Activity theory (L. S. Vygotsky, A. N. Leontiev, D. B. Elkonin)

Activity theory (L. S. Vygotsky, A. N. Leontiev, L. Ya. Galperin, D. B. Elkonin, V. V. Davydov, A. V. Petrovsky, etc.) is based on a fundamental principle - the activity approach to psyche. Activity is the process of human interaction with the outside world, the process of solving vital problems. With the activity approach, the psyche is understood as a form of the subject's vital activity, ensuring the solution of certain tasks in the process of his interaction with the world. The psyche is not just a picture of the world, a system of images, but also a system of actions.

According to the supporters of this theory, the mental development of a person has a social nature: the progress of mankind is determined not by biological, but social laws... The species experience of mankind is not fixed with the help of the mechanisms of genetic heredity, but is fixed in the products of material and spiritual culture. Teaching and education are specially organized activities of people, in the process of which they assimilate the experience of previous generations.

The unity of mental and external material activity is that both are activities. Both of these types of activity have an identical structure (goal, motive, object to which it is directed, a certain set of operations that implement the action and activity; the pattern according to which it is performed by the subject is an act of his real life activity, belongs to the subject, acts as the activity of a specific personality ). Their unity also lies in the fact that internal mental activity is a transformed external material activity, it is a product of external practical activity.

Activity gives rise to all mental phenomena, qualities, features, processes and states. Unlike the individual, the personality "in no sense is antecedent to his activity, just like his consciousness, it is generated by it."

The main psychological components of an activity are its motives. A. N. Leontiev divides motives into two types: motives-incentives and sense-forming motives.

Personal meanings are integrated with each other into a connected system, designated by A. N. Leont'ev by the term "semantic formations of personality." Hierarchical connections of motives form the core of the personality. A. N. Leont'ev noted: "The structure of the personality is a relatively stable configuration of the main, within itself hierarchized motivational lines ... Internal relationships of the main motivational lines in the totality of human activities form, as it were, a general" psychological profile "of the personality." In the concept of A. N. Leont'ev, the categories "personality", "consciousness", "activity" appear in their dialectical interaction, trinity.

A. N. Leont'ev believed that personality is the social essence of a person, and therefore temperament, character, abilities and knowledge of a person are not part of the personality as its substructures, they are only conditions for the formation of this formation, social in its essence. Direction and will belong to the individual, because a volitional act cannot be considered outside the hierarchy of motives, and direction is a direct expression of motivational structures, i.e. core of personality.

Cultural and historical concept Lev Semenovich Vygotsky proves that the solution to the human psyche lies not inside the brain or spirit, but in signs, language, tools, social relations. To understand higher mental processes ( arbitrary memory, attention, abstract logical thinking, speech), it is necessary to go beyond the limits of the organism and look for an explanation in the social relations of this organism with the environment. Children's development is subject not to biological laws, but to socio-historical laws. The development of the child occurs through the appropriation of historically developed forms and methods of human activity. Thus, the driving force behind human development – this training. But learning is not identical to development, it creates a zone of proximal development, sets in motion the internal processes of development, which at first are possible for the child only in interaction with adults and in cooperation with comrades, but then, permeating the entire internal course of development, become the property of the child himself. The zone of immediate action is the distance between the level of the child's actual development and the level of his possible development, with the assistance of adults. L. S. Vygotsky wrote: "The zone of proximal development determines the functions that are not yet ripe, but are in the process of maturation; it characterizes the mental development for tomorrow." The phenomenon of the zone of proximal development testifies to the leading role of education in the mental development of a child. Learning is capable of rebuilding the entire system of consciousness("one step in learning can mean a hundred steps in development").

L. S. Vygotsky emphasizes that mental development is the holistic development of the whole personality. This theory reveals the social essence of a person and the mediated nature of his activity (its instrumentality, symbolism). According to LS Vygotsky, higher mental functions arise initially as a form of collective behavior of a child, as a form of cooperation with other people, and only then do they become individual functions and abilities of the child himself. So, at first, speech is a means of communication between people, but in the course of development it becomes internal and begins to perform an intellectual function. Distinctive features higher mental functions - mediation, awareness, arbitrariness, consistency; they are formed during their lifetime in the process of mastering special means developed during historical development society; the development of higher mental functions occurs in the learning process, in the process of mastering the given samples. The function of mediating higher mental processes is performed by signs, with the help of which there is a mastery of behavior, its social determination. The tools of labor change the substance of nature. Culture signs are also tools, but special, psychological ones. They change not the external material world, but the human psyche. Initially, these signs are used in communication between people, in external interaction. And then this process from the external becomes internal (the process of internalization). Thanks to this, the development of higher mental functions occurs. Cultural and social development is the main condition for the development of personality.

Personal development as a process of socialization of an individual is carried out in certain social conditions family, immediate environment, region, country, in certain socio-political, economic conditions, in the ethnosocial and cultural, national traditions of the people of which he is a representative. At the same time, at each phase of the life path, as Vygotsky emphasized, certain social situations of development take shape as a kind of relationship between the child and the social reality surrounding him. Adaptation to the norms in force in society, forms of interaction is replaced by the phase of individualization, the search for means and ways to indicate one's individuality, dissimilarity, and then by the phase of integration of the individual into the community – all these are mechanisms of personal development(according to A. V. Petrovsky).

No influence of an adult on the processes of mental development can be carried out without the real activity of the child himself. And the process of development itself depends on how this activity will be carried out. The development process is the child's self-movement due to his activity with objects, and the facts of heredity and environment are only conditions that determine the essence of the development process, but only various variations within the normal range. This is how the idea arose of the leading type of activity as a criterion for the periodization of the child's mental development.

According to A. N. Leontiev, "some types of activity are leading at this stage and are of greater importance for the further development of the personality, others are less important. Some play a major role, others a subordinate role."

Leading activity is characterized by the fact that the main mental processes are rebuilt in it and changes occur psychological characteristics personality at this stage of its development. The content and form of the leading activity depends on the concrete historical conditions in which the child's development proceeds. The change in the leading types of activity is prepared for a long time and is associated with the emergence of new motives that induce the child to change the position he occupies in the system of relations with other people. Working out the problem of leading activity in child development is a fundamental contribution of Russian psychologists to child psychology. In the studies of A.V. Zaporozhets, A.N. Leontyev, D. B. Elkonin, V. V. Davydov, L. Ya. Halperin, the dependence of the development of mental processes on the character and structure was shown. different types leading activity. In the process of the child's development, the motivational side of the activity is first mastered (otherwise the objects have no meaning for the child), and then the operational and technical side; in development one can observe the alternation of these types of activity (D. B. Elkonin). With the assimilation of socially developed methods of action with objects, the formation of the child as a member of society takes place. Developing the ideas of L. S. Vygotsky, D. B. Elkonin considers each age based on the criteria (Table 2.1):

• - the social situation of development - the system of relations into which the child enters in society;
• - the main or leading type of child's activity during this period;
• - the main new formations of development, moreover, new achievements in development lead to the inevitability of changes in the social situation, to a crisis;
• - crisis - turning points in child development, separating one age from another. Large crises at 3 years and 11 years old (adolescent crisis) are relationship crises, followed by orientation in human relationships, and small crises at 1 year and 7 years old open orientation in the world of things.

Table 2.1. Periodization of mental development but D. B. Elkonin

The child's mental development is carried out simultaneously along the lines of: the cognitive sphere (the formation of the intellect, the development of the mechanisms of cognition); the psychological structure and content of activity (the formation of goals, motives and the development of their correlation, the development of methods and means of activity); personality (orientation, value orientations, self-awareness, self-esteem, interaction with the social environment, etc.). In the studies of L. S. Vygotsky, A. N. Leontyev, D. B. Elkonin, L. I. Bozhovich, it was shown that the development of a child as a person is determined by the consistent formation of personality neoplasms. L. I. Bozhovich gives their analysis within the five age stages of personal development:

• 1) the central personality neoformation of the first year of life is the emergence of affectively charged ideas, which induce the child's behavior despite the influences of the external environment;
• 2) by the end of early childhood, by the age of three, the central neoformation is the "I system" and the need to act on my own ("I myself") generated by this neoformation. During this period, two forces collide: "I want" and "I must", the formation of self-awareness takes place;
• 3) the period of 7–8 years is the formation of the child as a "social individual", the child has a need for socially significant activity;
• 4) by the age of 12-14, the "ability to set goals", to define and set conscious goals is formed;
• 5) by the age of 15-16, a teenager has a "life perspective".

V. S. Mukhina considers the development of personality as a consistent formation of the structure of self-awareness of the child: "The structure of human self-awareness, which is formed by a proper name, self-esteem and the claim to recognition, representing oneself as a representative of a certain gender, representing oneself in time (in the past, present and future), self-assessment in relation to rights and obligations ".

Personality gets its structure from the species structure human activity and is therefore characterized by five potentials: cognitive, value, creative, communicative and artistic.

Epistemological (informative ) potential is determined by the volume and quality of information that a person has. This information consists of knowledge about the external world (natural and social) and self-knowledge. This potential includes the psychological qualities that are associated with human cognitive activity.

Axiological (value ) potential personality is determined by the system of value orientations acquired by it in the process of socialization in the moral, political, religious, aesthetic spheres, i.e. her ideals, life goals, beliefs and aspirations. The unity of psychological and ideological aspects of a person's consciousness and self-consciousness is developed with the help of emotional-volitional and intellectual mechanisms, revealing itself in her attitude, worldview and world outlook.

Creative potential personality is determined by the skills and abilities she has acquired and independently developed, the ability to act constructive or destructive, productive or reproductive, and the measure of their implementation in one or another sphere (or several spheres) of labor, socio-organizational and critical activities.

Communication potential personality is determined by the measure and forms of its sociability, the nature and strength of contacts established by it with other people. By its content interpersonal communication expressed in the system of social roles.

Artistic potential personality is determined by the level, content, intensity of her artistic needs and how she satisfies them. The artistic activity of the individual unfolds in creativity, professional and amateur, and in the "consumption" of works of art.

Thus, a person is determined not by his character, temperament, physical qualities, etc., but by:

• 1) what and how she knows;
• 2) what and how she appreciates;
• 3) what and how it creates;
• 4) with whom and how she communicates;
• 5) what are her artistic needs and how she satisfies them.

The main thing is what is the measure of responsibility for their actions, decisions, fate.

The implementation of the activity approach in social psychology of personality is presented in the concept of activity mediation of interpersonal relations by Artur Vladimirovich Petrovsky. The fundamental categories in this concept are personality, activity and team. Interpersonal relationships in a group are mediated by the content and values ​​of the group. Socio-psychological phenomena in a group are determined by the content of this activity, the multilevel structure of group activity, and the level of development of the groups. The vector of this development is from a diffuse group to the development of a collective, which is a group where " interpersonal relationships are mediated by the socially valuable and personality significant content of joint activity ... A personality can be understood only in the system of stable interpersonal relationships, which are mediated by the content, values, meaning of joint activity for each of the participants. "

Among the black and white portraits on the walls of the psychology department, his face is always the youngest and most beautiful. Soviet psychologist, founder of cultural-historical theory Lev Vygotsky is one of those people who are not ashamed to talk about with aspiration. Not only because he was a genius, although there is no doubt about that. Vygotsky was somehow able to remain an amazingly kind and decent person at a time when very few people succeeded.

At the end of the 19th century, the city of Gomel, Mogilev province, was in full swing with life. Workshops, factories and woodworking enterprises coexisted with damp barracks in which workers huddled. Schools and colleges were actively built. Gomel was not only an industrial and commercial center, but also the focus of Jewish life: Jews accounted for more than half of the population. The city consisted of 26 synagogues, 25 houses of worship, there was a first-class Jewish school and a private Jewish gymnasium for boys.

In 1897, the second floor of a small house in the very center of the city, at the intersection of Rumyantsevskaya and Aptechnaya streets, was occupied by a small family: a bank clerk Simkha, his wife Tsilya, a teacher by education, and their two children - the big-eyed Khaya Anna, two years old and one year old A lion. For Lev Vygodsky, whom the world will soon recognize as Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky, this house in the heart of Gomel will become the core of his life, a breeding ground for all his successes and works, thoughts, aspirations and struggles.

As the neighbors soon learned, the Vygodskys moved from a smaller town - Orsha. The father of the family got a good position: the merchant Simkha became the deputy manager of the Gomel branch of the United Bank. Simkha Vygodsky was a domineering man with a difficult character, a real patriarch. He received an excellent education, spoke several languages ​​and soon won an indisputable authority among the townspeople. Vygodsky Sr. became one of the leaders of the Gomel self-defense movement, established in 1903, participated in the creation of a Jewish education circle and a city public library.

The children called their mother, Cecilia Moiseevna, "the soul of the family" - she, in contrast to her husband, was soft and sympathetic. By profession, Tsilya Vygodskaya did not work, devoting herself to home and childcare. A young family grew, one after another were born younger sisters and the brother of Leo and Anna. In addition to their seven own children, the Vygodskys raised David's nephew, the son of the late brother of Simcha, Isaac. David Vygodsky would later become a famous poet, literary critic and translator.

It is easy to guess that such a large family lived more than modestly: the girls, in addition to their gymnasium uniforms, had one chintz dress each. What parents did not skimp on was the education of their children. Her favorite leisure activities were trips to the theater and discussion of the books she had read.

For the first five years, Lev Vygodsky studied at home. His tutor, Solomon Ashpiz, is not the last person in the Gomel Social Democratic organization, except revolutionary activity was famous for teaching his charges through Socratic dialogue. Under his leadership, Leo learned English, Ancient Greek and Hebrew, and after becoming a high school student, he also successfully mastered French, German and Latin.

Vygodsky Sr. made sure that the children develop their talents. Noticing Leo's interest in culture and philosophy, his father got him Benedict Spinoza's Ethics on one of his business trips. Flattered by such attention, Leo reread the book many times. For many years she remained one of his favorites.

Children in the Vygodsky family were taught to take care of each other, the elders took care of the younger ones. There was a touching custom: in the evenings, when my father returned from work, the whole family would gather for tea, and everyone would talk in a circle about what had happened that day. Perhaps it was this combination of warm nepotism, hard work and freedom of thought that his parents passed on to him and laid the foundations for Lev Vygotsky's future brilliant discoveries.

Life also taught its lessons. Little Leo was 7 years old when a wave of bloody pogroms swept through the towns and cities, claiming thousands of lives. In the first Gomel pogrom of 1903 (two years later another will happen), ten people were killed. Hundreds of others were beaten, injured, robbed. After that, the famous Gomel trial, unfair and shameful, took place. They tried not only the rioters, but also Jews, participants in self-defense - for trying to protect their homes and families.

The grown-up Vygotsky will never forget these events, but he will never speak about them directly. The topic of anti-Semitism will forever remain a sore point for him. His first publications in the magazine “ New way”, Already under a changed surname, Vygotsky devotes to anti-Semitism in Russian literature. "... having brought realism to its extreme expression and crossed the line beyond which the real becomes symbolic, through a brilliant psychological comprehension of the secrets of the human soul, Russian literature has contributed so little psychological insight into the image of the Jews," he notes with bitterness.

By the way, biographers and relatives pass over the topic of changing his name with delicate silence: no one knows exactly when and why from Lev Simkhovich Vygodsky he turned into Lev Semenovich Vygotsky. The not too convincing official version says that the future famous psychologist did not want to be confused with his cousin, the writer David Vygodsky.

In 1913, graduating with honors private gymnasium Ratner, Vygodsky, then still with the letter "d" in his surname, submitted documents to the Faculty of Philology of Moscow University and was refused. Although a promising student fell into the "percentage rate" for individuals Jewish origin, the choice of faculties was limited for him. Then, on the advice of his parents, he entered the medical school - where else can a talented Jewish youth go? But interest in the humanities overpowered, and a year later, 18-year-old Leo transferred to legal. Affected and the "national question": the profession of a lawyer made it possible to overcome the Pale of Settlement.

College friends and later colleagues described Vygotsky as a kind, optimistic person with a great sense of humor combined with amazing decency and invariably energetic. Thanks to this ebullient energy, he had the strength to attend free lectures at the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the Shanyavsky University, simultaneously with his legal studies. In 1917 he finished his studies there, finally giving up jurisprudence.

Academic successes, first publications in magazines, good friends and a favorite job ... What must a 23-year-old young man feel when he heard the diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis, which at that time meant a death sentence with a short delay?

"Tragedy is a riot of maximum human strength, therefore it is in the major," Vygotsky wrote. Before the invention of penicillin, there were still two decades left. He didn't have time. And yet he managed to do a lot - so much that it is difficult to imagine how a human life 37 years long can accommodate all this.

To marry for great love and become a father of two daughters, the eldest of whom, Gita, will later publish a book expressing his love and admiration for him, who left early. Work as a literature teacher in a number of schools and technical schools. To head the theatrical subdivision of the Gomel department of public education, and then the art department at Gubnarobraz. Take part in the work of the Moscow State Institute of Experimental Psychology, the State Institute of Scientific Pedagogy, the Moscow State Pedagogical University, the Institute for the Study of Higher nervous activity, The Experimental Defectological Institute - and this is far from full list places where Vygotsky worked.

Defend a thesis and obtain a senior research fellowship equivalent to the current PhD degree. Write almost two hundred works on child psychology, pedagogy, literature and art. To become the founder of the cultural and historical concept of development, which is still being studied by psychologists and educators around the world.

His works are striking in their harmony and simplicity of presentation: no abstruse terms, no cumbersome structures. He wrote clearly and easily, just as he thought. But these thoughts shook with their freshness, and also with amazing tenderness and sympathy, with which Lev Vygotsky described inner world their wards.

“Suppose we are dealing with a child suffering from hearing impairment due to whatever reasons,” Vygotsky argues in his monograph Difficult Childhood. - It is easy to imagine that this child will experience a number of difficulties, adapting to environment... He will be scrubbed by other children into the background during games, he will be late for walks, he will be pushed aside from active participation in children's party, conversation. " And he continues: now the child has three possible ways development. The first is to become embittered with the whole world and become aggressive, the second is to adapt to your defect and receive from it " secondary benefit"Or the third - to compensate for their lack of development of positive qualities: attention, sensitivity, ingenuity.

Vygotsky urged teachers to be sympathetic to the "inconvenient" behavior of students, to delve into its reasons, "to strike at the root, and not by the phenomenon." If this approach is used instead of punishment, he argued, it will be possible for the benefit of children to use the same defects that led to disobedience or learning disabilities - "to turn them into good character traits."

But what, fortunately, Vygotsky did not have time - to see how soon after his death his works will burn in the furnace. Stalinist repression both figuratively and literally. The psychologist's books were taken from libraries and often burned. This time was caught by his daughters, Gita and Asya Vygodsky. Gita Lvovna, a psychologist-defectologist, continued her father's work and devoted her life to restoring his legacy.

“I wanted to write about my father truthfully, objectively,” she admits in the book “Lev Semenovich Vygotsky. Life. Activity. Strokes for a portrait ”. - And this suggests that it is necessary to tell not only about positive aspects his personality, but also what may characterize him with negative side... But no matter how hard I tried, I could not revive in my memory anything that would speak negatively about him - not a single such act of his that would drop him in my eyes. Nothing ... So what was he like? For myself, I answer this question with words from his favorite work: he is “the best of the people with whom I happened to converge” (W. Shakespeare, “Hamlet”) ”.

Posts from This Journal by “ЖЗЛ” Tag

• Glorious Did Panas - Shiry Ukrainian Yevrey

  Who would have thought? Unless, of course, you already do not know that Did Panas is still Hades. Grandfather Panas is a legend for those who were a child in the 60s and 80s ...

• SAVELY KRAMAROV - RUSSIAN COMICIAN AND ORTHODOX JEW

  The prominent Moscow lawyer Viktor Savelyevich Kramarov was let down by his professionalism. In 1937, on duty, he defended the defendants in ...

• 
  Detaly.co.il: Portraits of our premieres: 4. Golda Meir

  Golda Meir was born in Kiev in 1898. The Jewish pogroms she saw there made her a Zionist. At eight years old, the carpenter father took away all ...

• Theodor Herzl

  He was a dude, a boulevard dandy. They said that he loved listening to Wagner's operas, dressing in fashion, gossiping in cafes and flying around ...

Vygotsky Lev Semyonovich (1896-1934) - Soviet psychologist, creator of the cultural-historical theory of the development of higher mental functions. Lev Semenovich Vygotsky was born on November 5, 1896 in the city of Orsha. A year later, the Vygotsky family moved to Gomel. It was in this city that Lev graduated from high school. After graduating from high school, L.S. Vygotsky entered Moscow University, where he studied at the Faculty of Law.

He worked at the Moscow State Institute of Experimental Psychology (1924-1928), at the State Institute of Scientific Pedagogy (GINP) at the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute and at the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute. A.I. Herzen (both in 1927-1934), the Academy of Communist Education (AKV) (1929-1931), the 2nd Moscow State University (1927-1930), and after the reorganization of the 2nd Moscow State University - into the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. A.S.Bubnov (1930-1934), as well as in the Experimental Defectological Institute founded by him (1929-1934); also gave lectures at a number of educational institutions and research organizations in Moscow, Leningrad, Tashkent and Kharkov, for example, at the Central Asian State University (SAGU) (in 1929).

Vygotsky was widely engaged in pedagogy, consulting and research activities. He was a member of many editorial boards and wrote extensively himself. Despite the materialistic form of his theory, Vygotsky adhered to an empirical evolutionist direction in the study of cultural differences in thinking, creating an approach to psychology. Exploring verbal thinking, Vygotsky solves the problem of localization of higher mental functions as structural units of brain activity in a new way. Studying the development and disintegration of higher mental functions on the material of child psychology, defectology and psychiatry, Vygotsky comes to the conclusion that the structure of consciousness is a dynamic semantic system of affective volitional and intellectual processes that are in unity.

In 1928-32, Vygotsky, together with his colleagues Luria and Leontiev, participated in experimental research at the Academy of Communist Education. Vygotsky headed the psychological laboratory, and Luria headed the entire faculty. The greatest fame was brought to Vygotsky by the psychological theory, which has become widely known under the name of the cultural-historical concept of the development of higher mental functions, the theoretical and empirical potential of which has not yet been exhausted. The essence of this concept is the synthesis of the doctrine of nature and the doctrine of culture. The theory provides an alternative to the existing behavioral theories, and above all behaviorism. According to the author himself, the study of the basic laws of the development of culture can give an idea of ​​the laws of personality formation. Lev Semenovich considered this problem in the light of child psychology. Spiritual development the child was placed in a definite dependence on the organized influence of adults on him. Lev Semenovich has a lot of works devoted to the study of mental development and the laws of the formation of a personality in childhood, the problems of learning and teaching children at school. It was Vygotsky who played the most outstanding role in the development of the science of defectology. He created in Moscow a laboratory for the psychology of abnormal childhood, which later became a component of the Experimental Defectological Institute. When studying the psychological characteristics of abnormal children, Vygotsky focused on the mentally retarded and deaf-blind-mute.

In the works of Vygotsky, the problem of the relationship between the role of maturation and learning in the development of higher mental functions of a child is considered in detail. He formulated essential principle, according to which the preservation and timely maturation of brain structures is a necessary, but insufficient condition for the development of higher mental functions. The main source for this development is the changing social environment, to describe which Vygotsky introduced the term social developmental situation, defined as "a peculiar, specific for a given age, exclusive, unique and inimitable relationship between the child and the surrounding reality, primarily social." It is this attitude that determines the course of development of the child's psyche at a certain age stage.

A significant contribution to educational psychology is the concept of zone of proximal development, introduced by Vygotsky. The zone of proximal development is “the area of ​​unripe, but maturing processes,” which encompasses tasks that a child at a given level of development cannot cope with on his own, but which he can solve with the help of an adult; this is the level reached by a child so far only in the course of joint activities with an adult.

On the last stage In his scientific work, Vygotsky was interested in the problems of thinking and speech, and he wrote the scientific work Thinking and Speech. In this fundamental scientific work, the main idea is inextricable link existing between thinking and speech. Vygotsky first made an assumption, which he himself soon confirmed, that the level of development of thinking depends on the formation and development of speech. He revealed the interdependence of these two processes.

During the life of Lev Semenovich, his works were not allowed for publication in the USSR. Since the early 1930s. a real persecution began on him, the authorities accused him of ideological perversions. On June 11, 1934, after a long illness, at the age of 37, Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky died.

Lev Semenovich Vygotsky was born on November 5, 1896 in the city of Orsha. A year later, the Vygotsky family moved to Gomel. It was in this city that Lev graduated from high school and took his first steps in science. Back in his gymnasium years, Vygotsky read a book by A.A. Enjoy Thought and Language, which piqued his interest in psychology. In 1913 he went to Moscow, entered at once in two educational institutions- to the People's University at the Faculty of History and Philosophy on their own and at the Moscow Imperial Institute at the Faculty of Law at the insistence of his parents. After the 1917 revolution, Lev Semyonovich left for his hometown, where he worked as a literature teacher. He is invited to teach philosophy and logic at the Pedagogical College. Within the walls of this technical school, Vygotsky created a study of experimental psychology.

Lev Semenovich Vygotsky is called the "Mozart of psychology", but meanwhile we can say that a person came to psychology from the outside. Lev Semenovich did not have a special psychological education, and it is quite possible that it was this fact that allowed him to look in a new way, from a different point of view, at the problems facing psychological science. His largely innovative approach is due to the fact that the traditions of empirical "academic" psychology did not weigh on him.

In 1924, at the Second All-Russian Congress on Psychoneurology, he presented his report "Methods of Reflexological and Psychological Research." His performance attracted the attention of the most famous psychologists of that time A.N. Leontiev and A.R. Luria. Lev Semenovich becomes the leader and ideological inspirer of the legendary troika of psychologists: Vygotsky, Leontiev, Luria.

The greatest fame was brought to Vygotsky by the psychological theory he created “ Cultural-historical concept of the development of higher mental functions th ". The essence of this concept is the synthesis of the doctrine of nature and the doctrine of culture. According to Vygotsky, all mental, nature-given ("natural") functions over time are transformed into functions of a higher level of development ("cultural"): mechanical memory becomes logical, the associative flow of ideas - purposeful thinking or creative imagination, impulsive action - voluntary, etc. .d. All these internal processes arise in direct social contacts between a child and an adult, and then are fixed in his mind. The child's spiritual development was put in a definite dependence on the organized influence of adults on him. The formation of the child's personality, his full-fledged development, is almost equally influenced by both hereditary inclinations and social factors.

Lev Semenovich has a lot of works devoted to the study of mental development and the laws of the formation of a personality in childhood, the problems of learning and teaching children at school. Moreover, not only normally developing children, but also children with various developmental anomalies. Vygotsky played an outstanding role in the development of the science of defectology. In Moscow, he created a laboratory for the psychology of abnormal childhood.

Known for his work " Psychology of art". In his opinion, art radically changes the affective sphere, which plays a very important role in the organization of behavior, and socializes it. L.V. Vygotsky wrote the scientific work Thinking and Speech. In this scientific work, the main idea is the inextricable connection that exists between thinking and speech. Instead of the "consciousness - behavior" dyad, Vygotsky proposed the "consciousness - culture - behavior" triad.

During his lifetime, his works were not appreciated at their true worth, his works were not allowed to be published in the USSR. From the beginning of the 30s, he was persecuted. The authorities accused him of ideological perversion. On June 11, 1934, after a long illness, at the age of 37, Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky died.

L.S. Vygotsky is about 200 scientific works, including the Collected Works in 6 volumes, the scientific work "Psychology of Art".

The famous Russian psychologist and one of the founders of neurophysiology, Alexander Luria, has repeatedly admitted that "we owe everything good in the development of Russian psychology to Vygotsky." Lev Vygotsky is a truly iconic figure for several generations of psychologists and humanitarians, and not only Russian ones.

After in 1962 on English language his work "Thinking and Speech" was published, Vygotsky's ideas spread widely in the USA, Europe, and then in other countries. When one of the American followers of the cultural-historical school Uri Bronfenbrenner from Cornell University managed to come to the USSR, he embarrassed Vygotsky's daughter Gita Lvovna from the doorway with the question: "I hope you know that your father is God for us?"

Vygotsky's students, however, considered him a genius during his lifetime. As the same Luria recalls, in the late 1920s, “our entire group devoted almost the entire day to our grandiose plan for restructuring psychology. L.S. Vygotsky was an idol for us. When he left somewhere, students wrote poetry in honor of his trip. "

Vygotsky came to psychology from among theater-goers and art lovers - from the world of the "Silver Age" of Russian culture, in which he was well-versed.

Before the revolution, he attended the Shanyavsky People's University in Moscow, where he attended lectures by the literary critic and critic Yuri Eichenwald, the philosopher Gustav Shpet and Georgy Chelpanov. Thanks to these courses and self-reading(in several languages) Vygotsky received an excellent humanitarian education, which he later supplemented with natural sciences.

After the revolution, he wrote reviews for theatrical performances and taught in his hometown Gomel, prepared several works on Shakespeare's drama and developed the foundations of the psychology of art.

In 1924 he again moved to Moscow at the invitation of the Moscow Institute of Experimental Psychology, where he finally found his calling.

In the harsh conditions of post-revolutionary Russia, not even reaching the age of 38, he proposed many solutions in psychological theory and pedagogy, which remain fresh today.

Already in 1926, Vygotsky stated that not only domestic, but also world psychology was in crisis. It needs a complete restructuring theoretical foundations... All opposing schools, the development of which is rapidly taking place in the first quarter of the XX century, can be divided into two parts - natural science and idealistic. The former studies reflexes and reactions to stimuli, and the position of the latter was most clearly expressed by Wilhelm Dilthey, who argued that "we explain nature, but we understand mental life."

It is possible to overcome this opposition and this crisis only through the creation general psychology- through the systematization and ordering of individual data on human psyche and behavior. It was necessary to combine explanation and understanding in a single and holistic approach to the analysis of the human psyche.

What is the most common thing in all the phenomena studied by psychology, what makes the most diverse phenomena psychological facts - from saliva in a dog to enjoying tragedy, what is common in the delirium of a madman and the strictest calculations of a mathematician?

Lev Vygotsky from the work "The Historical Meaning of the Psychological Crisis"

A person is fundamentally distinguished by the fact that he uses consciousness and signs - and this is what psychology has until then ignored (behaviorism and reflexology), considered in isolation from social practice (phenomenology) or replaced it with unconscious processes (psychoanalysis). Vygotsky saw the way out of the crisis in dialectical materialism, although he was skeptical about attempts to directly adapt Marxist dialectics to psychology.

Marx had fundamentally important provisions on the determining role of social relations, tool and symbolic activity in the formation of the psyche:

The spider performs operations that resemble those of a weaver, and the bee, by building its wax cells, puts some human architects to shame. But even the worst architect differs from the best bee from the very beginning in that, before building a cell of wax, he has already built it in his head.

Karl Marx "Capital", Chapter 5. The labor process and the process of increasing value

A general psychology, overcoming the differences of different schools and approaches, did not appear during Vygotsky's life - it does not exist even now. But in these revolutionary years in all respects, it seemed to many that this was quite possible: the general psychological theory was somewhere nearby, "we now hold in our hands a thread from it" - he writes in 1926 in notes that were later revised and published under the title "The Historical Meaning of the Psychological Crisis". At this time, Vygotsky is in the Zakharyino hospital, where he was urgently hospitalized due to an exacerbation of tuberculosis.

Luria later said: "The doctors said that he had 3-4 months to live, he was placed in a sanatorium ... And then he began to frantically write in order to leave behind some basic work."

It was at this time that what would later be called "cultural-historical theory" began to form. In 1927, Vygotsky was discharged from the hospital and, together with his colleagues, began to conduct research on higher mental functions, which would bring him worldwide fame. He studies speech and sign activity, genetic mechanisms of the formation of the psyche in the development of children's thinking.

Vygotsky's classical scheme of behaviorism "stimulus - reaction" turns into the scheme "stimulus - sign (means) - reaction".

The intermediate element transforms the entire scene of thinking, changes all its functions. What was a natural reaction becomes a conscious and socially conditioned cultural behavior.

3 theses of Vygotsky's psychology

“... Every function in the cultural development of a child appears on the scene twice, in two planes, first social, then psychological, first between people as an interpsychic category, then inside a child as an intrapsychic category. This applies equally to arbitrary attention, to logical memory, to the formation of concepts, to the development of will ”.

This is how the famous formulation of the "general genetic law of cultural development", which Vygotsky proposed in "Thinking and Speech", looks like. We are talking here about the social origin of consciousness - but this formula can be interpreted in completely different ways.

Similar ideas were once expressed by the French psychologist and philosopher Pierre Janet: those forms of behavior that others initially used in relation to the child (“wash your hands”, “do not talk at the table”), he then transfers to himself.

Vygotsky does not at all claim that social factors completely and completely determine the development of the psyche. Nor does he say that consciousness arises from natural, innate mechanisms of adaptation to the environment. "Development is a continuous self-conditioned process, not a puppet guided by pulling two strings." The child emerges as a separate person only through interaction, active participation in the lives of others.

As Luria's experiments carried out in Uzbekistan in the early 1930s showed, logical operations that we consider natural arise only in the context of formal education. If you are not told in school what a circle is, the idea of ​​a circle by itself will not come down to you from the Platonic world of ideas.

For an illiterate, a triangle is a tea stand or an amulet, a filled circle is a coin, an unfinished circle is a month, and there is nothing in common between them.

Let's say you were offered the following syllogism: 1. In the Far North, where there is always snow, all bears are white. 2. New earth located in the Far North. 3. What color are the bears there? If you were not taught to reason in abstract terms and solve abstract problems, then you will answer something like “I have never been to the North and have not seen bears” or “you should ask people who have been there and seen”.

Vygotsky and Luria showed that many mechanisms of thinking that seem to be universal are in fact determined by culture, history, and certain psychological tools that do not arise spontaneously, but are acquired in the course of learning.

“A person introduces artificial stimuli, signifies behavior and, with the help of signs, creates, acting from the outside, new connections in the brain”; "In a higher structure, the sign and the way it is used is the functional defining whole or the focus of the whole process."

Vygotsky emphasizes that all forms of behavior characteristic of a person are of a symbolic nature. Signs are used as psychological tools: simplest example is a knot tied to memory.

Let's see how children play with blocks. It can be a spontaneous game in which the figures are piled on top of one another: this cube becomes a machine, the next one becomes a dog. The meaning of the figures is constantly changing, and the child does not come to some kind of stable solution. The child likes it - the process itself brings him pleasure, and the result does not matter.

A teacher who considers such an activity pointless can invite the child to build a certain figure according to the drawn model. There is a clear goal here - the child sees where each cube should be. But such a game is not interesting to him. A third option can also be proposed: let the child try to assemble a model from the cubes, which is indicated only approximately. It cannot be copied - you need to find your own solution.

In the first version of the game, the signs do not determine the child's behavior - he is driven by the spontaneous flow of fantasy. In the second version, the sign (the drawn model) acts as a predetermined pattern that just needs to be copied - but the child loses its own activity. Finally, in the third version, the game acquires a goal, but allows for many decisions.

It is this form that human behavior has, mediated by signs that give it purpose and meaning, without taking away the freedom of choice.

“... By engaging in behavior, a psychological tool changes the entire course and structure of mental functions. He achieves this by setting the structure of a new instrumental act, just as a technical tool changes the process of natural adaptation, defining the type of labor operations. " But the action of the sign, in contrast to the tool, is directed not outward, but inward. It not only conveys a message, but also acts as a means of self-determination.

"Immaturity of functions at the time of the beginning of training is a general and basic law"; “Pedagogy should be guided not by yesterday, but by tomorrow child development... Only then will she be able to bring to life those development processes that now lie in the zone of proximal development in the learning process ”.

The concept of "zone of proximal development" is one of Vygotsky's most famous contributions to pedagogical theory. A child can independently perform a certain range of tasks. With the help of leading questions and tips from the teacher, he can do much more. The interval between these two states is called the zone of proximal development. It is through her that any training is always carried out.

To explain this concept, Vygotsky introduces a metaphor about a gardener who needs to keep track of not only ripening, but also ripening fruits. Education should focus specifically on the future - something that a child does not know yet, but can learn. It is important to stay within this zone - not to dwell on what you have learned, but also not to try to jump far ahead.

A person cannot exist separately from others - any development always takes place in a team. Modern science she has achieved a lot not only because she stands on the shoulders of giants - the whole mass of people is no less important, which for the majority remains anonymous. Genuine talents do not arise in spite of, but because of the environmental conditions that stimulate and direct their development.

Many of Vygotsky's ideas and concepts remained unformed. Experimental work to test his bold hypotheses, it was mainly not he himself who carried out, but his followers and students (therefore, most concrete examples taken from Luria's work). Vygotsky died in 1934 - unrecognized, reviled and forgotten for many years by everyone except a narrow circle of like-minded people. Interest in his theory was revived only in the 50-60s on the wave of the "semiotic turn" in humanitarian research.

Today, both domestic representatives of cultural-historical theory and foreign sociocultural psychologists, cognitivists, anthropologists and linguists rely on his work. Vygotsky's ideas are included in the obligatory baggage of teachers around the world.

How would you define who you are if it weren't for the avalanche of cultural clichés that others bombard us with on a daily basis? How would you know that the major and minor premise of a categorical syllogism lead to a very definite conclusion? What would you learn if it weren't for the teachers, notebook notes, classmates, class journals, and grades?

The reason for Vygotsky's continuing influence is that he shows the importance of all these elements that so easily elude our attention.