The Study On Vygotsky's Cultural-historical Perspective In His Psychological Theory

Vygotsky was a famous psychologist of former Soviet Union and the founder of socio-culture history school. Taking dialectic materialism as guideline, Vygotsky successfully studied on the Psychological Methodology, Psychological Historiography, General Psychology, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Artistic Psychology,Children Defectology, Clinical Neurology, Semeiology, Culture Anthropology and Pedagogy etc., and creatively put forward a series of important psychological principles. In recent years, Vygotsky craze spread internationally,which interested more and more Chinese scholars and made them study deeply from different angles. Even so , few scholars paid attention to the Cultural-historical Perspective that appeared in the Psychology of Vygotsky, which influenced the Modern Psychology deeply. In fact, the Cultural-historical Perspective of Vygotsky not only conceived and promoted the Culture-Oriented of psychology, but also provided new angle of view for the Culture-Oriented and drove the sustainable and healthy development for it. The thesis studied and summarized the Cultural-historical Perspective of Vygotsky, which is expected to provide a new angle of view and reference for the future study on it.The thesis comprises 5 chapters: The first chapter mainly introduces the lives of Vygotsky, narrates his family and academic background that helped him become the famous psychologist. And also briefly generalizes the related fields of Vygotsky psychological study and his main articles.The second chapter specifically elaborates on the Cultural-historical Perspective in psychological theory. First, Chapter 2 reviews the social and historical background, and the academic background in which the Cultural-historical Perspective generated. Second , Chapter 2 explores and discusses the Cultural-historical Perspective contained in Psychological Developmental Theory, Educational Psychology, Psychological Methodology. In his Psychological Developmental Theory , psychological development will experience two completely different processes, and generate two relatively different psychological functions. One is natural developmental process, which produces low-level psychological functions. The other is cultural-historical developmental process , called"Psychologically Humanized Process", which produces high-level psychological functions. The Cultural-historical Perspective of Vygotsky mainly focused on the high-level psychological functions to begin his study. Through his"Activity"theory,"Tool"theory, and"Agent"theory, he systematically explained the generation and development of human high-level psychological functions. Vygotsky realized the relation between education and development in his Educational Psychology, and put forward the viewpoint that school education is the source of development, and the brand-new concept the zone of proximal development. His study on education and zone of proximal development was a good example of his cultural-historical perspective. Vygotsky not only emphasized the theoretical structure of psychology , but also emphasized the study of methodology in psychology. He maintained the dialectic thinking to compose psychological scientific system, on the basis of which, he founded a series of study methods such as"genetic analytic method","unit analytic method","dual stimulative method"etc.Finally,Chapter 2 summarizes the limitation of the Cultural-historical Perspective of Vygotsky:(1)over-emphasized the human developmental cultural and historical attribute and ignored the active role that the human play;(2)separated low-level and high-level psychological functions;(3)Cultural-historical Perspective narrow understanding of Historism principles with abstract sociological perspective.The third chapter elaborates on the inheritance and development of Cultural-historical Perspective. In terms of activities , Leonjef tried to explain the human psychology's crucial effect on Cultural-historical Perspective, and to make up for the weakness of Vygotsky's theory in Cultural-historical Perspective, which was considering that human could only adapt to the environment inactively. Ruglia inherited the Vygotsky's theory about the systematical location of high-level psychological functions, and extended social-cultural-historical determinism to explain all human psychological activities including all the human mental activities through domain of activities. On the basis of Vygotsky's theory, Social Constructionism Psychology put forward"establishment and interaction". Social Constructionism Psychology emphasized the interaction between social macro- and micro- background and self-internal establishment, belief and cognition , which overcame the weakness in Vygotsky's Cultural-historical Perspective that is ignoring the active role of human and narrow understanding historical principles.The forth chapter analyzes the influence of Cultural-historical Perspective on the development of Modern Psychology. Vygotsky's psychological theory spread to the West,and made culture into the theories and methods of psychology which influenced the development of Modern Psychology greatly. To some extent , Vygotsky's Cultural-historical Perspective accelerated the Culture-Oriented, brought some new perspectives and methods to the Culture-Oriented, expanded the vision and promoted the sustainable and healthy development of the Culture-Oriented.The fifth chapter mainly elaborates on the domestic studies, related issues and inspiration on Vygotsky. Along with the more and more international study on Vygotsky, it already appeared"the upsurge of Vygotsky"."The upsurge of Vygotsky"also influenced China. Domestic studies on Vygotsky mainly consist of three phases: beginning phase, elementary introduction and evaluation phase, and specific and all-sided study. Vygotsky's creative work not only remained brilliant research results for us,but also brought some important inspiration to Chinese scholars, which will be referred in future psychological study.