32 Facts About Lev Vygotsky

1.

Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist, best known for his work on psychological development in children and creating the framework known as cultural-historical activity theory.

2.

The Social Origin of Mind: Vygotsky believed that human mental and cognitive abilities are not biologically determined, but instead created and shaped by use of language and tools in the process of interacting and constructing the cultural and social environment.

3.

The Zone of Proximal Development: Vygotsky introduced the concept of the ZPD which refers to the gap between a child's current level of development and the level they are capable of reaching with tools provided by others with more knowledge.

4.

The Significance of Play: Lev Vygotsky viewed play as a crucial aspect of children's development, as the best sandbox to build and develop practice of mediation.

5.

Lev Vygotsky was raised in the city of Gomel, where he was homeschooled until 1911 and then obtained a formal degree with distinction in a private Jewish gymnasium, which allowed him entrance to a university.

6.

In 1913 Lev Vygotsky was admitted to the Moscow University by mere ballot through a "Jewish Lottery": at the time a three percent Jewish student quota was administered for entry in Moscow and Saint Petersburg universities.

7.

Lev Vygotsky had an interest in the humanities and social sciences, but at the insistence of his parents he applied to the medical school at Moscow University.

8.

In January 1924, Lev Vygotsky took part in the Second All-Russian Psychoneurological Congress in Petrograd.

9.

Lev Vygotsky moved to Moscow with his new wife, Roza Smekhova.

10.

Lev Vygotsky began his career at the Psychological Institute as a "staff scientist, second class".

11.

Lev Vygotsky became a secondary teacher, covering a period marked by his interest in the processes of learning and the role of language in learning.

12.

Lev Vygotsky's dissertation was accepted as the prerequisite of a scholarly degree, which was awarded to Vygotsky in autumn 1925 in absentia.

13.

Lev Vygotsky argued that if one wanted to build a truly Marxist Psychology, there were no shortcuts to be found by merely looking for applicable quotes in the writings of Marx.

14.

Lev Vygotsky guided his students in researching this phenomenon from three different perspectives:.

15.

Lev Vygotsky died of a relapse of tuberculosis on June 11,1934, at the age of 37, in Moscow.

16.

Lev Vygotsky introduced the notion of zone of proximal development, a metaphor capable of describing the potential of human cognitive development.

17.

At some point, Lev Vygotsky came to disagree with Piaget's understanding of learning and development, and held a different theoretical position from Piaget on the topic of inner speech; Piaget thought that egocentric speech follows from inner speech and "dissolved away" as children matured.

18.

Lev Vygotsky showed that egocentric speech became inner speech, and then called "thoughts".

19.

Lev Vygotsky remained virtually unknown until the late 1980s when his idea of the "zone of proximal development" became popular in educational psychology and practice.

20.

The hypothesis put forward by Lev Vygotsky was a paradigm shift in psychology.

21.

Lev Vygotsky was first to propose that all psychological functions, which govern mental, cognitive and physical actions of the individual are not immutable but have a history of cultural development through interiorization of cultural tools.

22.

Lev Vygotsky posits the existence of lower and higher mental functions.

23.

Lev Vygotsky came to the conclusion that conscious is possible because of the mediated nature of higher psychological functions.

24.

Lev Vygotsky illustrated his idea of mediation via Buridan's ass paradox.

25.

Lev Vygotsky studied child development and the significant roles of cultural mediation and interpersonal communication.

26.

Lev Vygotsky observed how higher mental functions developed through these interactions, and represented the shared knowledge of a culture.

27.

Book was a collection of essays and scholarly papers that Lev Vygotsky wrote during different periods of his thought development.

28.

Lev Vygotsky described silent inner speech as being qualitatively different from verbal external speech, but both equally important.

29.

Lev Vygotsky claimed that in its mature form, inner speech would not resemble spoken language as we know it.

30.

Inner speech, according to Lev Vygotsky, develops through the accumulation of long-term functional and structural changes.

31.

Only a couple of Lev Vygotsky's texts were published in English before translation of Thinking and Speech in 1962.

32.

Today, an umbrella term for theoretical framework based on Lev Vygotsky's ideas is "Cultural-historical Activity theory" or "Activity theory".