developing in a social world
Introduction
As we have seen in previous chapters, organicists such as Piaget viewed development as arising from children's own actions as they experiment with the world, while mechanists saw the child as a passive recipient of environ- mental influences. In stark contrast, Vygotsky, Rubinstein and Riegel devel- oped dialectical theories, based on the notion that development occurs as a result of a tension and interaction between internal and external influences.
The most influential of these theorists is Lev Semenovich Vygotsky. He was a Soviet psychologist who developed his ideas over just ten years between the two world wars before he died at an early age from tuberculosis, leaving many unpublished manuscripts. He thus had a very short time in which to elaborate his theoretical framework, in contrast with the long-lived Piaget, who spent decades revising his theory. Vygotsky's focus was upon the devel- opment of cognition under social influence. In this chapter, we outline the dialectical approach to development (especially Vygotsky's) and some ways in which it has influenced recent theorizing in development and education.
including the first Russian institute for the study of children with disabil- ities (Kozulin, 1988). Vygotsky was committed to Marxist doctrine but his interpretation of it led to a suppression of his writings until Khrushchev denounced Stalinism in 1956. Despite this, his work had a great influence on psychological theory and practice in his own country, especially in terms of the education of children with disabilities. The work of the 'Institute of Defectology' in using his principles to foster the development of deaf/blind children - even enabling some to enter university - was beautifully illustrated in the documentary film The Butterflies of Zagorsk (BBC, 1990).
In his lifetime he had intellectual exchanges with Piaget, but Vygotsky's main influence on western developmental psychology is much more recent, following from the translation of his works into English. Thought and Language was published in English in 1962, with a foreword by the US psychologist Jerome Bruner. By the end of that decade, this text was set by Joan Wynn Reeves for one of the present authors' (RS) undergraduate classes at London University and, without doubt, had Reeves lived to write a second edition of her 1965 book Thinking about Thinking, Vygotsky would have featured prominently. It was not until a decade later, when an edited and translated body of his work appeared in 1978 as Mind in Society, that the broader psychological community began to take notice of Vygotsky's work. In the past few years, he has gained a place in under- graduate developmental textbooks, where his theory is typically compared and contrasted with that of Piaget. Possible reasons for his increasing influ- ence in the West include republications of his work in Russian and further translations into English, an increasing exchange of ideas between US and former Soviet Union academics, and the relevance of his ideas for educa- tion (Wertsch and Tulviste, 1992). Also, his theoretical framework seemed to have come at the 'right time' in western scholars' thinking.
Central to Vygotsky's theory is the notion that human cognition has its beginnings in human social life. This idea seems to have come from previ- ous thinkers such as Marx and Janet (who was in turn influenced by Durkheim, and also George Herbert Mead) (Wertsch and Tulviste, 1992).
Vygotsky emphasized that the child develops cognitively through interac- tions with others, hence his theory is dialectical. He was critical of main- stream western views of education and psychology where the emphasis was on individual development and where collective functioning was generally ignored.
In his preface (1962) to the English-language translation of Thought and Language, Bruner observed that Vygotsky's theory represented an enor- mous step up from understanding development in terms of classical Pavlovian conditioning. Vygotsky built upon Pavlov's notion of the 'second signal system', which 'provides the means whereby man creates a mediator between himself and the world of physical stimulation so that he can react
in terms of his own symbolic conception of reality' (Bruner, in Vygotsky, 1962: x).
Vygotsky's theory was instrumental, cultural and genetic (Holaday et al.
1994). It was instrumental inasmuch as it claimed that '[p]eople actively modify the stimuli they encounter and use them as instruments to control conditions and regulate their own behavior' (Holaday et a/., 1994: 16). As such, a feature of Vygotsky's theory was that individuals are active agents in creating their own development and learning, a feature held in common with Piaget's theory. The cultural aspect of his theory (discussed further below) was expressed through the centrality he granted to language as a cultural tool in the development of thinking. The genetic aspect of his theory (in the same developmental sense we noted in connection with Freudian and Piagetian theory) was that, through interactions with others, higher-order mental functions develop from lower-order ones.
According to Vygotsky, child development is made up of periods of rela- tively stable growth, crises and transformation, which implies that develop- ment passes through qualitatively distinct stages. The development of an individual can come to a standstill or even regress. Based on Vygotsky's work, Van DerVeer (1986: 528) described five stages in child development:
infancy, early childhood, the pre-school period, school age and adoles- cence. Each of these stages is a so-called stable period preceded and con- cluded by a period of crisis. At around 12 months of age the toddler faces a new period of crisis or transformation which is associated with three new developments - namely walking, speech and emotional reactions. For Vygotsky, the child's language development is paramount, and he made the distinction between thought and speech development in the first two years of life. However, at about two years of age the two curves of develop- ment of thought and speech come together to initiate a new form of behav- iour. In Vygotsky's view this is a momentous time in the toddler's cognitive development: speech begins to serve intellect and thoughts begin to be spoken. The onset of this stage is indicated by two unmistakable objective symptoms: a sudden active curiosity about words, and questions about every new thing; and the resulting rapid increase in the child's vocabulary.
Vygotsky also articulated a number of stages in children's conceptual development, derived from experimental work on the sorting of blocks varying in colour and shape (Vygotsky, 1934/1962). Initially, objects are sorted into unorganized 'heaps'. Later, objects are grouped in terms of functional, concrete uses, such as knife with fork and spoon (a kind of cat- egorization that adults also use). Then come chain complexes, in which groups of objects are sorted consecutively according to certain criteria (such as shape or colour), but the decisive criterion changes over time.
Then come diffuse complexes, in which the criteria for selection are fluid, and based on unreal attributes that would surprise an adult. These are followed by pseudo-concepts, which predominate in the thinking of the
pre-school child: superficially, the child appears to be using true concepts, but deeper probing reveals 'flawed' reasoning; the development of pseudo- concepts is very much directed by adult language, which enables an adult and a pre-school child to communicate, but the underlying understandings may be quite different. True, abstract thought appears in adolescence, but earlier, more concrete, forms of thinking continue to operate. This latter point - that adolescents (and even adults) do not always, or even usually, operate at the highest level of abstraction, has also been demonstrated through studies designed to test Piagetian ideas about intellectual development.
Piaget's stage theory of intellectual development has very much over- shadowed the stage aspects of Vygotskian theory, which is acknowledged most for its emphasis on the social, language-driven nature of children's cognitive development, and is identified by some (e.g. Berk, 2000) as a continuity theory.
Particularly influential has been Vygotsky's discussion of egocentric speech. Initially, the child's behaviour is controlled by verbal instructions from others, then at a later stage the child talks aloud, especially when dif- ficulties arise - in effect, instructing the self. Finally, these instructions 'go underground' (to use Vygotsky's phrase) and become internalized as thought. Vygotsky gave an example to illustrate how the child's self- directed speech performs a controlling function: a child was drawing a streetcar when his pencil broke; he said 'It's broken' and, using another pencil, proceeded to draw a broken streetcar after an accident (Vygotsky, 1934/1962).Thus egocentric speech (which Piaget saw as a by-product of thought) becomes an integral part of the developmental process in Vygotsky's theory. Vygotsky's pupil Luria and more recent researchers have experimentally demonstrated the shift in children's development from speaking aloud while performing tasks, to muttering, to silence (e.g.
Frauenglass and Diaz, 1985). Today, the terms private speech or inner speech are preferred. A summary of Vygotsky's view of the relationship between thought and language is presented in Box 7.1.
Although Vygotsky placed much emphasis on language, research has indicated that some activities (especially in certain cultures) are better learned by observation (Rogoff, 1990). Imagine, for example, trying to teach someone to knit through verbal instruction alone! It is certainly the case that Vygotsky placed enormous importance on language, but his theory encompassed all forms of cultural signs and symbols. Furthermore, he made special mention of the ability to imitate as being an important sign that the child is developmentally ready to understand the task at hand (Vygotsky, 1978).
This notion of 'developmental readiness' brings us to another of the main features of Vygotsky's theory: the notion of the zone of proximal devel- opment. He defined this as 'the distance between actual developmental level
Box 7.1 Vygotsky and the relationship between thought, word and action
The relation between thought and word is a living process;
thought is born through words. A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow. The connection between them, however, is not a pre- formed and constant one. It emerges in the course of develop- ment, and itself evolves. To the Biblical 'In the beginning was the word', Goethe makes Faust reply, 'In the beginning was the deed'. The intent here is to detract from the value of the word, but we can accept this version if we emphasize it differently: in the beginning was the deed. The word was not the beginning - action was there first; it is the end of development, crowning the deed.
(Vygotsky, 1934/1962: 153)
as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development through problem solving under adult guidance or in collab- oration with more capable peers' (Vygotsky, 1978: 86). Thus, a standard mental test, such as an IQ test, is a measure of independent problem- solving (completed development), but does not capture the entirety of a child's ability: two children with the same IQ might be able to reach different levels of performance under adult guidance. Furthermore, Vygotsky's perspective implies that a child's capacity to learn is not just a property of the child, but a shared property between the child and a par- ticular guide (socially shared cognition). Thus, a child's zone of proximal development (ZPD) might be greater with a guide who is more sensitive to the child's developmental needs.
Two important dimensions of the ZPD are 'joint collaboration' and 'transfer of responsibility'. 'Joint collaboration' is best viewed as active, shared participation for the purpose of solving a problem. The adult or peer, by virtue of greater understanding of the problem, actively facilitates or encourages the child in his or her own definition and redefinition of the problem to promote the achievement of a solution. 'Transfer of respon- sibility' refers to the adult's decreasing role in regulating and managing behaviour or task performance, with the child being given more opportun- ities to perform the task independently (Holaday et at., 1994; Rogoff, 1986). While the notion of the ZPD has become influential in child devel- opment theory and education, it has also been criticized as circular; in other words, it cannot be defined a priori, but only in relation to the child's performance (it is not alone in this, however, with the behaviourist term 'stimulus' being criticized as only definable in relation to a response).
It is often said that the Vygotskian child is a 'little apprentice', in contrast with the solitary 'little scientist' of Piaget. From a Piagetian perspective, while procedures can be learned from others, this does not represent true understanding, which is demonstrated by unassisted performance (Wood, 1998). However, as we observed in Chapter 4, Piaget did maintain that social interactions between equals could be important for cognitive growth, especially with regard to the development of moral understanding.
The European social psychologist Doise (1990) took up the notion that social interaction can promote cognitive development under some circum- stances, but based this on Piaget's theory, not Vygotsky's. He proposed (and demonstrated experimentally) that a child can develop cognitively if her/his schema comes into conflict with an alternative schema proposed by another person, provided circumstances permit the successful resolution of the cognitive conflict to produce a more advanced schema. For this to hap- pen, the child must already have a certain level of competence; to translate this into Vygotskian terms, this would mean the task must be in the zone of proximal development. Also, the nature of the social relationship must be one in which the cognitive conflict can be explored and resolved. Drawing upon ideas of Durkheim, Doise maintained that this can only happen in 'relations of cooperation' rather than 'relations of constraint'. In other words, if the other person uses their authority to impose their perspective on the child, cognitive growth will not occur. It is often peer relationships that permit the necessary cooperation, rather than the relationships with adults that Vygotsky saw as important for cognitive development. There is no real antagonism between the view of Piaget/Doise and the Vygotskian perspective if we take into account that an adult who uses authority to impose their view upon a child would also be an adult who, in Vygotsky's view, was not operating within the child's zone of proximal development - and, again, no cognitive progress would be expected. A crucial difference between Piaget and Vygotsky remains, however. While Piaget acknow- ledged that the speech of another person could spark thoughts leading to cognitive growth, the real driver of that growth is the child's own activity.
For Vygotsky, however, cognitive processes are directly derived from speech.