Cultural-historical concept of the development of l from Vygotsky. Cultural and historical concept of mental development
If most of the concepts consider development as an adaptation of a person to his environment, then L. S. Vygotsky comprehends the environment as a source of development of higher mental functions of a person. Depending on the age of the latter, the role of the environment in development changes, since it is determined by the experiences of the child.
L. S. Vygotsky formulated a number of laws of mental development:
♦ child development has its own rhythm and pace, which change in different years life (a year of life in infancy is not equal to a year of life in adolescence);
♦ development have a chain qualitative changes, and the psyche of a child is fundamentally different from the psyche of adults;
♦ the development of the child is uneven: each side in his psyche has its own optimal period of development.
1. The scientist substantiated the law of development of higher mental functions. According to L. S. Vygotsky, they initially arise as a form of the child's collective behavior, 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 of higher mental functions are mediation, awareness, arbitrariness, systemicity. They are formed during life - in the process of mastering special means developed in the course of the historical development of society; the development of higher mental functions occurs in the process of learning, in the process of assimilation of given patterns.
2. Child development is subject not to biological, but to socio-historical laws. The development of the child occurs due to the assimilation of historically developed forms and methods of activity. Thus, the driving force behind human development is learning. But the latter is not identical with development, it creates a zone of proximal development, sets in motion its internal processes, which at first are possible for a child only through interaction with adults and in cooperation with comrades. However, later, penetrating the entire internal course of development, they become the property of the child himself. Proximity zone - it is the difference between the level of actual development and the possible development of the child due to the assistance of adults. “The zone of proximal development defines functions that have not yet matured, but are in the process of maturation; characterizes mental development for tomorrow. This phenomenon testifies to the leading role of education in the mental development of the child.
3. human consciousness not the sum of individual processes, but their system, structure. In early childhood, perception is at the center of consciousness, in before school age- memory, in school - thinking. All other mental processes develop under the influence of the dominant function in consciousness. The process of mental development means a restructuring of the system of consciousness, which is due to a change in its semantic structure, i.e., the level of development of generalizations. Entry into consciousness is possible only through speech, and the transition from one structure of consciousness to another is carried out due to the development of the meaning of the word - generalization. Forming the latter, translating it into more high level, learning is able to rebuild the entire system of consciousness (“one step in learning can mean a hundred steps in development”).
26) Environment, morality and personality development in the concept of A.G. Asmolov.
27) Driving forces and conditions for the development of personality in the theory of A. G. Asmolov
The characterization of the subject of personality psychology given by A. N. Leontiev (1983) is an example of the abstraction that can be deployed to create a specific picture of the systemic determination of personality development. In order to develop this abstraction, it is necessary, firstly, to identify the guidelines contained in it that set the general logic for studying personality development: breeding the concepts of "individual" and "personality", "personality" and "mental processes", as well as highlighting new scheme determination of personality development. Secondly, to indicate the specific areas of personality psychology highlighted by these guidelines ...
The first landmark is the separation of the concepts of "individual" and "personality", as well as the identification of various qualities of the "individual" and "personality", reflecting the specifics of their development in nature and society.
When highlighting the concept of "individual" in personality psychology, they first of all answer the question of what this person similar to all other people, that is, they indicate what unites this person with the human species. The concept of "individual" should not be confused with the concept of "individuality", which is opposite in meaning, with the help of which an answer is given to the question of how this person differs from all other people. "Individual" means something integral, indivisible. The etymological source of this meaning of the concept "individual" is the Latin term "individuum" (individual). When characterizing “personality”, they also mean “integrity”, but such an “integrity” that is born in society. The individual acts as a predominantly genotypic formation, and its ontogeny is characterized as the realization of a certain phylogenetic program of the species, completed in the process of maturation of the organism. The maturation of the individual is based mainly on adaptive adaptive processes, while personality development cannot be understood solely from adaptive forms of behavior. An individual is born, and a person becomes (A. N. Leontiev, S. L. Rubinshtein). ‹…›
The appearance of the human individual in the "world of man" is mediated by the entire history of his species, which was refracted in the hereditary program of the individual, preparing him for a lifestyle specific to this species. So, only a person has a record length of the period of childhood; the ability to be at birth in a state of extreme "helplessness"; the weight of a child's brain, which is only about a quarter of the weight of an adult's brain...
The lifestyle of mankind leads to a radical restructuring of the laws of the historical evolutionary process, but precisely to the restructuring of this process, and not to its complete abolition. The laws of evolution do not just die off, but are radically transformed, the logic of causes and driving forces evolutionary process. The individual properties of a person express, first of all, the tendency of a person as an "element" in the developing system of society to be preserved, providing a wide adaptability of human populations in the biosphere. ‹…›
Thus, when breeding the concepts of "individual", "personality" and "individuality" in the context of the historical-evolutionary approach to the study of personality development in the system public relations there is no substitution of these concepts for the terms "biological" and "social". The very formulation of the question of the animal-biological in man, imposed by the anthropocentric paradigm of thinking, loses its meaning. The main questions are questions about the transformation of the laws of biological evolution into historical process the development of society and the systemic determination of the life of an individual, the way of existence and development of which is joint activity in the social concrete historical way of life of a given era.
The second landmark is the scheme for determining the development of the individual in the system of social relations. ‹…›
The basis of this scheme is a joint activity in which the development of the individual is carried out in the socio-historical coordinate system of a given era. “We are accustomed to think that a person is a center in which external influences and from which the lines of his connections diverge, his interactions with outside world that this center, endowed with consciousness, is his "I". However, this is not the case at all (…). The diverse activities of the subject intersect with each other and are linked into knots by objective relations, social in nature, into which he necessarily enters. These knots, their hierarchies form that mysterious "center of the personality" which we call "I"; in other words, this center lies not in the individual, not beyond the surface of his skin, but in his being.
The socio-historical way of life is the source of personality development in the system of social relations. In philosophical methodology, as well as in a number of specific social sciences, primarily in sociology, a way of life is characterized as a set of types of life activity typical for a given society, social group or individual, which are taken in unity with the living conditions of a given community or individual. In psychology, the concept of “social situation of development” is used in a similar sense, which was proposed in discussions with researchers who adhere to two-factor schemes of personality development, in particular, in the course of criticizing the notion of “environment” as a “factor” of personality development. The concept of "social situation of development", introduced by L. S. Vygotsky, then received the right of citizenship in child and social psychology thanks to the research of L. I. Bozhovich and B. G. Ananiev. Speaking about the “social situation of development”, L. S. Vygotsky emphasized that the environment is not a “condition of development”, that is, a certain “factor” that directly determines the behavior of an individual. It is precisely the condition for the implementation of human activity and the source of personality development. But this is the condition without which, as well as without the individual properties of a person, the complex process of building a personality is impossible. The material for this process are those concrete social relations that the individual encounters when he is born. All these circumstances that fall to the lot of the individual, in themselves act as "impersonal" prerequisites for the development of personality.
The introduction of a socio-historical way of life as a source of personality development makes it possible to study the development of a personality at the intersection of two axes in one coordinate system - the axis of the historical time of a person's life and the axis of the social space of his life.
Little is known about the nature of time and its role in determining the development of personality in psychology. V. I. Vernadsky's classical research on qualitatively different structures of time in physical, geological, biospheric and social systems affected psychology in a tangential way. Just as psychology has studied personality in "artificial worlds", "environments", it has long been satisfied with the idea of time borrowed from classical mechanics. Any transformations of time in the history of culture or human consciousness, its consolidation or acceleration were interpreted as illusions, as "apparent" deviations from physical time. In Russian psychology, the thesis about the dependence of time on the systems in which it is included - in inorganic nature, in the evolution of organic nature, in the sociogenesis of society, in the history of a person's life path - was formulated by S. L. Rubinshtein. ‹…›
One axis of the historical time of the way of life of the individual in a given society makes it possible to single out the objective social regime that is given to the individual - the historically determined length of childhood in this culture; an objective mode of changing the game - study, study - work; the distribution of the time budget for "work" and for "leisure", characteristic of this typical way of life. Without taking into account historical time, certain features of human activity, the involvement of a child in play or study, will seem to come either from the child himself or from his immediate social environment. They can only slightly slow down or speed up the historical rhythm of the way of life, but not change it within the framework of a given era.
The other axis of the way of life is the social space, the objective reality in which, at a given interval of historical time, there are various “socialization institutions” (family, school, labor collectives), large and small social groups participating in the process of familiarization of the individual through joint activities of social historical experience. IN fairy tale M. Maeterlinck "The Blue Bird" Kind fairy gives children a miraculous diamond. One has only to turn this diamond, and people begin to see the "hidden souls" of things. As in any real fairy tale There is a lot of truth in this story. Objects around people human culture do have, in the words of K. Marx, "a social soul." And this “soul” is nothing but a field of meanings that exist in the form of action schemes objectified in the process of activity in the tools of labor, in the form of roles, concepts, rituals, ceremonies, various social symbols and norms. Only if a person becomes a personality, if with the help of social groups he joins the stream of activities (and not the stream of consciousness) and through their system assimilates the “meanings” exteriorized in the human world. Joint activity is the “diamond” that, as a rule, completely unaware of this, a person turns in order to see the “social souls of objects” and acquire his own “soul”.
In other words, in the world surrounding a person there objectively exists a special social dimension created by the cumulative activity of mankind - a field of meanings. A separate individual finds this field of meanings as outside-of-his-existing - perceived by him, assimilated, therefore, as well as what is included in his image of the world (A. N. Leontiev). Organizing activity in accordance with the field of meanings, people thereby continuously confirm the reality of its existence. Social space seems so natural, originally rooted in natural properties objects of nature, that it is noticed most often when they find themselves within the framework of a completely different culture, a different way of life. It is then that the difference in the image of the human world is revealed. different cultures e.g. differences in ethnic identity, value orientations etc.
The socio-historical way of life of the individual is the source of the development of the individual, which in the course of the individual's life turns into its result. In reality, a person is never bound by the framework of given social roles. She is not a passive replica of culture, not a "role robot", as is sometimes explicitly or implicitly stated in the role concepts of personality.
By transforming the activity unfolding according to this or that social "scenario", by choosing various social positions in the course of life, the individual more and more sharply declares himself as an individual, becomes an ever more active creator of the social process. Manifestations of personality activity do not arise as a result of any first impulse caused by certain needs. The search for the “engine” that gives rise to the activity of the individual must be sought in those contradictions that are born in the process of activity, which are the driving force behind the development of the individual. The culminating point in the analysis of personality in society is the consideration of productive (creativity, imagination, goal setting, etc.) and instrumental-stylistic (abilities, intelligence, character) manifestations of the individuality of the individual, i.e., the individual entering into relation to himself , transforming the world, changing its own nature and subordinating it to its power.
With the transition of the individual's activity from the mode of consumption, the assimilation of culture into the mode of creation and creativity, biological and historical time is increasingly turning into psychological time the life of a person who builds his plans and embodies his life program in the social lifestyle of a given society. According to L. Seva, a person's "time of life" turns into his "time to live."
So, in the scheme of systemic determination of personality development, the following three points are distinguished: individual properties of a person as prerequisites for personality development, socio-historical way of life as a source of personality development, and joint activity as the basis for the implementation of personality life in the system of social relations. Behind each of these moments are different and still insufficiently correlated areas of personality study.
Ideas about the individual prerequisites for the development of a personality and their transformation in the course of its development remain at the level of reasoning, unless one turns to the rich theoretical constructions and empirical data accumulated in differential psychophysiology, psychogenetics, psychosomatics, and neuropsychology. At the same time, studies in differential psychophysiology, psychogenetics and other areas will resemble, figuratively speaking, “a cat that walks by itself”, if you do not consider their subject as organic prerequisites for the development of a personality and thereby include it in the context of an integral system of knowledge about personality psychology.
When studying society as a source of personality development, questions invariably arise about its sociotypical manifestations, its social position in society, the mechanisms of socialization and regulation of its social behavior, development in sociogenesis. The solution of these issues is unthinkable without turning to social, historical, age, pedagogical, environmental psychology and ethnopsychology. In turn, each of these disciplines runs the risk of “not seeing the forest for the trees” and reducing, for example, “personality” to a “role” or mixing “social character” with “individual character”, mistaking the periodization of the development of the psyche for the periodization of personality development, including if other determinants are not at least on the periphery of the study of these areas of psychological science. The development of ideas about the socio-historical way of life as a source of personality development helps to resolve the issues of what is appropriated, attached by the personality in the process of its movement in the system of social relations, what are the possibilities of choice, the transition from one type of activity to another, what is the content of the traits acquired in this system and personality settings.
Both in the analysis of individual prerequisites and in the study of the socio-historical way of life as a source of personality development, it should always be taken into account that we are talking not about parallel lines of biogenetic and sociogenetic programs for the life of an individual in society. From the very moment of human movement in society, these prerequisites begin to actively participate in the life of a particular evolving system, influence its development, transform from prerequisites as a result of its development, and be used by the individual as a means to achieve its goals.
This problem is especially acute when studying the individuality of a person as a subject of activity. The most pronounced individuality of the individual, his creativity, character, abilities, actions and deeds are manifested in problem-conflict situations, increasing the potential for the development of culture. When studying the individuality of a person, the center is questions about what a person lives for, what is the motivation for his development, what laws he obeys. life path. In addition to general psychologists, representatives of developmental, pedagogical, social, engineering psychology, labor psychology and medical psychology, i.e., those branches of psychology that are faced with the task of educating a person and correcting her behavior, are working on solving these issues. In the study of the individuality of the individual as a subject of activity, representatives of general and differential age, social, historical, clinical and engineering psychology raise the problems of personal choice, self-determination, self-regulation of the individual, mechanisms that ensure the productivity of the individual's activity, general and special abilities as characteristics of the success of the activity. They also raise questions about the study of the individual style of activity and character as forms of expression of personality in activity.
A comprehensive solution to these problems requires psychologists who develop personality psychology to create an extensive network of psychological services throughout the country.
The selected guidelines for the consideration of personality psychology act as the basis for studying the complex network of relationships between nature, society and the individual. They also make it possible to designate the points of application of the efforts of various branches of psychology involved in the study of the diverse manifestations of personality. The main significance of these guidelines lies in the fact that they make it possible to present disparate facts, methods and patterns in a single context. general psychology personality.
The methodology of Marxist philosophy, the general scientific principles of system analysis, and the activity approach to the study of mental phenomena make it possible to identify interdisciplinary connections in human knowledge and outline ways to understand the mechanisms of development and functioning of the individual in nature and society.
Related article « Cultural-historical concept of L. S. Vygotsky»
The twenties of the last century became a truly "golden age" in Russian psychology. During this period, such names asL. S. Vygotsky, A. R. Luria, A. N. Leontiev.The discoveries made by these thinkers in the course of their lives, especially the cultural-historical theory of L. S. Vygotsky, are subject to endless debate.You can learn about the significance of this period of time for the development of psychology from A. Asmolov’s introductory speech to the book “Etudes on the History of Behavior”: “Moreover, the farther in time we move away from L. S. Vygotsky, the role in culture and society. 1
A truly invaluable contribution to the replenishment of the pantry of psychology with knowledge was made by the Soviet scientist L. S. Vygotsky. “It would not be an exaggeration to call Vygotsky a genius. For more than five decades in science, I have not met a person who would come close to him in terms of clarity of mind, the ability to see the essence of the most complex problems, the breadth of knowledge in many areas of science and the ability to foresee the further development of psychology, ”wrote the Swiss psychologist. Jean Piaget. 2
Man is a social being, therefore his development is determined by the conditions of the society in which he lives. According to L. S. Vygotsky, the higher mental functions, namely: perception, imagination, memory, thinking and speech, arose in the course of the cultural development of society, so there is no doubt that they have a social origin. Consciously regulated attention and memory, thinking based on theoretical reasoning and inference, the ability to independent development and organization of one's own activity, as well as coherent speech, are a product of the historical development of society and are inherent only to a reasonable person.
“The introduction of a historical approach to development into Soviet psychological science mental processes of a person, the struggle for the creation of a specific psychological theory of consciousness and, in connection with this, an in-depth experimental study of the development of concepts in children, the development of a complex question about the relationship between learning and mental development of a child - such was the contribution ”L.S. Vygotsky in Soviet psychology. Initially, psychologists believed that the higher mental functions are laid down from birth, and develop in a team. In fact, as L. S. Vygotsky proved, these functions begin their formation and development on the basis of the lower ones, thereby human behavior becomes conscious, arbitrary. Lev Semyonovich proved that the highest "functions are first formed in the team in the form of relations between children, then they become the mental functions of the individual." 3
According to L. S. Vygotsky, the personality of a child receives full development only when the biological and social principles develop together, interacting with each other. Otherwise, violation of one of them will lead to a violation of personality formation. For example, a completely healthy physiologically child who finds himself outside of society becomes a social invalid, the so-called Mowgli child. The role of the environment in the development of the child changes in direct proportion to his age.
The significance of the cultural-historical concept for the pedagogy of L. S. Vygotsky is invaluable. The personality-oriented approach in education is based on the definition of Lev Semyonovich that personality is a complex psychological mechanism that perform certain functions. This statement suggests that each child is a unique personality, possessing a set of properties and qualities inherent only to it, therefore it requires a certain attitude and attention to itself. Also, the provisions of the concept influenced the emergence and formation cultural method in pedagogy. According to L. S. Vygotsky, “personality is not innate, but arises as a result of cultural and social development". The child learns the culture of the society in which he lives, learns its values. 4
On the soil prepared by the cultural-historical concept, a school was born in psychology, from which A. N. Leontiev, A. R. Luria, A. V. Zaporozhets, L. I. Bozhovich, P. Ya. Galperin, D. B. Elkonin, P. I. Zinchenko, L. V. Zankov and others. Each of them has contributed to science. Developing the ideas of the school of L. S. Vygotsky, D. B. Elkonin created his own scientific direction in child and educational psychology, a system of developmental education that has already existed for more than 50 years.
Based on the foregoing, the following conclusions can be drawn. The cultural-historical theory of L. S. Vygotsky reveals the specific features of the mental development of a social being - a person who develops comprehensively due to the interaction of biological and social principles.Thanks to the scientific contribution of L. S. Vygotsky, a cultural approach to education arose, which is also used in primary school, and school. It produced remarkable scientists, the fruits of which we are currently reaping.
List of used literature
Vygotsky L. S. Collected Works: In six volumes. T.Z. Problems of the development of the psyche / Ed. A. M. Matyushkina / L. S. Vygotsky - M .: "Pedagogy", 1983. - 368 p.
Vygotsky L. S. Etudes on the history of behavior: monkey, primitive, child. Social biography of cultural-historical psychology / A. R. Luria - Moscow: "Pedagogy - Press", 1993. - 224 p.
Leontiev A.N. Psychological views of L.S. Vygotsky / A. R. Luria - M., 1956. - 366 p.
Piaget J. Genetic aspect of language and thinking / J. Piaget - M.: Pedagogy-Press, 1994. - 526 p.
1Vygotsky L.S., Etudes on the history of behavior: monkey, primitive, child. Social biography of cultural-historical psychology / A. R. Luria - Moscow: "Pedagogy - Press", 1993. - 224 p. pp. 2-3.
2Piaget J. Genetic aspect of language and thinking / J. Piaget - M.: Pedagogy-Press, 1994. - 526 p. S. 25.
3Leontiev A.N., Psychological views of L.S. Vygotsky / A. R. Luria - M., 1956. - 366 p. S. 25.
4Vygotsky L.S. Collected Works: In b-ti vol. T.Z. Problems of the development of the psyche / Ed. A. M. Matyushkina / L. S. Vygotsky - M .: "Pedagogy", 1983. - 368 p.
Among the various approaches to the problem of the origin and development of human consciousness, two dominated: "biological" and "ideal". From the standpoint of an ideal approach, man has a divine origin. According to this point of view, the goal of every person's life is to "fulfill God's plan" (Christian approach), to express a part of the "objective spirit" (Hegel), etc. The soul of man, his psyche is divine, immeasurable and unknowable. From a “biological” point of view, a person has a natural origin and is part of living nature, therefore his mental life can be described by the same concepts as the mental life of animals. Among the brightest representatives of this position can be attributed I.P. Pavlov, who discovered that the laws of higher nervous activity are the same for both animals and humans.
L.S. Vygotsky solved this problem in a different way. He showed that man has special kind mental functions that are completely absent in animals. These functions, named by L.S. Vygotsky, higher mental functions constitute the highest level of the human psyche, generally called consciousness. They are formed in the course of social interaction. In other words, Vygotsky argued that the higher mental functions of a person, or consciousness, are of a social nature. At the same time, the higher mental functions are understood as: arbitrary memory, arbitrary attention, logical thinking, etc.
Vygotsky's conception can be divided into three components. The first part can be called "Man and Nature". Its main content can be formulated in the form of two theses. The first is the thesis that during the transition from animals to humans, a fundamental change in the relationship of the subject with the environment took place. Throughout the existence of the animal world, the environment acted on the animal, modifying it and forcing it to adapt to itself. With the advent of man, the opposite process is observed: man acts on nature and modifies it. The second thesis explains the existence of mechanisms for changing nature on the part of man. This mechanism consists in the creation of tools of labor, in the development of material production.
The second part of Vygotsky's conception can be called "Man and his own psyche". It also contains two provisions. The first position is that the mastery of nature did not pass without a trace for a person, he learned to master his own psyche, he developed higher mental functions, expressed in the forms of voluntary activity. Under the higher mental functions of L.S. Vygotsky understood the ability of a person to force himself to memorize some material, to pay attention to some object, to organize his mental activity.
The second position is that man has mastered his behavior, as well as nature, with the help of tools, but special tools - psychological ones. These psychological tools he called signs.
Vygotsky called signs artificial means by which primitive man was able to master his behavior, memory, and other mental processes. The signs were objective, - a "knot for memory" or a notch on a tree also act as a sign, as a means by which they seize memory. For example, a person saw a notch and remembered what to do. By itself, this sign is not associated with a specific type of activity. A “knot for memory” or a notch in a tree can be meaningfully related to various types labor operations. But, faced with a similar sign-symbol, a person connected it with the need to perform some specific operation. Consequently, such signs acted as additional symbols meaningfully related to labor operations. However, in order to perform this labor operation, a person needed to remember exactly what he had to do. Therefore, signs-symbols were the triggers of higher mental processes, i.e. acted as psychological tools.
The third part of Vygotsky's concept can be called "Genetic Aspects". This part of the concept answers the question "Where do the sign funds come from?" Vygotsky proceeded from the fact that labor created man. In the process of joint work, communication took place between its participants with the help of special signs that determine what each of the participants should do. labor process. It is likely that the first words were command words addressed to the participants in the labor process. For example, “do this”, “take this”, “take it there”, etc. These first command words were essentially verbal signs. A person, having heard a certain combination of sounds, performed one or another labor operation. But later, in the process of activity, a person began to direct commands not to anyone, but to himself. As a result, its organizing function was born from the external command function of the word. So a person learned to control his behavior. Consequently, the ability to command oneself was born in the process of human cultural development.
It can be assumed that at first the functions of the person ordering and the person fulfilling these orders were separated and the whole process; according to L.S. Vygotsky was interpsychological, i.e. interpersonal. Then these relationships turned into relationships with oneself, i.e. in iptrapsychological. Vygotsky called the process of transforming interpsychological relations into intrapsychological relations internalization. In the course of internalization, external means-signs (notches, knots, etc.) are transformed into internal ones (images, elements of inner speech, etc.).
In ontogeny, according to Vygotsky, the same thing is observed in principle. First, the adult acts with a word on the child, prompting him to do something. Then the child adopts a way of communication and begins to influence the adult with a word. And, finally, the child begins to influence himself with the word.
Thus, two fundamental provisions can be distinguished in Vygotsky's concept. First, higher mental functions have an indirect structure. Secondly, the process of development of the human psyche is characterized by the internalization of relations of control and means-signs. The main conclusion of this concept is the following: a person is fundamentally different from an animal in that he has mastered nature with the help of tools. This left an imprint on his psyche - he learned to master his own higher mental functions. To do this, he also uses tools, but psychological tools. Signs or symbolic means act as such tools. They have a cultural origin, with speech being the universal and most typical system of signs.
Consequently, the higher mental functions of a person differ from the mental functions of animals in their properties, structure and origin: they are arbitrary, mediated, social.
Vygotsky's concept has a number of shortcomings and can be criticized, but it played a huge role in the development of scientific psychological thought. Its main provisions were used in the development of such a practical problem as defectology. Vygotsky's concept also influenced the formation of modern scientific views on the problem of the origin of the psyche and the development of human consciousness.
Today, in Russian psychology, the fundamental thesis is the assertion that the origin of human consciousness is associated with its social nature. Consciousness is impossible outside of society. Specifically, the human path of ontogenesis consists in the assimilation of socio-historical experience in the process of training and education - socially developed ways of transferring human experience. These methods ensure the full development of the child's psyche.
The historical concept was called because it is impossible to understand the mental processes and consciousness that have “become”, now available, but one should consider the history of their development and formation, but at the same time it is development, that is, qualitative changes, the emergence of neoplasms, and not simple evolution. Vygotsky tried to consider mental development in terms of all types of genesis. However, his focus was on ontogenetic studies of the formation and development of HMF in a child.
This concept is called cultural because Vygotsky believed that the consciousness of the child, the specific features of his HMF are formed in the child as a result of communication with adults, in which the child masters the systems of cultural signs. These signs mediate his "lower" (involuntary) PF and thus lead to the creation of completely new formations in the child's mind.
Educational psychology: lecture notes by Esin E V
3. The concept of development and learning L. S. Vygotsky
L. S. Vygotsky formulated a number of laws of the mental development of the child:
1) child development has its own specific rhythm and pace, which changes in different years of life. Thus, a year of life in infancy does not equal a year of life in adolescence;
2) development is a chain of qualitative changes. Thus, the psyche of a child is qualitatively different from the psyche of an adult;
3) each side in the child's psyche has its own optimal period of development - this is the law of uneven child development;
4) the law of the development of higher mental functions states that they first arise as a form of the child's collective behavior, as a form of cooperation with other people, and only then become individual functions and abilities of the child himself. For example, speech is at first a means of communication between people, and in the course of development it becomes internal and begins to perform an intellectual function. Distinctive features higher mental functions are awareness, arbitrariness, mediation, systemic. They are formed during life in the process of mastering special means that have been developed in the course of the historical development of society. The development of higher mental functions proceeds in the process of learning and assimilation;
5) child development is subject to socio-historical, not biological laws. The development of the child occurs through the assimilation of historically developed methods and forms of activity. Education is the driving force behind human development. Education is not identical with development, it creates a zone of proximal development and sets in motion internal developmental processes, which at the very beginning are possible for a child only in the process of cooperation with friends and interaction with adults. Penetrating the entire course of development, they become the property of the child himself. In this case, the zone of proximal 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. The zone of proximal development defines functions that have not yet matured, but are in the process of maturation. Thus, the zone of proximal development characterizes the development for tomorrow. The phenomenon of the zone of proximal development testifies to the leading role of education in the mental development of the child;
Human consciousness is not the sum of individual processes, but their system. For example, in early childhood, perception is at the center of consciousness, at preschool age - memory, at school age - thinking. The remaining mental processes develop at each age under the influence of the dominant function in consciousness.
The process of development is the restructuring of the systemic structure of consciousness. It is a change in its semantic structure. Forming a generalization, transferring it to a higher level, training is able to rebuild the entire system of consciousness, which means that one step in learning can mean a hundred steps in development.
The ideas of L. S. Vygotsky were developed in Russian psychology and led to the following provisions:
1) no influence of an adult on the processes of mental development can be carried out without the real activity of the child himself. The process of development itself depends on how this activity will be carried out. Development process- this is the self-movement of the child due to his activity with objects, and the facts of heredity and environment are only conditions that determine not the essence of the development process, but only various variations within the norm. This is how the idea arose of the leading type of activity as a criterion for the periodization of the child's mental development;
2) the leading activity is characterized by the fact that the main mental processes are rebuilt in it and changes occur psychological features personality at this stage of its development. The form and content of leading activity depend on the concrete historical conditions in which the development of the child takes place. A change in the leading types of activity is prepared for a long time and is associated with the emergence of new motives that prompt the child to change the position he occupies in the system of relations with other people. The development of the problem of leading activity in the development of the child is a fundamental contribution of Russian psychologists to child psychology. In their research A. V. Zaporozhets, A. N. Leontiev, D. B. Elkonin, V. V. Davydov, L. Ya. Galperin showed the dependence of the development of mental processes on the nature and structure of various types of leading activity. In the process of a child's development, the motivational side of activity is first mastered, otherwise the objective side has no meaning for the child, then the operational and technical side is mastered. Also in development, alternation of these types of activity can be observed. The formation of a child as a member of society takes place during the assimilation of socially developed methods of action with objects.
D. B. Elkonin, developing the ideas of L. S. Vygotsky, considers each age based on the following criteria:
1) social development situation- this is a system of relations in which a child enters in society;
2) the leading, or main, type of activity of the child during this period;
3) the main neoplasms of development, and new achievements in development lead to the inevitability of change and the social situation, to a crisis;
4) to crisis are the turning points in child development, separating one age from another. Relationship crises- these are crises at three years and at eleven years, after which there is an orientation in human relations, and orientation in the world of things is opened by crises at one and seven years. The activity theory of learning is based on the following fundamental principles:
1. Activity approach to the psyche: the human psyche is inextricably linked with its activities, and activity is the process of human interaction with the outside world, the process of solving vital tasks. With the activity approach, the psyche is understood as a form of the subject's life activity, which provides the solution of certain tasks in the process of its interaction with the world.
Psyche- this, among other things, is also a system of actions, and not just a picture of the world and a system of images. The connection between images and actions is two-way, but the leading role belongs to the action. No image, abstract or sensual, can be obtained without a corresponding action of the subject. Perception as a sensory image is the result of perceptual actions. concept is a product of various cognitive activities a person aimed at those objects, the concept of which he is forming. The use of an image in the process of solving various problems occurs by including it in any actions. Thus, without the actions of the subject, it is impossible to form an image, restore it or use it.
2. Social nature of human mental development. The development of man and mankind as a whole is determined primarily by social rather than biological laws.
The experience of humanity as a species is fixed in the products of the spiritual and material culture rather than through the mechanisms of genetic inheritance. At birth, a person does not have ready-made methods of thinking, ready-made knowledge about the world. He does not rediscover the laws of nature known to society. He learns all this from the experience of mankind and socio-historical practice. Education and teaching are specially organized activities of people, during which students learn the experience of previous generations.
3. The unity of mental and external material activity. Activity is both mental and material activity. Both types of activity have the same structure, namely: a goal, a motive, an object to which it is directed, a certain set of operations that implement an action and an activity, a model for the performance of an activity by a subject. They are an act of real life activity and act as an activity. specific person. Also, their unity lies in the fact that internal mental activity is a transformed external material activity, a product of external practical activity.
The processes of teaching and education in pedagogical psychology are considered as activities. In the learning process, the teacher faces the task of forming certain types of activity, primarily cognitive. The learner can neither assimilate nor retain knowledge outside of his actions. To know means to perform some kind of activity or action related to certain knowledge. Therefore, the task of training is to form such activities that from the very beginning include a given system of knowledge and ensure their application within predetermined limits.
Pedagogical psychology proceeds from the fact that the cognitive abilities of trainees are not innate, but are formed in the learning process. The task of science is to identify the conditions that ensure the formation of cognitive abilities.
Since mental activity is secondary, new types of cognitive activity must be introduced into the educational process in an external material form.
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The fundamental theory of the origin and development of higher mental functions was developed by Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (1896 - 1934). Based on the ideas of comparative psychology, L.S. Vygotsky began his research at the point where comparative psychology stopped before questions that were insoluble for it: it could not explain the phenomenon of human consciousness. Vygotsky's fundamental idea is about the social mediation of human mental activity. The instrument of this mediation is, according to Vygotsky, the sign (word).
The first version of his theoretical generalizations concerning the patterns of development of the psyche in ontogenesis, Vygotsky outlined in the work "Development of the HMF". In this work, a scheme was presented for the formation of the human psyche in the process of using signs as a means of regulating mental activity.
In mechanisms brain activity L.S. Vygotsky saw dynamic functional complexes (The Development of Higher Mental Functions, 1931).
Man, in the process of his historical development, has risen to the point of creating new driving forces for his behavior: thus, in the process public life new needs of man arose, formed and developed, and the natural needs of man in the process of his historical development underwent profound changes.
A person has 2 lines of development: 1) natural; 2) cultural (historical).
The natural line of development is the physical, natural development of the child from the moment of birth.
With the appearance of communication with the outside world, a cultural line of development arises.
1. NPF - natural: sensations, perception, children's thinking, involuntary memory.
2. HMF - cultural, social; - the result of historical development: abstract thinking, speech, arbitrary memory, arbitrary attention, imagination.
HMF are complex, lifelong mental processes that are social in origin. Distinctive features of HMF are their mediated nature and arbitrariness.
The use of a sign, a word as a specifically human mental regulator restructures all the higher mental functions of a person. Mechanical memory becomes logical, the associative flow of ideas becomes productive thinking and creative imagination, impulsive actions become voluntary actions.
VPF arose with the help of a sign. The sign is an instrument of mental activity. This is an artificially created human stimulus, a means to control one's own behavior and the behavior of others.
The sign, as a purely cultural means, arose and is used in culture.
The history of the development of mankind is the history of the development of a sign. The more powerful the development of signs in generations, the more developed the HMF.
Painting has a sign system, because it, as a sign, reflects the vision of the world (example: rock drawing, pictographic letter - a conditional image of the named word).
A sign can be called gestures, speech, notes, painting. The word, like oral and written speech, is also a sign. Young children are already beginning to master the signs that are expressed in the pattern. The child appropriates everything that has been developed by man (the psyche). The history of child development resembles the history of human development. The appropriation of the psyche goes through an intermediary.
Vygotsky tries to connect natural and historical lines.
Historical study means applying the category of development to the study of a phenomenon. All the theories contemporary to him interpreted child development from a biological point of view (the transition from the social to the individual).
HMF are possible initially as a form of cooperation with other people, and later become individual (example: speech is a means of communication between people, but in the course of development it becomes internal and begins to perform an intellectual function)
A person does not have an innate form of behavior in the environment. Its development occurs through the appropriation of historically developed forms and methods of activity. Vygotsky postulated a structural analogy between objective and internal mental activity. The internal plan of consciousness began to be understood in Russian psychology as an actively mastered external world.
Vygotsky was the first to move from asserting the importance of the environment for development to identifying a specific mechanism of environmental influence, which actually changes the child's psyche, leading to the emergence of higher mental functions specific to a person. Vygotsky considered such a mechanism to be the internalization of signs - artificially created stimuli-means designed to control one's own and others' behavior.
Speaking about the existence of natural and higher mental functions, Vygotsky comes to the conclusion that the main difference between them lies in the level of arbitrariness. In other words, unlike natural mental processes that cannot be regulated by a person, people can consciously control higher mental functions.
The scheme of mental processes in Vygotsky's view looks like this
Unlike a stimulus-means that can be invented by the child himself (a stick instead of a thermometer), signs are not invented by children, but are acquired by them in communication with adults. Thus, the sign appears first on the outer plane, on the plane of communication, and then it passes into the inner plane, the plane of consciousness. Vygotsky wrote that each higher mental function appears on the stage twice: once as an external function - interpsychic, and the second time - as an internal function - intrapsychic.
At the same time, signs, being a product community development bear the imprint of the culture of the society in which the child grows up. Children learn signs in the process of communication and begin to use them to control their inner mental life. Thanks to the internalization of signs, a sign function of consciousness is formed in children, and such human mental processes as logical thinking, will, and speech are emerging. In other words, the internalization of signs is the mechanism that forms the psyche of children.
Consciousness must be studied experimentally, therefore, it is necessary to bring together the HMF, cultural development behavior, mastery of their own behavioral processes.
One of their most important characteristics is mediation, that is, the presence of a means by which they are organized.
For higher mental functions, the presence of an internal means is essential. The main way for the emergence of higher mental functions is the internalization (transfer to the internal plan, "growing") of social forms of behavior into a system of individual forms. This process is not mechanical.
Higher mental functions arise in the process of cooperation and social communication- and they develop from primitive roots on the basis of the lower ones.
The sociogenesis of higher mental functions is their natural history.
The central moment is the emergence of symbolic activity, the mastery of a verbal sign. It is he who acts as the means that, having become internal, radically transforms mental life. The sign initially acts as an external, auxiliary stimulus.
The higher mental function goes through two stages in its development. Initially, it exists as a form of interaction between people, and only later - as a completely internal process. This is referred to as the transition from interpsychic to intrapsychic.
At the same time, the process of formation of the higher mental function will stretch for a decade, originating in verbal communication and ending in full-fledged symbolic activity. Through communication, a person masters the values of culture. Mastering the signs, a person joins the culture, the main components of it. inner peace there are meanings (cognitive components of consciousness) and meanings (emotional-motivational components).
Vygotsky argued that mental development does not follow maturation, but is conditioned active interaction an individual with an environment in the zone of his proximal mental development. On these fundamentals, the domestic psychological school was formed.
The driving force of mental development is learning. Development and learning are different processes. Development is the process of forming a person or personality, which takes place through the emergence of new qualities at each stage. Education is an internally necessary moment in the process of developing in a child the historical characteristics of mankind.
He believes that learning should "lead" development, this idea was deployed by him in the development of the concept of "zone of proximal development". Communication between a child and an adult is by no means a formal moment in Vygotsky's concept. Moreover, the path through the other turns out to be central in development.
