Vygotsky and Piaget: Scientific concepts

Abstract

This special issue is dedicated to the 3rd Estoril Vigotsky Conference-the biannual international scientific event held in Estoril, Portugal on 16-18 June 2014. The organizing committee honored the wide impact of Lev Vygotsky's works on contemporary psychology and included Vigotskyan League of Portuguese Language and the Institute Quintino Aires, in collaboration with the Lomonosov Moscow State University, the Russian University of Humanities (Russia, Moscow), IPAF-Instituto Vigotsky (São Paulo, Brazil) and Andricard (Luanda, Angola). The editorial board of our journal is very grateful to Professor Quintino-Aires for organization of this outstanding conference and to Professor Margarida César for contribution to this special issue. L.S. Vygotsky founded the socio-cultural approach to understanding cognitive processes in child development and introduced the genetic (developmental) method for their study. He also introduced the concept of cultural tools or mediational means, in his belief the higher mental functions to be products of social processes. The Theory and methodology section starts with an article by Andrei I. Podolskiy that discusses the practical implementation of another outstanding theory within the cultural-historical approach-by P.Ya. Galperin. The article's title There's nothing so practical as a good theory could be the motto of this special issue, because it includes classic theoretical papers as well as applied research and empirical data from professional practice. From the standpoints of the intersubjectivity concept, Anatoly N. Krichevets explores Lev Vygotsky's quintessential statement that "Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: on the social and on the individual levels-first between people (interpsychological) and then within the child (intrapsychological)". Pedro Ferreira Alves joins developmental psychologists and cognitive scientists around the world in discussion of L.S. Vygotsky and J. Piaget's dialogue on formation of scientific concepts. The idea of external mediation in rehabilitation of mental functioning became the basis of major neuropsychological developments, including the works by A.R. Luria. The largest section of the issue is dedicated to current questions of neuropsychology and clinical psychology.

The effectiveness of using the model-based thinking strategy in developing first-grade high school students’ physical concepts and inquiry thinking skills

“…This indicates that the effect size of the experimental treatment (model-based thinking strategy) in developing physical concepts is high, and this can be due to the fact that the model-based thinking strategy is considered one of the strategies that support the teaching of physical concepts in a procedural way, and reinforce the constructivist perspective in learning physical concepts and the necessity to convert the educational process from focusing on teaching physical facts to teaching physical concepts and ideas, and achieving a deep understanding of physical concepts, their construction and development, and applying them in new situations. It also reinforces the concept of concept based thinking, which refers to the operation of the mental processes associated with the learner's attention towards the relationships between events or examples and physical phenomena, in addition, providing the learner with the ability to interpret the concept and think about the rules that govern its construction and formation (Alves, 2014). This result agrees with the results of previous studies in the importance of using model-based thinking and mental models as a strategy for teaching physical concepts, constructing integrated and multiple representations for them, and enhancing thinking in concepts learning (Gaytan, 2017;Ifenthaler & Seel, 2013;Russ & Odden, 2017;Solimani, 2013;Zangori et al, 2017;Zwickl & Hu, 2015) .…”

“…Darmaji et al (2018) emphasized that providing learners with scientific concepts contributes to giving them meaningful educational experiences, because it helps in achieving a high level of thinking, and thus provides them with the necessary skills to solve different problems by processing information, formulating conclusions and different solutions to the problem. Accordingly, Alves (2014) formulated the concept of conceptual thinking, which refers to the operation of mental processes related to the learner's attention towards the relationships between objects, events, or examples, and scientific phenomena. Also, in conceptsbased thinking, the individual learns to distinguish and abstract the common characteristics that are formulated in a phrase that expresses the verbal significance of the concept in order to form generalizations, and to distinguish between elements or characteristics related to the concept and those that are not related to it.…”

Estudio del lenguaje desde la perspectiva sociocultural

“…Por ejemplo, Rodríguez (2009) se concentró en trabajar asuntos internos -o biológicos pertinentes al sujeto-y externos -sociales y culturales-y la relación entre ambos. Otros autores investigan desde prácticas que ocurren en ambientes académicos y en ámbitos externos a la academia, incluso en contextos virtuales (Ferreira, 2014;Peterson, 2012). Igualmente, Halle et al (2014) y Valdez (2012) se enfocan en el lenguaje principal de una persona y en observar las diferencias que ocurren en quienes aprenden un segundo idioma.…”

Question-asking behavior as a form of cognitive activity in primary school children

“…Notwithstanding the attention that the issues of development of children's cognitive activity have received from scientific research by Russian and foreign psychologists for many decades (Piaget, 1994;Alves, 2014;Krichevets, 2014), the issue of children's question-asking behavior as a form of cognitive activity has long escaped the attention of researchers. Most available studies on this psychological issue can be divided into two groups.…”