Lev Vygotsky

Learning is more than the acquisition of the ability to think; it is the acquisition of many specialized abilities for thinking about a variety of things.

Any function in the child's cultural development appears twice, or on two planes. First, it appears on the social plane, and then on the psychological plane. First, it appears between people as an interpsychological category, and then within the child as an intrapsychological category.

The true direction of the development of thinking is not from the individual to the social, but from the social to the individual.

A child's greatest achievements are possible in play, achievements that tomorrow will become her basic level of real action.

Through others, we become ourselves.

What a child can do with assistance today she will be able to do by herself tomorrow.

The social dimension of consciousness is primary in time and in fact. The individual dimension is derivative and secondary.

Speech is a means of communication and a means of thinking.

The path from object to child and from child to object passes through another person.

Human learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them.

The child begins to perceive the world not only through his eyes but also through his speech.

The most essential feature of play is that a child carries out his desires, but he does so by transferring them to other objects and actions.

Development is a complex dialectical process characterized by periodicity, unevenness in the development of different functions, metamorphosis or qualitative transformation of one form into another, intertwining of external and internal factors, and the adaptive process, which overcomes the obstacles that the child encounters.

The word is a microcosm of human consciousness.

The primary role of the teacher is to organize the learning process so that the child can master the tools of culture.

The child's development is a continuous process of self-creation.

Thought is not merely expressed in words; it comes into existence through them.

The very fact that a child can imitate something that is beyond his own level of development indicates that he is capable of learning.

The child's intellectual development is a function of the cultural tools that are available to him.

The most significant moment in the course of intellectual development, which gives birth to the purely human forms of practical and abstract intelligence, occurs when speech and practical activity, two previously completely independent lines of development, converge.