death_date death_place influenced birth_place influences image_size nationality fields notable_students birth_date known_for spouse image article_title name alma_mater
11 june 1934 moscow , ussr vygotsky circle , evald ilyenkov , jean piaget orsha , russian empire , now in belarus wilhelm , kurt koffka , kurt lewin , max wertheimer , von wolfgang köhler , kurt goldstein humboldt , alexander potebnia , alfred adler 190px russian psychology alexander luria 19 november 1896 cultural-historical psychology , zone of proximal development roza noevna vygodskaia -lrb- nee smekhova -rrb- lev_vygotsky . jpg lev vygotsky
 lev vygotsky moscow state university , shaniavskii open university
lev vygotsky

lev semyonovich vygotsky -lrb- , born Лев Симхович Выгодский `` lev simkhovich vygodsky '' , -- june 11 , 1934 -rrb- was a soviet psychologist , the founder of a theory of human cultural and bio-social development commonly referred to as cultural-historical psychology , and leader of the vygotsky circle .
vygotsky 's main work was in developmental psychology , and he proposed a theory of the development of higher cognitive functions in children that saw reasoning as emerging through practical activity in a social environment .
during the earlier period of his career he argued that the development of reasoning was mediated by signs and symbols , and therefore contingent on cultural practices and language as well as on universal cognitive processes .
vygotsky also posited a concept of the zone of proximal development , often understood to refer to the way in which the acquisition of new knowledge is dependent on previous learning , as well as the availability of instruction .
during his lifetime vygotsky 's theories were controversial within the soviet union .
in the 1930s vygotsky 's ideas were introduced in the west where they remained virtually unknown until the 1970s when they became a central component of the development of new paradigms in developmental and educational psychology .
while initially vygotsky 's theories were ignored in the west , they are today widely known , although scholars do not always agree with them , or agree about what he meant .
the early 21st century has seen scholarly reevaluations of many of vygotsky 's central concepts and theories .
a `` review of general psychology '' survey , published in 2002 , ranked vygotsky as the 83rd most cited psychologist of the 20th century .
