UNESCO Chair on the Cultural and Historical Psychology of Childhood

Moscow State University of Psychology and Education

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Home Thesaurus of Cultural-Historical Psychology

The thesaurus of Cultural-Historical Psychology

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This informational system (thesaurus) is aimed at orienting the user in the diversity of L.S. Vygotsky’s terms, support them in reading Vygotsky’s texts by providing the necessary bibliographic material and reference data.
On one hand this informational and reference system serves a function of synthesis by helping the reader to grasp the whole terminological network of Vygotsky, and on the other – helps deepen the understanding of each specific term of his theory.
 
The structure of a Thesaurus Entry
  1. word – definition (term);
  2. translation of the word into English;
  3. frequency factor – an indication of how many times the term was used in Vygotsky’s texts (including word-forms), in which works of which period the term was used;
  4. quote database – an exhaustive list of quotes containing the term as a key word, with an indication of the source of the quote (on the basis of bibliographical list of writings by T.M. Lifanova, published in collected works edition, vol.6, 1982);
  5. generalizing article (the actual thesaurus entry for the term);
  6. bibliographical list – a list of literature presenting most fully and explicitly the development of Vygotsky’s ideas related to the term, including writings in Russian and English.
A certain amount of prerequisite work by the project collaborators allowed us to allocate 9 sections in which we put in good order the main terms used by L.S. Vygotsky in his published writings.
After analyzing the subject index included in the edition of L.S. Vygotsky’s collected works (1982-1984, “Pedagogyca” publishing house, Moscow) we realized that some of Vygotsky’s  original terms were not included in the index. Therefore we conducted an additional analysis of psychological dictionaries and Vigotsky’s texts, and expanded the Word List. All your comments and suggestions regarding the Word List are very important to us.
Additional search fields will allow for obtaining information on where L.S. Vygotsky worked in the time when he performed a certain research, data on periodicals which published the main results of research by Vygotsky or his colleagues, information on scientific events where those results were presented and discussed.
We also created a tentative list of resources for additional search fields of the system – including Vygotsky’s places of work, periodicals which published his contributions, etc.
 
General sections of the informational and reference system
“The thesaurus of Cultural-Historical Psychology”

Section

Subsection

1

Methodology of psychology.

Methodological principles and methodical/procedural means of cultural-historical psychology

 

2

General scientific and philosophical terms, terms related to interdisciplinary and psychological scope of cultural-historical psychology

General scientific and philosophical terms

History of psychology

3

Basic terms of L.S. Vygotsky’s cultural-historical concept

 

4

 

 

 

General psychology

 

 

 

Sensation and perception

Memory

Attention

Thinking and speech

Emotions and needs. The affect/intellect problem (volition)

Personality

Imagination

Action, movement, motorics

5

 

 

 

 

 

 

Psychology of childhood (developmental psychology)

 

 

 

 

 

 

General methodological questions of children’s development periodization

Stages of children’s development

Neonatal crisis

Infancy

The First year crisis

Early childhood

The crisis of Age Three

Preschool age

The crisis of Age Seven

School age

The crisis of Age Thirteen

Puberty

The crisis of Age Seventee

6

Defectology

 

 

General methodological questions

Psychological features of a blind child

Psychological features of a deaf child

Psychological features of a mentally handicapped child

7

Educational psychology

 

The problem of education and development

Zone of proximal development

Psychological features of a gifted child

Behavioral and educational difficulties

8

Psychology of art

 

9

Scientific basis of psychology

 

Last Updated ( Friday, 31 October 2014 14:28 )  

Vygotsky Lev SemionovichVygotsky Lev Semionovich
5.11.1896 - 11.06.1934
Psychologist, thinker. Founder of Cultural-Historical psychology.

“… not a single distinguished psychologist in the world was able to enrich his area of science so significantly and diversely as he did…” M.G. Yaroshevsky