Tools of the Mind

The Tools of the Mind curriculum began in 1993 at Metropolitan State College of Denver (now Metropolitan State University of Denver) when Dr. Elena Bodrova and Dr. Deborah Leong began working together in early childhood classrooms to improve childrens ability to learn and to teach educators new techniques for working with children. Dr. Bodrova came to the United States from Russia, where she had studied with students and colleagues of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky and had worked on the application of Vygotskian-based teaching methods in preschool and kindergarten classrooms. The first priority of Drs. Bodrova and Leong was to create Vygotskian-based instructional strategies that would work in U.S. classrooms, which have different cultural demands than those in Russia, where the strategies were first developed. They crafted activities that teachers would be able to implement and that formed a coherent wholewith both a consistent theoretical framework and an internal logic. ...