Vygotsky. In this abbreviated form the argument contains some obvious weaknesses, that Vygotsky addressed and overcame (Chapters 5, 11). The most important rival argument can be found in Marx’s later writings and assumed a particularly influential form at the hands of A. N. Leont’ev (1948, 1960, 1974). Leont’ev began his career working under Vygotsky’s direction, but broke from him around 1928.

This alternative says that the transmission of practice through conditioning and imitation is followed by the child’s becoming conscious of this practice and this renders it cognitive. Vygotsky’s reply to this is outlined in Chapter 4.

Corresponding to the above shifts in the dynamic function of the levels, we find long-term shifts in motivation. In his penultimate period, in the early stages the child’s goals are biological; next, the goals of the individual are socially determined by what other people think; finally these two things are synthesised in the interests of adolescence (Vygotsky, 1931a, Ch. 1).

These two dialectical sequences, formed by the levels and motivation, are interlinked. During development after infancy, the initial point for a cycle of development comes from a new form of social relations (Vygotsky, 1931a, Ch. 3). This leads to changes in motivation, which precipitate further changes in the levels, that is in signs, self-consciousness and practice (Vygotsky, 1931a, Ch. 1). The reason that motivation can play this dynamic role is that the cognitive attainments involved in moving between steps along the levels, such as the improvements in tools and practice just mentioned, depend on the child’s achieving a certain motivational distance from situations. An infant will react immediately to what is around it and this prevents it from reflecting on what it experiences. To build machines using scientific concepts requires the capacity for considerable delay of gratification on the part of the machine’s designer, in order to reap the rewards of its operation, once all the thought, planning and effort needed to make it are finished.

In the period 1932–34 this dynamic model changed, although many of the fundamentals remained. He now suggests that there are stages in development that encompass both the intellect and the personality. He now talks most about the dynamics of development within stages, rather than about long-term dynamics. The dynamics within stages are similar across all stages. Within each stage a cycle of developments moves from social relations, to stress on language and signs, to self-consciousness, then to changes in practice and the personality as a whole. Within this cycle some parts are dynamic and push the others along, while others are passive. The main dynamic forces are again signs and self-consciousness in the middle period of development (Vygotsky, 1932b, 1932d, 1933i, 1934c, Ch. 6). This sequence is similar to the one he had assumed operated on a short-term basis within the middle period of development in the earlier model.

The nature of motivation, like that of some of the levels, changes considerably from the earlier period, but its role in the dynamics of development changes little. Each cycle of development starts with a new kind of social relations. This leads immediately to changes in motivation (Vygotsky, 1933i, 1934f, 1934k), which in turn act to produce further changes in the levels. So motivation is still an additional dynamic force.

Although Vygotsky concentrates on stage dynamics in his last period, we can piece together his late stance on longer term dynamics from scattered comments (see Chapters 5 and 6). It is similar to his earlier view, except that he now assumes the infant and the child below 7 years have both social relations and self-consciousness.

Next, we come to Vygotsky’s theory of knowledge. In the West, this is often seen as the central point in theories of cognitive development, in large part because Piaget successfully urged this idea. The approach adopted here interprets Vygotsky as a dialectical realist.

The term ‘realist’, as used here, is short for the approach that philosophers often call moderate realism. According to moderate realism, our knowledge gradually approximates to reality through some mechanism that helps it to do so, such as feedback from direct practice. In a familiar version, if an idea works in practice it is retained, if not it is rejected; this results in the idea approximating more and more closely to reality. Vygotsky often explicitly says he was a moderate realist (Vygotsky, 1925a, Ch. 1, 1927d, Chs 1, 4, 1930a, 1930b, 1930h, 1931b, Chs 1, 2, 1931d, 1932c, 1934c, Ch. 2).

Although the antirealist philosophy of constructivism is currently more popular in Western developmental psychology than realism, realism remains popular among philosophers and in other areas of psychology. One of the common justifications for realism is that if we reject it, we reject any capacity to reflect on the foundations of society and to change them. We are climbing aboard a car with no windscreen and no steering wheel. This is not just a rhetorical flourish, as the widespread and fashionable philosophy of postmodernism says precisely this: There is no such thing as valid social understanding, as everything we think we know about society is relative, and expresses our own nature and interests, not what really is, even in an approximate way.

The term ‘dialectical’, as applied to Vygotsky in this context, does not just mean that he used dialectical thinking in his theory in a general way. That would be to state the obvious. It refers to a particular aspect of dialectical thinking that Vygotsky applied to the way in which knowledge develops. This is that one side of the child’s thinking may predominate in the development of realistic knowledge at one point, a reverse side later on, while ultimately the two merge in a higher synthesis.

Vygotsky’s theory of knowledge is most clearly expressed in his analysis of the connection between speech and thought. Thought, as he uses the term, means a system for knowing about the world that is closely connected to practice. In broad outline his view of the long-term development of speech and thought remained the same throughout the period from 1928 until 1934.

In most of the first two periods, or stages, of development, practice predominates; in most of the next three it is signs (1930k, 1931b, Ch. 6, 1934c, 1934e). To reiterate, signs here means anything that can communicate meaning, such as gestures, speech or writing. Towards the end of the fifth period of development, advanced abstract concepts predominate, which are formed from the synthesis of practical thought and signs, including language (Vygotsky, 1931a, Ch. 3, 1933g). So the previous tendencies, emphasising first practice and then language and consciousness, are synthesised. This pattern of dialectical development, so called because it resembles a conversation, is taken from Hegel (especially Hegel, 1807, 1831).

We now need to know how the dialectic of practice and signs accomplishes the aim of knowing reality, thus being realist. For most of the first two periods, when practice is dominant, and towards the end of his five stages, when practice resumes at least an equal partnership with language, this is not a particular problem. For the most part he assumes that his readers are aware, that for many realist philosophers who stress practice, the feedback from practice corrects both the forms of thought and the particular uses made of them, bringing them into alignment with reality. This was, for instance, the view of Marx (1859, 1867, Ch, 7). At times he is more explicit (particularly in Vygotsky, 1931a, pp. 119–120), where he discusses Lenin’s (1925) use of this idea favourably.

Vygotsky’s view was that signs and language predominate in the acquisition of knowledge in the middle period of development. Their link with reality is mainly formed through the effect of sign use in providing the child with a means to overcome its one-sided perspectives on the world and adopt the view of a general observer, thus creating realistic knowledge (Vygotsky, 1931a, Ch. 3, 1931b, Ch. 6, 1934c, Ch. 7).

Finally, an ambiguous aspect of Vygotsky’s views is the way he connects signs as the motor of development and signs as the origin of new forms of knowledge. Vygotsky, adopting what seems to be the most obvious stance, thinks that if something is most important in driving forward the knowledge system, it must be most important in the development of new forms of knowledge. So, first practice has these roles in infancy and part of early childhood, then we shift to signs and finally to advanced concepts. So, if a new kind of simple concept, meaning or advanced concept appears, it does so as a result of the action of whatever is pushing cognition forward at the time.

However, this is not the only picture we can form. The engine of development might be pushing something else forward, that is actually responsible for the development of new knowledge. So, the development of the child’s speech might be powering the changes in its meanings, but it may be that this occurs through the intermediary of something else, such as the effects that speech has on the child’s practice and use of tools, which in turn affect its understanding.

Although, particularly in the form suggested by A. N. Leont’ev (1982), this second interpretation of Vygotsky has been remarkably popular, it is both inherently unlikely and not what he actually says (see Chapter 8).

We should also consider one further issue. Gaining knowledge can mean not only the development of new forms of knowledge, but also the use of existing means to fill out the content of knowledge. However, whatever means are used to gather content must have previously emerged as new forms. In other words, there can be no content without forms. On this level, Vygotsky thinks that the development of new forms of knowledge is the more fundamental problem. However, he only admits this in relation to the development of fundamental units of meaning, particularly those found in words. On the broader issue of the relation between the fundamental meanings and statements and rules formed from them, he generally thinks that development of the units of meaning is more fundamental. This can be confusing, because he and others often refer to this second tendency as the priority of content over form in development.

Conclusions

Vygotsky’s project was based on accepting that Marx had already founded a Marxist psychology, by claiming that the development of human capacities and personality depend on the development of the productive forces and that the historical develo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• 1: Introduction
• Part I: The theory
• Part II: Application and interpretation
• Part III: Origins
• Part IV: Prospects and problems
• Part V: Conclusions
• References