Alex Kozulin

Achva Academic College · Department of Special Education

Alex Kozulin, The Cultural Mind, Cambridge University Press, 2024

Drawing attention to the pivotal ideas associated with 'the science of the cultural mind', this book centres on the idea that the human mind should be considered a sociocultural, rather than a natural or biological, phenomenon. Far from being purely theoretical, the science of the cultural mind has direct, practical implications for areas such as c...

Review of Mediated Learning and Cognitive Modifiability By David Tzuriel. New York: Springer, 2021.

The goal of this paper is to explore the cognitive and metacognitive skills of teachers engaged in cogni-tive training. One of the best-known stand-alone cognitive programs is "Instrumental Enrichment" (IE) developed by Feuerstein, Rand, Hoffman, and Miller. Similar to other cognitive programs, the main em-phasis on IE research has always been on t...

Little attention has been paid to the question about generality versus modularity of the learning potential (LP). The main research question of our study was: Is the students’ LP established with the help of a dynamic assessment of their English as a foreign language (EFL) oral proficiency general enough to predict their subsequent EFL reading and...

• The purpose of this presentation is to explore the still unrealized potential of the dynamic assessment (DA) approach. As a starting point of this exploration I take Feuerstein’s papers of the 1960s which, to the best of my knowledge, constitute his earliest published attempts at formulating the methodology of the Learning Potential Assessment (L...

Attitudes of English (EFL) teachers toward inclusion of students with learning disabilities (LD) Alex Kozulin & Haya Razam Purpose. While a considerable amount of research has been dedicated to challenges facing students with LD in the area of reading and writing in their native language, much less is known about their foreign language learning....

The present research is aimed at developing an educational program effective for the development of the concepts of perimeter and area in students with LD and testing this program. The study combined action research with quasi-experimental design involving experimental (LD) and comparison (non-LD) groups. The intervention program consisted of 12 se...

Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development is recognized as one of the most innovative psychological theories of the twentieth century. The theory is based on the assumption that culture plays a major role in cognitive development. Each period in child development is associated with a leading activity dominant in a given period. A considerable emph...

The goal of this article is to explore the process of dynamic assessment (DA) with a group of educated adults. Although there is nothing in the theory of DA that would prevent its use with educated adults who have normative development, in practice, the main emphasis of DA research and practice was on children or adults with various special educati...

Cognitive education is usually considered in terms of its impact on students' problem-solving skills and their acquisition of disciplinary knowledge. Little is known about the impact of cognitive training on the cognitive skills of teachers themselves. In this pilot study, 80 South African high school teachers participated in the cognitive educatio...

Introduction Dynamic assessment (DA) is a rapidly growing trend in psychological, educational, and language research and practice (Haywood and Lidz, 2007; Sternberg and Grigorenko, 2002). The key element of all DA approaches is the belief that evaluation of individual learning potential is no less important than testing the current performance leve...

En este breve escrito el autor sostiene que detrás de todo conocimiento sobre el comportamiento, el conocimiento y el aprendizaje humanos, una metáfora sustenta la comprensibilidad del modelo teórico: el propuesto por Vygotski es el de un niño poeta, lo que permitiría concebir su desarrollo mental y personal como un acto creativo que produce una ob...

Instrumental Enrichment (IE) is among the most popular cognitive education programs aimed at the development of general cognitive and problem solving skills. A considerable number of studies assessed the effectiveness of IE in changing the students’ cognitive functioning. At the same time not that many studies addressed the question of teacher trai...

Here, we present to Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology readers the first in a series of "Classical Articles." The purpose of this series is to reprint some of the articles that have played pivotal role in the development of the field of dynamic assessment and cognitive education. Some of these articles never appeared in English, and othe...

Here, we present to Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology readers the first in a series of "Classical Articles." The purpose of this series is to reprint some of the articles that have played pivotal role in the development of the field of dynamic assessment and cognitive education. Some of these articles never appeared in English, and othe...

The present study investigated the effectiveness of a cognitive enrichment programme as a tool for enhancing the chances of immigrant and minority students to be admitted to a technological college. Students received two weekly sessions (four hours) of Instrumental Enrichment (IE) during the second semester of the college preparatory programme. The...

The relationship between thinking and learning constitutes one of the fundamental problems of cognitive psychology. Though there is an obvious overlap between the domains of thinking and learning, it seems more productive to consider learning as being predominantly acquisition while considering thinking as the application of the existent concepts a...

The dynamic assessment (DA) paradigm asserts that the level of a person's current cognitive performance (often operationalized as problem solving) does not necessarily coincide with his or her learning potential. For the most part learning potential assessment procedures have been used to uncover a "hidden" cognitive potential of low-performing stu...

The study aimed at exploring the effectiveness of cognitive intervention with the new "Instrumental Enrichment Basic" program (IE-basic), based on Feuerstein's theory of structural cognitive modifiability that contends that a child's cognitive functioning can be significantly modified through mediated learning intervention. The IE-basic progam is a...

This study examines new immigrants from the former USSR, their attitudes, expectations and the awareness of change in themselves and in their fellow immigrants. Participants demonstrated attitudes toward the new society which differed dramatically depending on the sphere of life being examined: cultural, institutional, or quotidian. Participants di...

The goal of the present study was to explore the dynamic aspects of receptive language development of young children with Down syndrome (DS). By its very nature typical dynamic assessment (DA) of cognitive functions focuses on “fluid” intelligence that is more amenable to change, than verbal knowledge that is “crystallized”. We believe, however, th...

The first research question of this study concerns the plasticity of cognitive processes of adult learners confronted with the task of adapting to a new language and an unfamiliar system of formal education. The second question inquires into the relative contribution of two different forms of cognitive intervention—the Learning Potential Assessment...

New evidence is presented that a basic cognitive function such as spatial memory is strongly culturally dependent and quite modifiable even in adult learners. The study was conducted with several groups of new immigrants from Ethiopia in Israel who were enrolled in a year-long educational program for young adults. Static administration of the Posit...

Data generated by international science examinations such as TIMSS and PISA indicated that many students failed to solve science tasks not because of their lack of specific scientific knowledge, but because of poor general problem solving skills. The present study was triggered by the need to introduce middle-school students to strategies and techn...

This book demonstrates how rigorous mathematical thinking can be fostered through the development of students’ cognitive tools and operations. This approach seems to be particularly effective with socially disadvantaged and culturally different students. The authors argue that children’s cognitive functions cannot be viewed as following a natural m...

Was the issue of the development and education of children with special needs chosen by Vygotsky, or was it a chance encounter forced by circumstances? We may never be able to find a definitive answer to this question. Vygotsky left no diary, and the testimony of his colleagues does not shed much light on this issue. What is known with certainty is...

Learning potential assessment (LPA) is only slightly younger than intelligence testing itself. In the early 1930s Lev Vygotsky (1934/1986) in Russia and Andre Rey (1934) in Switzerland made clear statements in favor of LPA procedures. As shown in recent reviews (Lidz, 1987; Weidl, Guthke, and Wigenfeld, 1995) even the period between the 1940s and t...

The aim of the present study was to explore the support system that immigrant parents from Ethiopia can provide to their children who experience difficulties in school. One hundred and thirty seven families from five Israeli cities were interviewed by a specially trained team of veteran immigrants from Ethiopia who received further education in Isr...

The goal of this study is to determine whether the learning potential score of underachieving students may serve as a better predictor of their sensitivity to cognitive intervention than the standard psychometric measures. Primary school immigrant students from Ethiopia were pre-tested at the beginning of the year using the dynamic version of Raven...

The aim of this paper is to valuate the applicability of Vygotsky's sociocultural theory and the concept of dynamic assessment to the problem of assessing reading comprehension in English as a third language (L3). The study was conducted with immigrant students from Ethiopia studying at pre-academic centers in Israel. The assessment procedure inclu...

What is the secret of Vygotsky’s popularity? Why does a theory developed in Moscow a few years after the Russian Revolution capture the imagination of American educators at the beginning of the 21st century? One possible explanation of this puzzling phenomenon is that Vygotsky’s theory offers us answers to the questions that were not asked earlier....

What are the differences among American, German, and Japanese classrooms? If we take as a cue the anecdote told by Stiegler and Hiebert (1999) in their book The Teaching Gap, in a Japanese classroom there are students and there is knowledge and the teacher serves as a mediator between them. In a German classroom there are also knowledge and student...

This 2003 book comprehensively covers all major topics of Vygotskian educational theory and its classroom applications. Particular attention is paid to the Vygotskian idea of child development as a consequence rather than premise of learning experiences. Such a reversal allows for new interpretations of the relationships between cognitive developme...

The goal of this article is to explore the feasibility of the development and implementation of the dynamic assessment procedure in such curriculum-based areas as English as a foreign language (EFL). Vygotsky's notion of the Zone of Proximal Development and Feuerstein's concept of Mediated Learning Experience served as a theoretical base for the co...

One of the most radical changes occurring in our approach to learning and instruction concerns the agency of learning. Only recently an individual was perceived as a 'natural' agency of learning. Now this position becomes increasingly challenged on both theoretical and prac- tical grounds. The concept of mediation plays the central role in this cri...

Feuerstein's Instrumental Enrichment (IE) program has been widely used for teaching learning strategies to socially disadvantaged, learning disabled and educationally deprived minority children. The present study focused on the question of mastery of IE tasks by new immigrant children from Ethiopia. The level of spontaneous correct solutions of IE...

The future of the cognitive and learning theories is discussed by Prawat in the context of discourses produced by John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky seventy years earlier, in the 1920s and 1930s. This frame of reference tells us much about the current disciplinary self-identification of the cognitive theory. Instead of aspiring to fit into the image of fa...

Four groups of new immigrant students from Ethiopia in Israel (N = 46) participated. They were tested using the Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices and received cognitive intervention in the form of the Learning Potential Assessment Device procedure. The intervention included teaching problem-solving strategies using material similar but not iden...

Discourse, Learning, and Schooling explores theoretical and methodological relationships between childrens' discourse - or socially used language - and their learning in educational settings. Within the fields of education and psychology, the role that discourse plays in social processes of learning and teaching has emerged as a critical, empirical...

Maintains that, although Leontiev's sociocultural orientation and its activity emphasis were inherited from Vygotsky's theory, the two men's theoretical motives and goals differed. Vygotsky's focus on symbolic mediation transforming psychological processes and Leontiev's on activities leading to internalization of action in mental processes were co...

Vygotsky's ideas, which originated in the scientific debates ofthe 1920s-1930s, have proved to be relevant for the psychological and educational agenda of the last decade of the twentieth century. Such delayed recognition carries with it an inevitable problem of interpretation. In this paper several such interpretations reflecting changing perspect...

This article suggests new directions for learning theory and cognitive education based on the combination of Vygotsky's "psychological tools" paradigm and Feuerstein's mediated learning experience (MLE) approach. Cognitive functions required by formal schooling do not appear spontaneously. Moreover, their development can be impeded by both an insuf...

Most studies on the adaptation of immigrants have a number of typical features. For the most part, they concern immigrants from Third World countries with a low level of formal education who represent a small minority group in the host country. This paper will focus on the phenomenon of mass immigration of Russian Jews to Israel during 1989-1992—in...

The reviewer contends that the authors (see record 1993-98537-000 ) present samples of their clinical research in the use of the notion of dialogue to evaluate the dynamics of the self and the possibilities of its integration. One may argue that there is a certain chasm between the rich theoretical texture of the authors' discussion of dialogical a...

Despite its failings, Herrnstein and Murray's "The Bell Curve" is valuable for emphasizing cognition as significantly affecting human performance and social achievement; acknowledging human differences; and offering a frightening depiction of contemporary American society. The authors err in reducing intelligence to a stable, immutable IQ score. Dy...

In PsYchologY that recognizes itself as a humanistic discipline, culture is considered to be the very fabric of human experience. Accordingly, human activity aimed at the creation and interpretation of culturally significant phenomena should be accepted as paradigmatic. An early attempt to reform psychology along these lines had been made by Vygots...

Reviews two books by L. S. Vygotsky and A. R. Luria: (1) "Studies on the History of Behavior: Ape, Primitive, and Child"; and (2) "Ape, Primitive Man and Child: Essays in the History of Behavior." Both books are based on a book published in 1930 that examined the phylogenetic, historical, and ontogenetic development of human behavior and cognition....

The concept of mediated learning is examined, focusing on the work of L. Vygotsky (1896-1934) and R. Feuerstein (born 1921). Mediated learning is the subtle social interaction between teacher and learner in the enrichment of the student's learning experience. Both theorists take a strong sociological approach to the development of intelligence and...

This paper traces the humanistic tradition in Russian psychology, that is, the tradition that derives its theoretical models from the humanities, and specifically from philology and literary scholarship. The milestones of this tradition are provided by Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of “life as authoring,” by the analysis of the psychological relevance...

Fyodor Vasilyuk's Psychology of Experiencing presents a Russian view of the process of "living through" a psychological crisis. This view is informed by both Vygotsky's psychological and Bakhtin's philosophical traditions and illustrated by Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov. Vasilyuk's ideas constitute an important contribution to humanistic psychology and...

The paper examines the heuristic value of the concept of regression in the context of developmental ideas advanced by the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934). The language of semiotic mediation of behavioral acts and mental operations seems to be more adequate at the present stage of research than the old metaphors of mental “economy” and...

Thinking and speech. VygotskyL.. In RieberR. & CartonA. (Eds.), The collected works of Lev Vygotsky, Vol. 1 (MinickN., Trans.). New York: Plenum, 1987. Pp. v + 285. - Volume 11 Issue 1 - Alex Kozulin

Noting that the previous two decades have seen Lev Vygotsky's psychology become highly influential while the psychology of other theoretical giants has faded, this book provides a major intellectual biography about Vygotsky's theories and their relationship to twentieth-century Russian and Western intellectual culture. The book traces Vygotsky's id...

An attempt was made to bring about a theoretical synthesis of such seemingly unrelated concepts as ‘reality monitoring’ (belonging to contemporary American cognitive psychology), ‘psychological tools’ (suggested by Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky in the 1930s), and ‘cognitive flexibility in bilinguals’ (developed by Canadian researchers in the 1...

The claim by Wertsch and Youniss [1987] that Vygotsky’s developmental psychology could best be explained as a response to the social task of nation building is examined. It is argued that the Soviet educational system of the 1930s to 1950s was incompatible with Vygotsky’s theory, for children were taught in terms of everyday, ‘spontaneous’ concepts...

What function can a science of psychology serve in a utopian society whose ideological foundations already contain a theory of human nature? This is the question that has dominated the history of Soviet psychology--a history that Alex Kozulin decodes in this book.Following an introduction that discusses the problems of deciphering the real content...

Presents a historical-theoretical analysis of the evolution of the concept of activity in Soviet psychology, beginning with the early writings of Vygotsky. Vygotsky suggested that socially meaningful activity ( Tätigkeit) may serve as an explanatory principle and generator of human consciousness. Incorporating the concept of activity into Vygotsky'...

In the late nineteenth century, Georgy Chelpanov brought Wundtian psychology to Russia and established that country's first institute of psychology. In the 1910s, Chelpanov's Institute was better staffed and equipped than any other psychological laboratory in Europe. Chelpanov's breadth of psychological vision helped him see beyond the narrow frame...

Every attitude, every methodological position inevitably undergoes numerous influences in the course of its development. It becomes overgrown with entirely new interpretations and commentary. Neither Pavlov's signal system concept nor his typology of 'thinkers' and 'artists' avoided this destiny. The signal systems concept was based upon the genera...

Abstract,2

The problem of immigrant and ethnic minority students' cognitive and problem-solving skills has both theoretical and practical significance. As a theoretical problem it poses a question of cross-cultural differences in cognition and their influences on education. As a practical problem it emerges each time the teacher enters a culturally heterogene...