Editing Lev Vygotsky (section)

==Career==
In January 1924, Vygotsky took part in the Second All-Russian Psychoneurological Congress in [[Petrograd]] (soon thereafter renamed [[Leningrad]]). After the Congress, Vygotsky met with [[Alexander Luria]] and with his help received an invitation to become a research fellow at the Psychological Institute in Moscow which was under the direction of [[Konstantin Kornilov]]. Vygotsky moved to Moscow with his new wife, Roza Smekhova, with whom he would have two children.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gonzalez-DeHass |first1=Alyssa R. |last2=Willems |first2=Patricia P. |title=Theories in Educational Psychology: Concise Guide to Meaning and Practice |date=2013 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-1-4758-0231-3 |page=64 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JlH5FxpTH4YC |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Green |first1=Michael G. |last2=Piel |first2=John A. |title=Theories of Human Development: A Comparative Approach |date=14 July 2015 |publisher=Psychology Press |isbn=978-1-317-34319-6 |page=258 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n_MoCgAAQBAJ |language=en}}</ref> He began his career at the Psychological Institute as a "staff scientist, second class".<ref>Van der Veer, R., & Valsiner, J. (1991). [https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/10170 Understanding Vygotsky. A quest for synthesis]. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.</ref> He also became a secondary school teacher, covering a period marked by his interest in the processes of learning and the role of language in learning.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Nutbrown|first1=Cathy|title=Early Childhood Education: History, Philosophy and Experience|last2=Clough|first2=Peter|last3=Selbie|first3=Philip|date=2008|publisher=SAGE|isbn=978-1-4129-4497-7|location=Thousand Oaks, CA|pages=57}}</ref>

By the end of 1925, Vygotsky completed his dissertation, "The Psychology of Art," which was not published until the 1960s, and a book, "Pedagogical Psychology," which apparently drew on lecture notes he prepared in Gomel while he was a psychology instructor at local educational establishments. In the summer of 1925, he made his first and only trip abroad to a London congress on the education of the deaf.<ref>van der Veer, R. & Zavershneva, E. (2011). To Moscow with Love: Partial Reconstruction of Vygotsky's Trip to London. ''Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science'' 45(4), 458–474: [https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs12124-011-9173-8 PDF], [https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs12124-011-9173-8 ''pdf'']</ref> Upon return to the Soviet Union, he was hospitalized due to [[tuberculosis]] and would remain an invalid and out of work until the end of 1926.<ref>Завершнева Е.Ю. «Ключ к психологии человека»: комментарии к блокноту Л.С. Выготского из больницы «Захарьино» (1926 г.) // Вопр. психол. 2009. No.3. С. 123—141.</ref><ref>Zavershneva, E. "The Key to Human Psychology". Commentary on L.S. Vygotsky's Notebook from the Zakharino Hospital (1926). ''[[Journal of Russian and East European Psychology]]'' 50(4), July–August 2012.</ref> His dissertation was accepted as the prerequisite of a scholarly degree, which was awarded to Vygotsky in autumn 1925 ''[[graduation in absentia|in absentia]]''.

After his release from the hospital, Vygotsky did theoretical and methodological work on the crisis in psychology, but never finished the draft of the manuscript and interrupted his work on it around mid-1927. The manuscript was published later with notable editorial interventions and distortions in 1982 and was presented by the editors as one of the most important of Vygotsky's works.<ref name="Zavershneva, E 2009">Zavershneva, E. 2009. Issledovanie rukopisi L.S. Vygotskogo "Istoricheskii smysl psikhologicheskogo krizisa" [Investigation of the original of Vygotsky's manuscript "Historical meaning of crisis in psychology"]. Voprosy psikhologii (6):119-137.</ref><ref name="ReferenceA">Завершнева Е.Ю. Исследование рукописи Л.С. Выготского "Исторический смысл психологического кризиса" // Вопросы психологии, 2009. No.6, с. 119 - 138.</ref><ref name="ReferenceB">Zavershneva, E. Investigating the Manuscript of L.S. Vygotsky's "The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology". ''Journal of Russian and East European Psychology'', 50(4), July–August 2012.</ref><ref name="ReferenceC">Завершнева Е.Ю., Осипов М.Е. Основные поправки к тексту «Исторический смысл психологического кризиса», опубликованному в 1982 г. в собрании сочинений Л.С. Выготского // Вопросы психологии, 2010. No.1. С. 92—103.</ref><ref>E. Iu. Zavershneva and M. E. Osipov. Primary Changes to the Version of "The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology" Published in the Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky. ''Journal of Russian and East European Psychology'', vol. 50(4), July–August 2012.</ref> In this early manuscript, Vygotsky argued for the formation of a general psychology that could unite the naturalist objectivist strands of psychological science with the more philosophical approaches of Marxist orientation. However, he also harshly criticized those of his colleagues who attempted to build a "[[Marxist]] Psychology" as an alternative to the naturalist and philosophical schools. He argued that if one wanted to build a truly Marxist psychology, there were no shortcuts to be found by merely looking for applicable quotes in the writings of [[Karl Marx|Marx]]. Rather, one should look for a methodology that was in accordance with the Marxian spirit.<ref name="Kozulin1986">Kozulin, Alex. 1986. "Vygotsky in Context" in Vygotsky L. "Thought and Language", MIT Press. pp. xi - lvii</ref>

From 1926 to 1930, Vygotsky worked on a research program investigating the development of higher psychological functions, i.e. culturally-governed lower psychological functions such as voluntary attention, selective memory, object-oriented action, and decision making. During this period, he gathered a group of collaborators including [[Alexander Luria]], Boris Varshava, [[Alexei Leontiev]], [[Leonid Zankov]], and several others. Vygotsky guided his students in researching this phenomenon from three different perspectives: 
* The instrumental approach, which aimed to understand the ways humans use objects as mediation aids in memory and reasoning.
* A developmental approach, focused on how children acquire higher cognitive functions during development
* A culture-historical approach, studying how social and cultural patterns of interaction shape forms of mediation and developmental trajectories <ref name="Kozulin1986"/>