Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Problem of Determinants and Mechanisms of Child Development; The Structure and Content of the Book
- 1 Vygotsky's Approach to Child Development
- 2 The Neo-Vygotskian Elaboration of Vygotsky's Approach to Child Development
- 3 First Year of Life: Emotional Interactions With Caregivers as the Leading Activity of Infants
- 4 Second and Third Years of Life: Object-Centered Joint Activity With Adults as the Leading Activity of Toddlers
- 5 Three- to Six-Year-Olds: Sociodramatic Play as the Leading Activity During the Period of Early Childhood
- 6 The Period of Middle Childhood: Learning at School as Children's Leading Activity
- 7 The Period of Adolescence: Interactions With Peers as the Leading Activity of Adolescents
- Conclusion The Neo-Vygotskian Approach to Child Development: Accomplishments and Shortcomings
- References
- Author Index
- Subject Index
2 - The Neo-Vygotskian Elaboration of Vygotsky's Approach to Child Development
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Problem of Determinants and Mechanisms of Child Development; The Structure and Content of the Book
- 1 Vygotsky's Approach to Child Development
- 2 The Neo-Vygotskian Elaboration of Vygotsky's Approach to Child Development
- 3 First Year of Life: Emotional Interactions With Caregivers as the Leading Activity of Infants
- 4 Second and Third Years of Life: Object-Centered Joint Activity With Adults as the Leading Activity of Toddlers
- 5 Three- to Six-Year-Olds: Sociodramatic Play as the Leading Activity During the Period of Early Childhood
- 6 The Period of Middle Childhood: Learning at School as Children's Leading Activity
- 7 The Period of Adolescence: Interactions With Peers as the Leading Activity of Adolescents
- Conclusion The Neo-Vygotskian Approach to Child Development: Accomplishments and Shortcomings
- References
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Summary
Although Vygotsky's approach became the general theoretical foundation of the scientific research and discourse of his Russian colleagues and followers (Elkonin, Galperin, Leontiev, Luria, Zaporozhets, and others), they were far from considering this approach a dogma. For many years after Vygotsky's death, their scientific effort was aimed at overcoming the shortcomings of his approach and elaborating those of his ideas that he had merely sketched.
The starting point of the neo-Vygotskians' analysis was the same as the starting point of Vygotsky's discourse, that is, the difference between the practical activity of humans and animals that results in the difference in their mental processes. Vygotsky (1930) saw the difference between the practical activity of humans and animals in the fact that humans systematically use tools in the course of their activity, whereas animals either do not use such tools or, in the case of apes, use these tools episodically. This view, however, reduced the difference between the use of tools by humans and animals to quantitative differences (systematic vs. episodic use of tools), and it did not explain why the use of tools by humans requires a qualitatively new level of mental processes. In contrast, the neo-Vygotskians have shown qualitative differences between both the use of tools by humans and animals and the structures of animals' and humans' activities and have analyzed as well how these differences lead to differences between mental processes of humans and animals.
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- The Neo-Vygotskian Approach to Child Development , pp. 45 - 76Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005