Chapter Two - Theoretical Foundations and Review of Literature

2.1 Theoretical Foundation and Key Definitions

As described briefly in the preceding chapter , the present study required participants to record, share and negotiate co-constructed understandings of their local environments, using text- and picture-messaging as the medium of communication.  The research is therefore grounded in classical Vygotskyian notions of the cultural use of tools, symbols and language, with respect to what has been conceptualized as the distribution of intelligence (Perkins, 1992).  

Perkins elaborates on three ways in which intelligence can be distributed; namely physically (describing the gamut of student output from completion of traditional problem sets, to journals and portfolios, to simple programming and desktop publishing), socially (co-operative learning), and symbolically (for example, through diagrams and charts, concept maps, and role-play).  To quote Perkins, "people think and remember with the help of all sorts of physical aids, and we commonly construct new physical aids to help ourselves yet more.  People think and remember socially, through interaction with other people, sharing information and perspectives and developing ideas … People sustain thinking through socially shared symbol systems – speech, writing, the technical argot of specialties, diagrams, scientific notations, and so on". (p. 133)

The germ of these insights was planted in Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory of activity, in which he postulated that individuals never react directly to their environment, but instead that the relationships between human agents and objects in their environment are mediated by culture, tools and symbols.

The catalyst which prompted the crystallization of Vygotsky’s thoughts with regards activity theory is often seen as his dissatisfaction with psychoanalysis and behaviourism, which were the two prevailing directions of psychology in the 1920s.  For example, in 1934, his published piece (translated into English in 1962) criticised methods of research on the study of thought and language in that “their interdependence and organization in the structure of consciousness as a whole remained outside the field of investigation”.

Instead, Vygotsky attempted to address this interdependence by devoting himself to investigating how children’s cognitive development is influenced by culture and language.  In fact, to Vygotsky, culture and social influences were seen as central to such development.  By attributing primary emphasis on external social forces, with respect to an individual’s cognitive development, Vygotsky’s views are often contrasted to the more self-oriented views of Piagetian developmental theory.

Vygotsky’s main area of interest was termed ‘pedology’.  This interest was shared by his contemporaries, Luria and Leont’ev.  Pedology - a discipline of child development - used tests developed in the West for psychoassessment, and for the diagnosis of developmental disorders.  Vygotsky himself devoted much time to studying the education of the mentally and physically handicapped, spending time (through his work at the Institute of Defectology in Moscow – which he founded) with people afflicted by congenital blindness, aphasia and mental retardation.  However, in the mid-1930s, around the time of Vygotsky’s death, the Soviet government ruled that pedology was a ‘bourgeois pseudoscience’, and ordered that it no longer be discussed, let alone researched.

These pedological roots underlie much of what Vygotsky, Luria and Leont’ev termed the concept of ‘artifact-mediated and object-oriented action’.  The roots are threefold – in brief, they are the importance of culture, language and the child’s relationship with the environment.

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