Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) was a Belarusian psychologist who, although he died young, at the age of 38, left a great legacy on psychology and pedagogy. His teachings and discoveries, especially about the mental development of children is still used today in pedagogical studies.

In addition, Lev Vygotsky's studies on mediation, language and learning brought an immense contribution to psychology. Furthermore, he attributed a significant role to the social relations of the time, being, inclusive, from where the pedagogical current of thought called socioconstructivism originated. Vygotsky also brought studies on the explanation of psychological functions, such asthinking, remembering, and planning.

The psychologist's ideas were impactful as they went against the thoughts instituted by thinkers of the time, such as innatist and behaviorist theories, especially about children's cognitive capacity. Thus, he was the pioneer in defending that, among other factors, learning occurs with the exploration of the environment, where the child acquires its own methods.

Who was Vygotsky?

Lev Semionovitch Vygotsky was an important thinker who pioneered studies on children's intellectual development, showing how cognitive function occurs in the midst of social interactions and conditions.

As he died young, his studies were only known in the academic world after his death. However, he became influence to many other scholars that have come along, such as Evald Iliengov and Urie Bronfenbrenner.

Biography of Lev Semionovich Vygotsky

Lev Vygotsky was born in 1896 in the city of Orsha, in Belarus, a region that, at the time, was dominated by Russia. With Jewish parents with good economic conditions, he had the opportunity to have a good education, with the help of private tutors.

Since childhood he was interested in various fields of knowledge, forming groups to study languages, literature, theater, and poetry. In 1918 he graduated in Law from Mascou University, where he simultaneously studied Literature and History at the Shanyavskii People's University, and even founded a publishing house and published a literary magazine.

Upon graduating from law school, he returned to the city where he taught, Gomel, when, in 1924, he married Roza Smekhova and had two children. Still in this city, he taught psychology at the Teacher Training Institute, where he then founded a Psychology laboratory.

In addition, he studied medicine, aiming to understand about learning and language disorders. In this sense, the problems about the genesis of human psychological processes is the study demonstrated in his work "The Social Formation of Mind".

His training in psychoanalysis was not divulged, due to Josef Stalin's persecutions, since he considered Sigmund Freud's theories to be a bourgeois ideology.

With his immense knowledge, the thinker left an intense baggage for scholars, mainly of psychology, with more than 200 scientific articles Although young, Lev Vygotsky had a vast knowledge about different political movements, which significantly influenced his work.

Child development for Vygotsky

In short, for Lev Vygotsky The child's mental development is a cognitive process where the child has a powerful ability to restructure concepts that were already embedded in them.

Lev Vygotsky created the genetic-experimental method, whose experiment aims to offer the experimenter conditions to understand what the real course of development of a certain function is. In this technique, he introduced obstacles in children's tasks, in order to break routine concepts of problem solving. Thus, in the study, it did not matter what the child's result was, but what themethods that she used.

For Lev Vygotsky, at birth the human being is already surrounded by his peers, in a cultural environment; in this sense, the development of intelligence is also a result of this coexistence. Thus, he created a theory on child development from the perception of the human being and reality.

Lev Vygotsky's Psychology

Mediation

For Lev Vygotsky mediation is ability to insert an intermediary between the subject and the object A relationship is said to be direct when there is only the stimulus and the response, whereas, if the relationship is mediated, there is the stimulus, the mediator, and the response.

To visualize this more easily, here are two examples:

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• Direct Relationship (stimulus-response): when we put our hand in the fire, we immediately remove it, due to the pain it causes;
• Mediated Relationship (stimulus-mediator-response): when we put our hand in the fire and withdraw due to a memory about the suffering caused, we are facing a mediated relationship, because there is an intermediary between the stimulus and the response.

Language

For Lev Vygotsky, language is one of the central points in the theory of human development, without which it would not happen. Thus, language is a tool, which is able to transform the directions of an activity and, also, able to organize our psychological functions, such as:

• attention;
• memory;
• thought.

Learning

In his cultural-historical theory, Lev Vygotsky first proposed that learning and development are seen as human phenomena that are mediated, above all, by language.

This is an important theory to understand how learning develops in a classroom, given the understanding that subjects modify the active forces that transform them. That is, in the human development through the relationship with the subject and the world the subject is acting upon it, transforming it into the object of his action.

Theory of the zone of proximal development for Vygotsky

In short, Lev Vygotsky's studies about learning are focused on the understanding that the human being develops according to his contact with society. Thus, he rejected the innatist theories of the time, which indicated that the human being was born with the characteristics that he develops during his life. In addition, he also rejected the empiricist and behaviorist theories, which believed that the human beinghuman was the result of external stimuli.

Therefore, for Lev Vygotsky In other words, for Vygotsky's theory, the important thing is how a person interacts with the environment in which he or she lives, called personally meaningful experience.

Meanwhile, in Lev Vygotsky's theory of learning, the development of the human being, in his childhood, takes place through socialization. In this sense, he categorized this learning process into three levels:

• Zone of Real Development: By going through stages in his life, the child becomes capable of solving problems independently;
• Zone of Potential Development: The child's ability to perform tasks that need help from adults or peers who are more capable;
• Zone of Proximal Development: lies between actual and potential development, thus becoming the path to maturation and, consequently, the consolidation of functions.

Lev Vygotsky's Main Works and Publications

• The tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. 1915;
• On methods of teaching literature in secondary schools. Report to the District Conference on Scientific Methodology. 1922;
• The investigation of the language comprehension process using multiple translation of text from one language to another. 1923;
• Problems of educating blind, deaf-mute, and retarded children . 1924;
• Methods of psychological and reflexological investigation. Report presented at the National Meeting of Psychoneurology. 1924;
• The principles of education of children with physical defects, 1924;
• The conscious as a problem of experimental psychology, 1925;
• Foreword by Principles of learning based on psychology , 1926;
• Contemporary Psychology and Art, 1928;
• The instrumental method in psychology. 1928;
• Roots of the development of thought and speech. 1929;
• The relation between work and intellectual development in the child. 1930.

So, although he died young, at the age of 38, Lev Vygotsky's research had a great impact on psychology and pedagogy, especially with his innovative views on the process of learning and human development.

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