What is Vygotsky's theory of play?

According to Lev S. Vygotsky, the highest levels of abstract thinking and self-regulation in preschool development are established in pretend play using object substitutions. Vygotsky also introduced an entirely new way of assessing the child’s ability to learn by using the assistance of a more knowledgeable person – the zone of proximal development. These concepts are fundamental to Vygotsky’s theory of how consciously directed mental functions develop as neurological systems. Francine Smolucha, Ph.D., has publications that include her translations of Vygotsky’s writings and her own original research on creativity, pretend play, and private speech. She has co-authored numerous research monographs on Vygotsky and creativity. Smolucha and Smolucha introduced Synergistic Psychology as a synthesis of major psychological theories using Vygotsky’s model of verbal interactions as the key unifying concept. Their most recent publication advancing Synergistic Psychology was Smolucha and Smolucha. Vygotsky’s empirical model of the internalization of self-guiding speech is also supported by an extensive research literature.

In play a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behaviour. Vygotsky was probably the first modern day theorist to fully consider the meaning and value of play in children’s lives, and to recognise how the learning that occurs as a result of children’s participation in play is ‘socially constructed’. He asserted that the potential of each child is inextricably tied up with those around him, and it follows that such interplay with others is unique to each child. He named this concept the Zone of Proximal Development. Ultimately Vygotsky argued that children should be assessed not only for what they can achieve in the here and now, but also for the potential they possess to progress further given a favourable environment. What the child can do today in collaboration, tomorrow he will be able to do independently. In play it is as though he were a head taller than himself.