Lev Vygotsky was a Russian psychologist born in 1896 who studied topics including psychology, sociology, linguistics, and philosophy. He completed his PhD in 1925 on the psychology of art but suffered from tuberculosis. Vygotsky went on to research language, attention, and memory and published over 270 articles before dying of tuberculosis in 1934 at age 37. His sociocultural development theory emphasized that social interaction and culture are fundamental to cognitive development. He is known for concepts like the zone of proximal development and scaffolding. Vygotsky's works were published after his death and suppressed but later influenced education and developmental psychology in the West.

1. LES-VOYGOSKY
MOSHERA OSAMA DALIA

2. Vygotsky's Early Life
◦ Lev Vygotsky was born November 17, 1896, Russian.
◦ He attended Moscow State University, where he graduated with a degree in law in 1917.
◦ Vygotsky studied a range of topics while at university, including sociology, linguistics, psychology, and
philosophy. However, his formal work in psychology did not begin until 1924 when he attended the Institute
of Psychology in Moscow.
◦ He completed a dissertation in 1925 on the psychology of art but was awarded his degree in absentia due
to an acute tuberculosis relapse that left him incapacitated for a year.
◦ Following his illness, Vygotsky began researching topics such as language, attention, and memory with the
help of students, including Alexei Leontief and Alexander Luria.

3. ◦ Vygotsky completed 270 scientific articles, numerous lectures and 10 books
based on a wide range of Marxist based psychological and teaching theories as
well as the areas of pedagogy (the science of teaching), art and aesthetics and
sociology, before dying of tuberculosis in June 1934, at the age of 37. Vygotsky
died while dictating the final chapter of his book 'Thought and language'.

4. In His Own Words
◦Learning is more than the acquisition of the ability to
think; it is the acquisition of many specialized abilities
for thinking about a variety of things."—Lev
Vygotsky, Mind in Society, 1978

5. Applications of Vygotsky's Theory to Education
◦ a zone proximal development
◦ This concept is important because teachers can use it as a guide to a child's development. It allows a
teacher to know what a student is able to achieve through the use of a mediator and thus enables the
teacher to help the child attain that level by themselves.
◦ the role of play in his theory
◦ Vygotsky argued that play leads to development. "While imitating their elders in culturally patterned
activities, children generate opportunities for intellectual development. Initially, their games are
recollections and reenactments of rea situations; but through the dynamics of their imagination and
recognition of implicit rules governing the activities they have reproduced in their games, children achieve
an elementary mastery of abstract thought." (Cole, 1978).

6. ◦ Language role in Vygotsky's theory
it is essential to the development of thinking, the school needs to provide many opportunities that allow
children to reach the third stage of speech, which is inner speech, since it is this stage which is responsible for
all higher levels of functioning.
specific application is the use of peer-to-peer learning. As noted, an “MKO”
need not be an adult teacher. Peers who have a greater command of a topic or more developed skills can
serve as MKOs, helping classmates gain greater mastery. Ideally, peer-to-peer learning involves groups in
which each individual can be an “MKO” in regard to some aspect of the concept or skill, with each
contributing in some way to the

7. ◦ One offshoot of the importance of peers in development is the significance of play in the classroom,
including (but not limited to) educational games
◦ A concrete example of a Vygotsky approach to learning is the concept of “scaffolding,” in which a learner
first learns concepts and skills that then enable them to reach a second, higher tier of concepts, and so on,
until at last mastery of the overall skill or idea is attained.

8. Examples
◦ A teacher in an experimental psychology course might initially provide scaffolding for students by coaching
them step-by-step through their experiments. Next, the teacher might slowly remove the scaffolding by
only providing outlines or brief descriptions of how to proceed. Finally, students would be expected to
develop and carry out their experiments independently.

9. Publishing his work
◦ His works were published after his death in 1934 and suppressed in 1936 and were not known in the West
until 1958. More recently, linguists and educationalists influenced by Piaget's Genetic Psychology have been
drawn towards Vygotsky's work, seeing in it a superior understanding of the relationship between the
educator and the educated, in which the educator must "negotiate" with the child or student who is
credited with an active role in the learning process. Especially in the United States,

10. ◦ Vygotsky has found a following among Community Development workers who value his concept of a "Zone
of Proximal Development", in which leadership is able to facilitate intellectual and social development in
struggles by communities to change their circumstances, leading to a subsequent benefit in an all-round
development of conceptual ability.
◦ References :
◦ https://www.massey.ac.nz/~wwpapajl/evolution/assign2/MHR/indexvyg.html#:~:text=Lev%20Semonovich%20Vygotsky%20was
%20born,second%20oldest%20of%20eight%20children.
◦ https://web.cortland.edu/andersmd/VYG/APP.HTML
◦ https://www.verywellmind.com/lev-vygotsky-biography-2795533