Vogotsky

Revisiting Piaget and Vigotsky: In Search of a Learning Model
for Technology Education.
Pierre Vérillon
Piaget, Vygotsky, and Artifacts

The same can be said about the psychological approach ofhuman technical functioning. In this section, the relevance of two different conceptual frameworks is discussed in relation to modeling human interaction with artifacts. In Europe, during the firsthalf of the century, several contrasting theoretical paradigms competed to explain human psychological behavior. Among these, one important current stressed the role of culture and society in theshaping of mental functions and processes and sought to articulate psychology within the wider realm of anthropological studies. Tool use, techniques, and work as fundamental dimensions of human activitywere prominent topics for research.

Some of the most influential psychologists of the time–Köhler, Vygotsky, Guillaume, Meyerson, Wallon, to mention a few– were major contributors
of empiricalevidence and theory. After WWII, however, scientific norms for psychological research favored methodologies and theoretical models
inspired by the natural sciences and, later, by artificial informationprocessing. Consequently, interest for complex and holistic, culturally determined behavior (which could no longer be treated as such) waned,
and the authors and the tradition that had once tackledthese problems receded into near oblivion.

For Vygotsky the philosophical framework he provided includes not only insightful interpretations about the cognitive role of tools of mediation, but alsothe re-interpretation of well-known concepts in psychology such as the notion of internalization of knowledge. In other see point, Piaget intends to explain knowledge development as a process ofequilibration using two main concepts in his theory, assimilation and accommodation, as belonging not only to biological interactions but also to cognitive ones. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vygotsky ,...