Lev Vygotsky

·         Born June 1896 to a Jewish family in Russia.
·         He was a social constructivist – believing that to a certain degree we create our own learning but our social environment has a large part to play on cognitive development.
·         He was heavily influenced by Marxist ideas.
·         He saw children as active organisers of their own knowledge who used sign systems (language, number) in a continuous interaction with the social world.
·         Talks about the ‘natural line’ of development which comes from within the child and dominates up until about two years old. Then the ‘cultural line’ of development kicks in which involves the use of sign systems.
·         For Vygotsky human thinking would be impossible without language and other sign systems
·         The zone of proximal development is the gap between what a child can do by independent problem solving and the level that might be achieved through problem solving (resolving cognitive conflict) with the support of an interested adult.
·         Vygotsky attempted to chart the developmental course of language. He did not believe these stages to be prescriptive and rigid and acknowledged that some children may move backwards and forwards between stages. Problem novelty or difficulty can cause a child to regress to an earlier stage whereas experience will progress development.
·         Primitive stage.
·         Practical intelligence.
·         External symbolic stage.
·         Internalisation of symbolic tools.