Theorist Paper: Lev Vygotsky | Ivy Tech Community College

Joshua McWhorter
EDUC 121
02/08/2015

Theorist Paper: Lev Vygotsky | Ivy Tech Community College

Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Russian born psychologist, best known for his
foundational work in sociocultural theories of human development. Born on
November 17th, 1896 in Orsha, a town in the vicinity of Minsk, Vygotsky was the
second child in a family of eight children. Mr. Vygotsky's parents' were highly
educated members of the Jewish community in the region. His father was a banker,
and because of his prestigious position as Department Chief at United Bank, they
were capable of giving their children, including Vygotsky, an excellent formal
education (Veer & Valsiner. 1991. Pg.1).
Early in Lev Vygotsky's life, he studied under private tutors until joining the
highest classes of the private Jewish Gymnasium; where he graduated with a gold
medal for his outstanding performance. An accomplishment that was later over
shadowed by his families Jewish roots, when it was determined that having such an
award didn't guarantee his college enrollment, as it normally would have. At that time,
higher education institutions, such as those in St. Petersburg and Moscow, enforced a
quota system that capped Jewish enrollment at three percent. Thankfully, Vygotsky
was one of the lucky winners of a lottery that guaranteed him a position at Moscow
State University, where he studied psychology and eventually developed his theories
on sociocultural development, including one of his best known theories, the Zone of
Proximal Development (Bullard. 2014. Pg. 12).
Although his work is considered influential in the field of psychology, Vygotsky

Theorist Paper: Lev Vygotsky | Ivy Tech Community College

lived a rather short life, preventing him from completing much of his work. He died
of Tuberculosis on June 11, 1934 in Moscow, Russia at the age of 37. His theories are
chronicled in six separate volumes, written over a period of almost a decade, and were
eventually translated into English starting in the early 1920s.
In his work, Vygotsky thought of children as apprentice thinkers who develop as
they interact with more developed individuals, providing them with a framework for
thinking that they rely on as they progress into adulthood (King. 2013. Pg. 299). For
him, cultural influences, symbolism, language, community, and the formal institutions
in which a person interacts, were major aspects that influenced how a child thought
and behaved as they grew; which he referred to as making meaning. This differed
from other psychologists, such as Piaget, who believed that development must always
precede learning, rather than development being the result of interaction with
environmental influences and concurrent with learning.
In his Zone of Proximal Development theory, he postulated that there was a zone
of development that represented a difference between what we can accomplish on our
own (through prior learning and established frameworks) and what we can
accomplish with the help of more capable and experienced members of our social
group. People that he he referred to as scaffolding, because of the support they
provided (Bullard. 2014. Pg. 12). Vygotsky also looked at a childs play as essential to
the development of their higher mental functions, reasoning that it helped to develop
abstract modes of thinking that were essential later in life.
Some academics have put forth, and correctly so, that it was his own experiences

Theorist Paper: Lev Vygotsky | Ivy Tech Community College

early in life that influenced how he viewed his own cognitive development and
therefore his theoretical insights. He came from a family with a strong support
structure, which greatly helped him. The strong influences of his parents, siblings, and
friends, who drove him towards avenues that he wouldn't have otherwise considered,
such as the study of medicine and law, provided him with a diverse skill set that he
would have otherwise lacked. His sister, and friend, David, kept him aware of
developments in linguistics and philology, and he maintained a healthy interest in
literature and art that turned into the basis for is Masters thesis (Veer & Valsiner.
1991. Pg. 18). These helpful elements, combined with set backs because of
discrimination, most likely led him to believe that such influences were very
responsible for how, when, and where he learned what he did. Instilling in him a sense
that without those sociocultural influences, he most likely wouldn't have been as well
prepared or positioned to develop his theories the way he went on to do.
Vygotsky's theories aren't without criticism, though, other professionals are quick
to point out that his ideas ignore biological factors of growth and development, and
that without defining developmental appropriate stages, which are important in
understanding growth and cognition, we wouldn't have as complete an understanding
of how we grow and interact with the world around us. Others are also critical of his
interpretation of language and how it relates to mental development. Vygotsky viewed
them as separate at birth, a process of internalization that did not merge until around
age 3; others, such as Piaget, viewed them as linked from the beginning and
dependent on thought, and therefore one had to precede the other.

Theorist Paper: Lev Vygotsky | Ivy Tech Community College

In today's educational system, Vygotsky's theories have been used to structure

activities for children that place emphasis on development of language and thinking
skills, often through activities that build on and promote problem solving, storytelling,
block building, art and drawing, in the hope that it will better prepare students, both
mentally and emotionally, for later academic and social challenges that they may face
(Bullard. 2014. Pg. 12).
Teachers have embraced sociocultural approaches, because they focus on children
in real world settings and provide educators with information and support materials
that help them better structure their classroom environment to their students' needs;
allowing them more knowledgeable opportunities to think about what influences
might effect their students' development, both in the classroom environment and
outside of the classroom environment (McDevitt & Ormrod. 2013. Pg. 16).
From a personal perspective, I think that sociocultural influences had a lot of
impact on my development. They were very much just as influential as any biological
influences or cognitive/emotional factors. In fact, social and cultural influences in my
life were instrumental in the development of my cognitive and emotional identity.
My mother pushed for us to be creative children: to read, write, and play.
Allowing us the flexibility to explore and learn on our own and to build and problem
solve through interaction with our peers. And although I don't think that Vygotsky's
work is complete or all encompassing, I do think that his approach is a valid part of a
larger whole. When we combine all of these different approaches, we end up with a
much more complete view of human development than we would have otherwise.

Theorist Paper: Lev Vygotsky | Ivy Tech Community College

Works Cited:

Bullard, J. (2014). Understanding the Importance of the Environment. In Creating

environments for learning: Birth to age eight (Second ed., pp. 12-13). Pearson.
King, L. (2013). Human Development. In Experience psychology (Second ed., p.
299). McGraw-Hill.
McDevitt, T., & Ormrod, J. (2013). Child development and education (5th ed., pp. 1617). Boston: Pearson.
Veer, R., & Valsiner, J. (1991). Understanding Vygotsky: A quest for synthesis.
Oxford, UK: Blackwell.