Vygotsky's theory of development. Abstract: Cultural and historical concept of L

He is not the author of the methods, but his theoretical developments and observations formed the basis practical systems famous teachers (for example, Elkonin). The research begun by Vygotsky was continued by his students and followers, giving them practical application. His ideas seem especially relevant now.

Biography of L.S. Vygotsky

L.S. Vygotsky was born on November 17, 1896 in Orsha, the second child in a large family of a bank employee. In 1897, the family moved to Gomel, where it became a kind of cultural center (the father is the founder of the public library).

Lev was a gifted boy and was educated at home. From 1912 he completed his studies at a private gymnasium.

In 1914, after graduating from high school, Vygotsky entered the medical faculty of Moscow State University, and a month later he was transferred to law and graduated in 1917. At the same time, he received an education at the Faculty of History and Philology of the Shanyavsky University.

In 1917, with the beginning of the revolution, the young man returned to Gomel. The Gomel period lasted until 1924 and was the beginning of its psychological and pedagogical activity. Here he marries and has a daughter.

At first he gave private lessons, then he taught a course in philology and logic at various schools in the city, and took Active participation in the formation of a new type of school. He also taught philology at the Pedagogical College, where he created a consulting room for psychology. Here Vygotsky began his psychological research.

In 1920, Lev contracted tuberculosis from his brother, who died.

In 1924 he was invited to the Moscow Institute of Experimental Psychology. From that moment on, the Moscow period of the scientist’s family began.

In 1924 - 1925 Vygotsky created his own cultural and historical psychological school on the basis of the institute. He began to become interested in working with special needs children. Continuing his psychological research, he simultaneously worked in the People's Commissar of Education, where he proved himself to be a talented organizer.

Through his efforts, an experimental defectology institute was created in 1926 (now the Institute of Correctional Pedagogy). He headed it until the end of his life. Vygotsky continues to write and publish books. From time to time the illness put him out of action. In 1926 there was a very severe outbreak.

From 1927 - 1931 scientist published works on problems cultural-historical psychology. During these same years, he began to be accused of retreating from Marxism. It became dangerous to study psychology, and Vygovsky devoted himself to pedology.

The disease periodically worsened, and in 1934 Lev Semenovich died in Moscow.

Main directions of Vygotsky's research

Vygotsky was, first and foremost, a psychologist. He chose the following areas of research:

comparison of adults and children;
comparison modern man and ancient;
comparison of normal personality development with pathological behavioral deviations.

The scientist compiled a program that determined his path in psychology: to seek an explanation of internal mental processes outside the body, in interaction with it environment. The scientist believed that these mental processes can only be understood through development. And the most intensive development of the psyche occurs in children.

This is how Vygotsky came to an in-depth study of child psychology. He studied the patterns of development of normal and abnormal children. In the process of research, the scientist came to study not only the process of child development, but also his upbringing. And since pedagogy is the study of education, Vygotsky began research in this direction.

He believed that any teacher should base his work on psychological science. This is how he connected psychology with pedagogy. And a little later, a separate science in social pedagogy emerged - psychological pedagogy.

While studying pedagogy, the scientist became interested in new science pedology (knowledge about the child from the point of view of various sciences) and became the main pedologist of the country.

He put forward ideas that revealed the laws of cultural development of the individual, his mental functions (speech, attention, thinking), explained the internal mental processes of the child, his relationship with the environment.

His ideas on defectology laid the foundation for correctional pedagogy, which began to practically help special children.

Vygotsky did not develop methods for raising and developing children, but his concepts proper organization training and education have become the basis of many developmental programs and systems. The scientist’s research, ideas, hypotheses and concepts were far ahead of their time.

Principles of raising children according to Vygotsky

The scientist believed that education does not consist in adapting the child to the environment, but in the formation of a personality that goes beyond this environment, as if looking forward. At the same time, the child does not need to be educated from the outside, he must educate himself.

This is possible with proper organization of the education process. Only the personal activity of a child can become the basis of education.

The teacher should only be an observer, correctly guide and regulate the child’s independent activity at the right moments.

Thus, education becomes an active process from three sides:

the child is active (he performs an independent action);
the teacher is active (he observes and helps);
The environment between the child and the teacher is active.

Education is closely related to learning. Both processes are collective activities. The structure of the new labor school, which Vygotsky created with his students, is based on the principles of the collective process of education and training.

Unified Labor School

It was the prototype of a democratic school based on a creative, dynamic, collaborative pedagogy. It was ahead of its time, imperfect, and made mistakes, but it was still successful.

Vygotsky’s ideas were implemented by teachers Blonsky, Wenzel, Shatsky and others.

The pedological theory was tested at the school:

there were rooms for psychological and pedological diagnostics;
constant medical and psychological monitoring was carried out;
classes were created according to the principle of the child’s pedological age.

This school existed until 1936, when the Soviet authorities began attacking it. The school was repurposed as a regular one.

The very idea of pedology was distorted, and it fell into oblivion. Pedology and the idea of a labor school received a second life in the 90s. with the collapse of the USSR. United labor school V modern understanding is a democratic school, very relevant in today's education.

Development and education of special children

Vygotsky developed a new theory of abnormal child development, on which defectology is now based and all practical correctional pedagogy is built. The purpose of this theory: the socialization of special children with a defect, and not the study of the defect itself. It was a revolution in defectology.

He connected special correctional pedagogy with the pedagogy of a normal child. He believed that the personality of a special child is formed in the same way as that of ordinary children. It is enough to socially rehabilitate an abnormal child, and his development will follow the normal course.

His social pedagogy was supposed to help the child remove the negative social layers caused by the defect. The defect itself is not the cause of the child’s abnormal development, it is only a consequence of improper socialization.

The starting point in the rehabilitation of special children should be an unaffected state of the body. “We should work with the child based on what is healthy and positive,” Vygotsky.

By starting rehabilitation, you can also start the compensatory capabilities of the special child’s body. The idea of the zone of proximal development has become very effective in restoring the normal development of special children.

Zone of Proximal Development Theory

The zone of proximal development is the “distance” between the level of the child’s actual and possible development.

Level of current development- this is the development of the child’s psyche in this moment(which tasks can be completed independently).
Zone of proximal development- this is the future development of the individual (actions that are performed with the help of an adult).

This is based on the assumption that a child, while learning some elementary action, simultaneously masters general principle this action. Firstly, this action itself has a wider application than its element. Secondly, having mastered the principle of action, you can apply it to perform another element.

This will be an easier process. There is development in the learning process.

But learning is not the same as development: learning does not always push development; on the contrary, it can become a brake if we rely only on what the child can do and do not take into account the level of his possible development.

Learning will become developmental if we focus on what the child can learn from previous experience.

The size of the zone of proximal development is different for each child.

It depends:

on the needs of the child;
from its capabilities;
on the willingness of parents and teachers to assist in the development of the child.

Vygotsky's merits in pedology

At the beginning of the 20th century, educational psychology appeared, which was based on the fact that learning and upbringing depend on the psyche of a particular child.

The new science did not solve many problems of pedagogy. An alternative was pedology - a comprehensive science about the full age development of a child. The center of study in it is the child from the point of view of biology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, pediatrics, and pedagogy. The hottest problem in pedology was the socialization of the child.

It was believed that child development proceeds from the individual mental world to the external world (socialization). Vygotsky was the first to postulate that the social and individual development of a child are not opposed to each other. It's just two different shapes the same mental function.

He believed that the social environment is the source of personal development. The child absorbs (makes internal) those activities that came to him from the outside (were external). These types of activities are initially enshrined in social forms of culture. The child adopts them by seeing how other people perform these actions.

Those. external social and objective activity passes into the internal structures of the psyche (interiorization), and through general social-symbolic activity (including through speech) of adults and children the basis of the child’s psyche is formed.

Vygotsky formulated the basic law of cultural development:

In the development of a child, any function appears twice - first in the social aspect, and then in the psychological (i.e., first it is external, and then it becomes internal).

Vygotsky believed that this law determines the development of attention, memory, thinking, speech, emotions, and will.

The influence of communication on raising a child

The child develops quickly and masters the world if communicating with an adult. At the same time, the adult himself should be interested in communication. It is very important to encourage your child's verbal communication.

Speech is a sign system that arose in the process of social historical development person. She is capable of transforming childish thinking, helps solve problems and form concepts. At an early age, a child’s speech uses words with a purely emotional meaning.

As children grow and develop, words of specific meaning appear in their speech. In older adolescence, the child begins to designate abstract concepts in words. Thus, speech (word) changes the mental functions of children.

The mental development of a child is initially controlled by communication with an adult (through speech). Then this process moves into the internal structures of the psyche, and inner speech appears.

Criticism of Vygotsky's ideas

Vygotsky's research and ideas on psychological pedagogy were subjected to the most vehement condemnation.

His concept of learning, based on the zone of proximal development, carries the danger of pushing forward a child who does not have sufficient potential. This can dramatically slow down children's development.

This is partly confirmed by the current fashionable trend: parents strive to develop their children as much as possible, without taking into account their abilities and potential. This dramatically affects the health and psyche of children and reduces motivation for further education.

Another controversial concept: systematically helping a child perform actions that he has not mastered on his own can deprive the child of independent thinking.

Dissemination and popularity of Vygotsky's ideas

After the death of Lev Semenovich, his works were forgotten and did not spread. However, since 1960, pedagogy and psychology have rediscovered Vygotsky, revealing many positive aspects in him.

His idea of the zone of proximal development helped assess learning potential and proved fruitful. Her outlook is optimistic. The concept of defectology has become very useful for correcting the development and education of special children.

Many schools have adopted Vygotsky’s definitions of age standards. With the advent of new sciences (valeology, correctional pedagogy, a new reading of previously perverted pedology), the scientist’s ideas became very relevant and fit into the concept modern education, a new democratic school.

Many of Vygotsky’s ideas are being popularized here and abroad today.

Michael Cole and Jerome Bruner incorporated them into their theories of development.

Rom Harré and John Shotter considered Vygotsky to be the founder of social psychology and continued his research.

In the 90s Valsiner and Barbara Rogoff deepened developmental psychology based on Vygotsky's ideas.

Vygotsky's students were prominent Russian psychologists, including Elkonin, who also worked on problems of child development. Together with teachers, based on Vygotsky’s ideas, he created an effective Elkonin-Davydov-Repkin development program.

It is used to teach mathematics and language according to a special system; it is approved by the state and is now widely used in schools.

In addition, there are still many talented hypotheses and unrealized ideas of Vygotsky that are waiting in the wings.

Treasury of the scientist's works. Bibliography

Lev Semenovich Vygotsky wrote more than 190 works. Not all of them were published during his lifetime.

Vygotsky's books on pedagogy and psychology:

"Thinking and Speech" (1924)
"Instrumental method in pedology" (1928)
"The problem of the cultural development of the child" (1928)
"Instrumental Method in Psychology" (1930)
"Tool and sign in the development of the child" (1931)
"Pedology school age" (1928)
"Pedology of Adolescence" (1929)
"Pedology of a teenager" (1930-1931)

Main publications:

1. Pedagogical psychology. — M: Education worker, 1926

2. Pedology of a teenager. - M: Moscow State University, 1930

3. Main currents modern psychology. — M + Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1930

4. Sketches on the history of behavior. Monkey. Primitive. Child. — M + Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1930

5. Imagination and creativity in childhood. — M + Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1930

6. Thinking and speech. — M + Leningrad: Sotsgiz, 1934

7. Mental development children in the learning process. - M: State educational teacher, 1935

8. Developmental diagnostics and pedological clinic for difficult childhood. — M: Experiment, defectol. Institute named after M. S. Epstein, 1936

9. Thinking and speech. Problems psychological development child. Selected pedagogical studies. - M: APN, 1956

10. Development of higher mental functions. - M: APN, 1960

11. Psychology of art. Art. - M, 1965

12. Structural psychology. - M: Moscow State University, 1972

13. Collected works in 6 volumes:

vol. 1: Questions of the theory and history of psychology;

vol. 2: Problems of general psychology;

vol. 3: Problems of mental development;

vol. 4: Child psychology;

vol. 5: Fundamentals of defectology;

vol. 6: Scientific heritage.

M: Pedagogy, 1982-1984

14. Problems of defectology. — M: Enlightenment, 1995

15. Lectures on pedology 1933-1934. - Izhevsk: Udmurt University, 1996

16. Vygotsky. [Sat. texts.] - M: Amonashvili, 1996

The main question in Vygotsky’s scientific research was the problem of consciousness, which he opened for concrete scientific study. Traditional psychology, as a science dealing with the issue of consciousness, Vygotsky said, was never one, since consciousness was in it the subject of “direct” experience, and not scientific knowledge. “Consciousness should be considered not as a “stage” on which mental functions appear, not as a “common owner of mental functions” (the point of view of traditional psychology), but as a psychological reality that has great value in all human life activities, which must be specifically studied and analyzed.”

Scientific knowledge always indirectly, wrote Vygotsky, and “direct experience,” for example, of the feeling of love does not at all mean scientific knowledge of this complex feeling. Scientific knowledge, unlike other diverse forms of knowledge, is the process of obtaining objective, true knowledge aimed at reflecting the laws of reality. Scientific knowledge has a threefold task and is associated with the description, explanation and prediction of processes and phenomena of reality.

Consciousness and the psyche in general appeared in Vygotsky’s concept not as a closed world of phenomena, open only to the subject’s introspection, but as a thing of a fundamentally different order. If phenomenon and essence coincided, no science would be needed, Vygotsky said. Consciousness requires the same objective scientific mediated study as any other entity, and cannot be reduced to the introspectively given to us phenomenon by the subject of any of its contents.

In Vygotsky’s views, personality is a social concept. It does not cover all the signs of individuality, but it equates the child’s personal development with his cultural development. As a person develops, he masters his own behavior. However, a necessary prerequisite for this process is the formation of personality, since the development of a particular function is always derived from the development of the personality as a whole and is conditioned by it.

In its development, a personality goes through a series of changes that have a staged nature. More or less stable development processes due to the lytic accumulation of new potentials, the destruction of one social situation of development and the emergence of others are replaced by critical periods in the life of the individual, during which the rapid formation of psychological new formations occurs. Crises are characterized by the unity of the destructive and constructive sides and play the role of steps in the forward movement along the path of further development of the child. Visible behavioral problems of a child in critical age period not a pattern, but rather evidence of the unfavorable course of the crisis, the lack of changes in the inflexible pedagogical system, which does not keep up with the rapid change in the child’s personality. New formations that arise in one period or another qualitatively change the psychological functioning of the individual.

Vygotsky defined the psyche as an active and biased form of the subject’s reflection of the world. He repeatedly emphasized that mental reflection is not distinguished by its mirror character: the mirror reflects the world more accurately, more completely, but mental reflection is more adequate for the subject’s lifestyle - the psyche is a subjective distortion of reality in favor of the organism.

Vygotsky sought to reveal, first of all, what is specifically human in behavior and the history of the formation of this behavior; his theory required a change in the traditional approach to the process of mental development. In his opinion, the one-sidedness and fallacy of the traditional view of the facts of the development of higher mental functions lies, as Vygotsky said: “The inability to look at these facts as facts of historical development, in the one-sided consideration of them as natural processes and formations, in the confusion and failure to distinguish between natural and cultural, natural and historical, biological and social in the mental development of a child, in short - in an incorrect fundamental understanding of the nature of the phenomena being studied.”

Vygotsky was the first to move from a statement about 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 showed that humans have a special type of mental functions that are completely absent in animals. These functions, called higher mental functions by Vygotsky, constitute highest level human psyche, generally called consciousness. And they are formed during social interactions. The highest mental functions of a person, or consciousness, are of a social nature. In order to clearly identify the problem, the author brings together three fundamental concepts that were previously considered as separate - the concept of higher mental function, the concept of cultural development of behavior and the concept of mastering the processes of one’s own behavior. “But now we will use this indisputable position as an example, which can simply be extended, due to the actual similarity of the scientific fate of many related problems, to other higher functions, leaving aside for now the complex course of further thoughts that allows us to bring together in our eyes the three main concepts of our research: the concept higher mental function, the concept of cultural development of behavior and the concept of mastering one’s own behavioral processes. Just as the history of the development of children’s will has not yet been written, the history of the development of other higher functions has not yet been written: voluntary attention, logical memory, etc. This is a fundamental fact that cannot be ignored.”

Vygotsky's hypothesis was that mental processes are transformed in a person in the same way as the processes of his practical activities, that is, they also become mediated. But tools themselves, being non-psychological things, cannot, according to Vygotsky, mediate mental processes. Consequently, there must be special psychological tools - tools of spiritual production. These psychological tools are various sign systems, by which he understood artificial means included by a person in a psychological situation. “Between the assertion that higher mental functions, of which the use of signs is an integral part, arise in the process of cooperation and social communication, and another statement that these functions develop from primitive roots on the basis of lower, or elementary, functions, that is, between the sociogenesis of higher functions and their natural history, there is a genetic, not a logical contradiction.

Signs are mental tools that, unlike tools of labor, change not the physical world, but the consciousness of the subject operating them. A sign is any conventional symbol that has a specific meaning.

The use of a sign, a word as a specifically human mental regulator reconstructs all 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.

Higher mental functions arose with the help of a sign. A sign is an instrument of mental activity. This is an artificially created stimulus, a means to control one’s own behavior and the behavior of others. A sign can be called gestures, speech, notes, painting. The word, like oral and written speech according to Vygotsky, is a universal sign. The initial form of existence of a sign is always external. Then the sign turns into an internal means of organizing mental processes, which arises as a result of a complex interiorization of the sign. Interiorization, strictly speaking, is not only and not so much a sign as the entire system of mediation operations. At the same time, this also means the internalization of relationships between people. Vygotsky argued that if previously the order and execution were divided between two people, now both actions were carried out by the same person. “We call this withdrawal of operations inward, this interiorization of higher mental functions associated with new changes in their structure, the process of ingrowth, meaning mainly the following: the fact that higher mental functions are built initially as external forms of behavior and are based on an external sign, not in any way accidental, but, on the contrary, determined by the very psychological nature of the highest function, which, as we said above, does not arise as a direct continuation elementary processes, but is a social mode of behavior applied to oneself.”

Unlike a stimulus-means, which can be invented by the child himself, signs are not invented by children, but are acquired by them in communication with adults. Thus, the sign appears first on the external plane, in the plane of communication, and then moves to the internal plane, the plane of consciousness. At the same time, signs, being a product of social 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 manage their inner mental life. Thanks to the internalization of signs in children, the sign function of consciousness is formed, the formation of such strictly human mental processes as logical thinking, will, speech. In other words, the internalization of signs is the mechanism that shapes the psyche of children.

Following the idea of the socio-historical nature of the psyche, Vygotsky makes the transition to the interpretation social environment not as a factor, but as a source of personal development. In development, he notes, there are, as it were, two intertwined lines. The first follows the path of natural maturation. The second is to master cultures, ways of behavior and thinking. Auxiliary means of organizing behavior and thinking that humanity has created in the process of its historical development are systems of signs and symbols. A sign is a means developed by humanity in the processes of communication between people. It is a means of influencing, on the one hand, another person, and on the other, oneself. Mastering the connection between sign and meaning and the use of speech in the use of tools marks the emergence of new psychological functions, systems underlying higher mental processes that fundamentally distinguish human behavior from animal behavior.

According to Vygotsky, it is necessary to distinguish two lines of mental development of a child - natural and cultural development. The natural mental functions of an individual are immediate and involuntary in nature, determined primarily by biological, or natural factors. The natural line of development is the physical, natural development from the moment of birth. It is not related to activity and interaction with the environment, as a means of transforming oneself and others. The body does not require any effort or effort for their development; this development occurs naturally. Natural mental functions are inherent in all living beings. Another line of development is the line of cultural improvement of psychological functions, the development of new ways of thinking, and the mastery of cultural means of behavior. Cultural development is born from the natural, just as something more complex is born from something simpler. Here, effort and diligence are required from the individual as mandatory rules for development. The environment no longer acts as something neutral and insignificant, it changes its role to the opposite, becoming an indispensable component for the development of the organism. The cultural line of development, unlike the natural line of development, is inherent only to man and not to any other living creature.

In the process of cultural development, not only individual functions change, but new systems of higher mental functions arise, qualitatively different from each other at different stages of ontogenesis. Thus, as it develops, perception is freed from its initial dependence on the affective-need sphere and begins to enter into close connections with memory, and subsequently with thinking. Thus, the primary connections between functions that developed during evolution are replaced by secondary connections built artificially - as a result of a person’s mastery of sign means, including language as the main sign system. Here, as Vygotsky said, the formation of higher mental functions occurs.

Speaking about the existence of natural and higher mental functions, Vygotsky comes to the conclusion that the main difference between them is the level of voluntariness. According to Vygotsky: “With the development of higher mental processes, a restructuring of the relations between them takes place, first with the leading role of perception, then memory, then logical, verbal thinking, as well as the increasing inclusion of arbitrariness and the use of various mediation techniques.”

In other words, unlike natural mental processes that cannot be regulated by humans, people can consciously control higher mental functions. For higher mental functions, the presence of an internal means is fundamental. The main way of emergence of higher mental functions is internalization social forms

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 also develop from primitive roots on the basis of lower ones. Higher mental functions are possible initially as a form of cooperation with other people, and subsequently become individual. The person doesn't have congenital form

behavior in the environment. Its development occurs through the appropriation of historically developed forms and methods of activity. At the same time, the process of formation of the highest mental function is extended over a decade, originating in verbal communication and culminating in full-fledged symbolic activity. Through communication, a person masters the values of culture. By mastering signs, a person becomes familiar with culture, the main components of his meanings and meanings appear. Vygotsky argued that mental development does not follow maturation, but is conditioned by the active interaction of the individual with the environment in the zone of his immediate mental development.

The driving force of mental development is learning. Development and learning are different processes. Development is the process of formation of a person or personality, accomplished through the emergence of new qualities at each stage. Training - internal necessary moment in the process, the child develops the historical characteristics of humanity. Vygotsky believes that learning should lead to development; this idea was developed by him in developing the concept of the 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 another turns out to be central in development. Teaching is, in essence, communication organized in a special way. Communication with an adult, mastering the methods of intellectual activity under his guidance, seem to set the immediate prospects for the child’s development: it is called the zone of proximal development, in contrast to the current level of development. Vygotsky said that learning that comes ahead of development is effective.

Among the various approaches to the problem of the origin and development of human consciousness, two dominated: “biological” and “ideal”. From the standpoint of the 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 part of the “objective spirit” (Hegel), etc. The human soul, his psyche is divine, immeasurable and unknowable. From a “biological” point of view, man 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 is 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 differently. He showed that humans have a special type of mental functions that are completely absent in animals. These functions, called L.S. Vygotsky’s higher mental functions constitute the highest level of the human psyche, generally called consciousness. They are formed during social interactions. In other words, Vygotsky argued that the highest mental functions of a person, or consciousness, are of a social nature. In this case, higher mental functions mean: voluntary memory, voluntary attention, logical thinking, etc.

Three components can be distinguished in Vygotsky’s concept. 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 there was a fundamental change in the relationship of the subject with the environment. Throughout the existence of the animal world, the environment has 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 humans. This mechanism consists in the creation of tools of labor and the development of material production.

The second part of Vygotsky’s concept can be called “Man and his own psyche.” It also contains two provisions. The first point is that the mastery of nature did not pass without a trace for man, he learned to master his own psyche, he acquired higher mental functions, expressed in forms of voluntary activity. Under the higher mental functions of L.S. Vygotsky understood a person’s ability to force himself to remember some material, pay attention to some object, and organize his mental activity.

The second position is that man mastered his behavior, as well as nature, with the help of tools, but special tools - psychological. He called these psychological tools signs.

Vygotsky called signs the artificial means with the help of 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 master memory. For example, a person saw a notch and remembered what to do. This sign itself is not associated with a specific type of activity. A “memory knot” or a notch on a tree can be meaningfully associated with various types of labor operations. But, faced with such a 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 what exactly he had to do. Therefore, signs-symbols were triggers for 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 sign-means come from?” Vygotsky proceeded from the fact that labor created man. In the process of joint labor, communication took place between its participants using special signs that determined what each participant in the labor process should do. It is likely that the first words were words of orders addressed to participants in the labor process. For example, “do this”, “take that”, “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, the person began to direct commands not at someone else, but at himself. As a result, from the external command function of the word its organizing function was born. This is how 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 executing 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 relationships into non-trapsychological ones internalization. During internalization, external means-signs (notches, knots, etc.) are transformed into internal ones (images, elements of inner speech, etc.).

In ontogenesis, according to Vygotsky, fundamentally the same thing is observed. First, the adult uses a word to influence the child, encouraging him to do something. Then the child adopts the method of communication and begins to influence the adult with words. And finally, the child begins to influence himself with words.

Thus, two fundamental provisions can be distinguished in Vygotsky’s concept. Firstly, 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: man is fundamentally different from animals 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. For this he also uses tools, but the tools are psychological. Such tools are signs or symbolic means. They have a cultural origin, and the universal and most typical system of signs is speech.

Consequently, the higher mental functions of humans 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 connected with his social nature. Consciousness is impossible outside of society. The specifically human path of ontogenesis consists in the assimilation of socio-historical experience in the process of training and education - socially developed ways of transmitting human experience. These methods ensure the full development of the child’s psyche.

The concept was called historical because it is impossible to understand the “become” mental processes and consciousness that are 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 new formations, and not simple evolution. Vygotsky tried to consider mental development according to 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 child’s consciousness and the specific features of his HMF are formed in the child as a result of communication with adults, in which the child assimilates systems of cultural signs. These signs mediate his “lower” (involuntary) PF and thereby lead to the creation of completely new formations in the child’s consciousness.

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 where comparative psychology stopped at 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, a sign (word).

Vygotsky outlined the first version of his theoretical generalizations concerning the patterns of development of the psyche in ontogenesis in his work “Development of the HMF.” This work presented a scheme for the formation of the human psyche in the process of using signs as a means of regulating mental activity.

In the mechanisms of brain activity L.S. Vygotsky saw dynamic functional complexes (“Development of Higher Mental Functions,” 1931).

"Man, in the process of his historical development, rose to the point of creating new driving forces of your behavior: so in progress public life man’s new needs arose, formed and developed, and man’s natural needs in the process of his historical development underwent profound changes.”

A person has 2 lines of development: 1) natural; 2) cultural (historical).

The natural developmental line is the physical, natural development of a child from the moment of birth.

With the emergence of communication with the outside world, a cultural line of development arises.

1. NPF - natural: sensations, perception, children's thinking, involuntary memory.

2. VPF - cultural, social; - the result of historical development: abstract thinking, speech, voluntary memory, voluntary attention, imagination.

HMF are complex mental processes that develop during life, social in origin. Distinctive Features HMF are their indirect nature and arbitrariness.

HPFs arose with the help of a sign. A sign is an instrument of mental activity. This is an artificially created stimulus by man, a means to control OWN behavior and the behavior of others.

A sign, as a purely cultural means, arose and is used in culture.

The history of the development of humanity 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 painting, pictographic writing - a conventional 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 drawings. The child appropriates to himself everything that has been developed by man (psyche). The history of child development resembles the history of human development. The appropriation of the psyche occurs through an intermediary.

Vygotsky tries to connect the natural and historical lines.

Historical study means applying the category of development to the study of a phenomenon. All contemporary theories interpreted child development from a biologizing point of view (the transition from social to individual).

HMFs are possible initially as a form of cooperation with other people, and subsequently 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 plane of consciousness began to be understood in Russian psychology as the external world mastered by activity.

Speaking about the existence of natural and higher mental functions, Vygotsky comes to the conclusion that the main difference between them is the level of voluntariness. In other words, unlike natural mental processes that cannot be regulated by humans, people can consciously control higher mental functions.

The diagram of mental processes in Vygotsky’s view looks like this

Unlike a stimulus-means, which 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 external plane, in the plane of communication, and then moves to the internal plane, the plane of consciousness. Vygotsky wrote that each higher mental function appears on the stage twice: once as external - interpsychic, and second - as internal - intrapsychic.

At the same time, signs, being a product of social 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 manage their inner mental life. Thanks to the internalization of signs, the sign function of consciousness is formed in children, and the formation of such strictly human mental processes as logical thinking, will, and speech occurs. In other words, the internalization of signs is the mechanism that shapes the psyche of children.

Consciousness must be studied experimentally, therefore it is necessary to bring together the HMF, the cultural development of behavior, and the mastery of one’s own behavioral processes.

One of their most important characteristics is mediation, i.e. the presence of a means by which they are organized.

For higher mental functions, the presence of an internal means is fundamental. The main way for the emergence of higher mental functions is internalization (transfer to the internal plane, “incorporation”) 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 also develop from primitive roots on the basis of lower ones.

The sociogenesis of higher mental functions is their natural history.

The central point is the emergence of symbolic activity, 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 highest mental function in its development goes through two stages. 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 highest mental function is extended over a decade, originating in verbal communication and ending in full-fledged symbolic activity. Through communication, a person masters the values of culture. By mastering signs, a person becomes familiar with culture; the main components of his inner world are meanings (cognitive components of consciousness) and meanings (emotional and motivational components).

Vygotsky argued that mental development does not follow maturation, but is conditioned by the active interaction of the individual with the environment in the zone of his immediate mental development. The domestic psychological school was formed on these principles.

He believes that learning should “lead” development; this idea was developed by him in developing 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 another turns out to be central in development.

Personality is not pure psychological concept, and it is studied by all social sciences - philosophy, sociology, ethics, pedagogy, etc. Literature, music, art. The personality plays a significant role in solving political, economic, scientific, cultural, technical problems, and in general in raising the level of human existence.

The category of personality occupies one of the central places in modern scientific research and in public consciousness. Thanks to the category of personality, opportunities arise for a holistic approach, system analysis and synthesis of psychological functions, processes, states, and human properties.

IN psychological science There is no generally accepted definition of the nature of personality. The era of active scientific study of personality problems can be divided into two stages. The first covers the period from the end of the 19th to the middle of the 20th century. and approximately coincides with the period of formation of classical psychology. At this time, fundamental principles about personality were formulated and the main directions of research were laid psychological characteristics personality. The second stage of research into personality problems began in the second half of the 20th century.

The value and uniqueness of personality do not exclude, but presuppose the presence of its special structure. L.S. Vygotsky noted: “A structure is usually called such integral formations that do not consist of individual parts, representing their aggregate, but themselves determine the fate and meaning of each of their constituent parts.” Personality structure:

As integrity, it is an objective reality, personifying internal personal processes. In addition, the structure reflects the logic of these processes and is subordinate to them;

It appears as the embodiment of a function, as an organ of this function. Of course, the emergence of a structure, in turn, leads to a change in the functions themselves and is closely related to the process of its formation: structure is simultaneously the result of formation, its condition and a factor in the further development of the individual;

It represents an integrity that includes all mental (conscious and unconscious) and non-mental components of the personality. But it is not their simple sum, but represents a new special quality, a form of existence of the human psyche. This is a special orderliness, a new synthesis;

Is controversial regarding the stability factor. On the one hand, it is stable and constant (it includes the same components and makes behavior predictable). But at the same time, the personality structure is fluid, variable, never fully completed.

The cultural-historical theory has proven that the structure of a person’s personality changes during the process of ontogenesis. An important and unresolved problem is the determination of individual content components of the personality structure. To make this problem clear, let us cite L. S. Vygotsky’s reasoning regarding the search for meaningful units of analysis of the psyche as a whole. He makes a good analogy with the chemical analysis of a substance. If a scientist is faced with the task of establishing the true underlying mechanisms and properties of, for example, a substance such as water, he can choose two ways of analysis.

Firstly, it is possible to split a water molecule (H2O) into hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms and lose integrity, since the individual elements released will not have any properties inherent in water (this is the so-called “elemental analysis”).

Secondly, if you try to combine analysis with the preservation of the properties, features and functions of integrity, you should not decompose the molecule into elements, but single out individual molecules as active “bricks” (L.S. Vygotsky writes - “units”) of analysis, which can already be investigated, and at the same time preserve in the most simplified, but also acutely contradictory, “universal” form, all the features of matter as a whole.

The main specificity of personality as an object of psychological analysis lies not even in complexity, but in the fact that it is an object capable of its own, free actions (the “activity” feature). That is, the personality, acting as an object of study (or influence), simultaneously exists as a subject, which greatly complicates the problem of understanding its psychology, but only complicates it, and does not make it hopeless.

The identification of semantic units of psychological analysis is the leading principle of genetic psychology. Analysis shows that it is impossible to single out one unit in a person.

There are structures of different psychological nature that satisfy the requirements for a unit of analysis:

The structure must be specific and independent, but at the same time, it will exist and develop only as part of an integral personality;

This structure should reflect the entire personality in its real unity, but at the same time reflect it “in-depth and simplified” in the form of an essential contradiction;

This structure does not represent something like a “building block” - it is dynamic and capable of both its own development and harmonious participation in the formation of an integral personality;

The structure about which we're talking about, must reflect a certain essential perspective of the existence of the individual and meet all the essential features of a holistic personality.

Being a historical being, man is at the same time, and even above all, a natural being: he is an organism that carries within itself the specific features of human nature. It is essential for the psychological development of a person that he is born with a human brain, that when he is born, he brings with him the inheritance received from his ancestors, which opens up wide opportunities for him for human development. They are realized and, being realized, develop and change as a person masters in the course of training and education what was created as a result of the historical development of mankind - products of material and spiritual culture, science, art. Natural features human beings differ precisely in that they open up the possibilities of historical development.

L.S. Vygotsky believed that the first steps of a child’s mental development are of great importance for the entire history of the child’s personality. The biological development of behavior, occurring especially intensively after birth, is the most important subject of psychological study. The history of the development of higher mental functions is impossible without studying the prehistory of these functions, their biological roots, their organic inclinations. In infancy, the genetic roots of two main cultural forms of behavior are laid - the use of tools and human speech; This circumstance alone puts the age of the infant at the center of the prehistory of cultural development.

Cultural development is separated from history and is considered as an independent process, directed by internal forces inherent in itself, subjugated by its immanent logic. Cultural development is seen as self-development. Hence the fixed, static, unconditional nature of all the laws that govern the development of the child’s thinking and worldview.

Children's animism and egocentrism, magical thinking based on participation (the idea of the connection or identity of completely different phenomena) and artificialism (the idea of creation natural phenomena) and many other phenomena appear before us as some always inherent child development, the mental forms are always the same. The child and the development of his mental functions are considered in abstracto - outside the social environment, cultural environment and economic forms in it logical thinking, worldviews and ideas about causality.

L.S. Vygotsky believed that in the process of his development, a child learns not only the content of cultural experience, but also techniques and forms of cultural behavior, cultural ways of thinking. In the development of a child’s behavior, two main lines should be distinguished. One is the line of natural development of behavior, which is closely related to the processes of general organic growth and maturation of the child. The second is the line of cultural improvement of psychological functions, the development of new ways of thinking, mastering cultural means of behavior. It can be assumed that cultural development consists in the assimilation of such methods of behavior that are based on the use and application of signs as a means for carrying out one or another psychological operation.

Cultural development consists precisely in mastering such auxiliary means of behavior that humanity created in the process of its historical development and such as language, writing, and the counting system.

The cultural development of a child goes through four main stages, or phases, successively replacing each other and arising from one another. Taken as a whole, these stages depict the full circle of cultural development of any psychological function.

The first stage can be called the stage of primitive behavior or primitive psychology. In experiments, it manifests itself in the fact that the child usually early age, tries, to the extent of his interest, to remember the material presented to him in a natural or primitive way. How much he remembers is determined by the degree of his attention, individual memory and interest.

Usually, such difficulties encountered on this child’s path lead him to the second stage, either the child himself “discovers” a mnemonic method of memorization, or the researcher comes to the aid of a child who cannot cope with the task using the strength of his natural memory. The researcher lays out pictures, for example, in front of the child and selects words to memorize so that they are in some natural connection with the pictures. A child, listening to a word, looks at the picture, and then easily recalls the entire series in his memory, since the pictures, in addition to his desire, remind him of the word he just heard. The child usually very quickly grabs the means to which he was led, but without knowing, of course, by what means the drawings helped him remember the words. When he is again presented with a series of words, he again, this time on his own initiative, places drawings around him, looks at them again, but since there is no connection this time, and the child does not know how to use the drawing in order to remember given a word, when playing it, he looks at the drawing, reproduces not the word that was given to him, but the one that reminds him of the drawing.

The second stage usually plays the role of a transitional stage, from which the child very quickly moves experimentally to the third stage, which can be called the stage of cultural external reception. Now the child replaces the memory processes with rather complex external activities. When he is given a word, he looks out from the many cards lying in front of him for the one that for him is most closely related to the given word. In this case, the child first tries to use the natural connection that exists between the picture and the word, and then quite quickly moves on to creating and forming new connections.

The third stage is replaced by the fourth stage, which directly arises from the third. With the help of a sign, the child’s external activity transforms into internal activity. External reception turns into internal. For example, when a child must remember the words presented to him, using pictures laid out in a certain sequence. After several times, the child “memorizes” the drawings themselves, and he no longer needs to use them. Now he associates the intended word with the name of the picture, the order of which he already knows.

Thus, within the framework of the personality theory of L.S. Vygotsky identifies three basic laws of personality development.

The first law concerns the development and construction of higher mental functions, which are the main core of personality. This is the law of transition from direct, natural forms of behavior to indirect, artificial ones that arise in the process of cultural development of psychological functions. This period in ontogenesis corresponds to the process of historical development of human behavior, improvement existing forms and ways of thinking and developing new ones, based on language or another system of signs.

The second law is formulated as follows: the relationship between higher psychological functions was once a real relationship between people. Collective, social forms of behavior in the process of development become a means of individual adaptation, forms of behavior and thinking of the individual. Higher psychological functions arise from collective social forms of behavior.

The third law can be called the law of the transition of functions from the external to the internal plane. A psychological function in the process of its development passes from an external form to an internal one, i.e. internalized and becomes an individual form of behavior. This process can be divided into three stages. Initially, any higher form of behavior is mastered by the child only from the outside. Objectively, it includes all the elements of a higher function, but for a child this function is a purely natural, natural means of behavior. However, people fill this natural form of behavior with a certain social content, which later acquires the meaning of a higher function for the child. In the process of development, the child begins to understand the structure of this function, manage and regulate its internal operations. Only when the function rises to its highest, third degree, does it become a personal function.

According to L.S. Vygotsky, the basis of personality is a person’s self-awareness, which arises precisely during the transition period adolescence. Behavior becomes behavior for oneself, a person realizes himself as a certain unity. This moment represents the central point of adolescence. Psychological processes in a teenager acquire a personal character. Based on individual self-awareness, mastery psychological processes For himself, the teenager rises to the highest level of management of internal operations. He feels himself to be the source of his own movement and attributes a personal character to his actions.

In the process of sociogenesis of higher psychological functions, so-called tertiary functions are formed, based on a new type of connections and relationships between individual processes, for example, between memory and thinking, perception, attention and action. Functions enter into new relationships with each other difficult relationships.

In the consciousness of a teenager, these new types of connections and function relationships provide for reflection and reflection of mental processes. Characteristic of psychological functions in adolescence is the participation of the individual in each individual act: it is not thinking that thinks - it is a person who thinks, it is not memory that remembers, but a person. Psychological functions are included in new connection with each other through personality. The law of the construction of these higher tertiary functions is that they are mental relations transferred into the personality, which were previously relations between people.

Thus, personality is a socialized individual who embodies essential socially significant properties. A personality is a person who has his own position in life, which has been established as a result of long and painstaking conscious work; it is characterized by free will, the ability to choose, and responsibility.