Lev Vygotsky
...by the Western world in the 1960s. An important thinker, he pioneered the idea that the intellectual development of children is a function of human communities, rather than of individuals. It is now thought that Vygotsky's contributions have been vital in furthering our understanding of child development, and that his ideas were not only ahead of his time but also ahead of ours.
Vygotsky (1896-1934) was born on November 5, 1896, in the small town of Orsha in Byelorussia (Soviet Union). He began his professional career as a literary critic and public school teacher at several schools in the local city of Gomel near Chernobyl in the Ukraine. Later, his interests slowly changed from art to the psychology of art and didn't become interested in psychology until he reached the age of 28. According to Bringmann, Early, Luck, & Miller (1997); "a series of lectures at the Second Neuropsychological Congress in Leningrad in January of 1924 led to an invitation to become a research assistant at the Institute of Experimental Psychology of Moscow State University." There he began his brilliant but brief academic career, during which he held several professorships, wrote numerous articles and books, and advanced original theories in various sub disciplines of psychology. His writings covered many areas of psychology and related fields of Science, although he never had any formal training in psychology.
Vygotsky's collaborators included Alexander Luria and Alexei Leontiev, who helped create the body of research now known as the Vygotskian approach. During his lifetime, Vygotsky was under pressure to adapt his theories to the prevailing political ideology in Russia. After his death from tuberculosis in 1934, his ideas were repudiated by the government but his ideas were kept alive by his students and later revived. Vygotsky's pioneering work in developmental psychology has...
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