Vygotsky S Notebooks

This book consists of previously unpublished manuscripts by Vygotsky found in the first systematic study of Vygotsky’s family archive. The notebooks and scientific diaries gathered in this volume represent all periods of Vygotsky’s scientific life, beginning with the earliest manuscript, entitled The tragicomedy of strivings (1912), and ending with his last note, entitled Pro domo sua (1934), written shortly before his death. The notes reveal unknown aspects of the eminent psychologist’s personality, show his aspirations and interests, and allow us to gain insights into the development of his thinking and its internal dynamics. Several texts reflect the plans that Vygotsky was unable to realize during his lifetime, such as the creation of a theory of emotions and a theory of consciousness, others reveal Vygotsky’s involvement in activities that were previously unknown, and still others provide outlines of papers and lectures. The notes are presented in chronological order, preceded by brief introductions and accompanied by an extensive set of notes. The result is a book that allows us to obtain a much deeper understanding of Vygotsky’s innovative ideas.

This book takes up where L. S. Vygotsky has left off during the last few months of his life, when he renounced much of what he had done before. A month before Vygotsky died, he wrote in his notebook that he felt like Moses who had seen the promised land but was never allowed to set foot on it. The vision Vygotsky laid out during his final days had been influenced by his readings of the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza and a book by Karl Marx published for the first time a year before Vygotsky died. In the present book, the author lays out a view of mathematics based on a monist view of knowing, learning, and development. Just as the essence of what is specifically human, the mathematics of mathematics exists in the ensemble of societal relations. For the individual, this means that mathematical thinking and reasoning was a society-typical relation with another person first, often the teacher. Using data from a variety of situations, including school students as well as scientists, the book develops some fundamental concepts and categories for mathematics education research, including the thinking body, sociogenesis, the intra-intersubjective field, pereživanie (experience), obučenie (teaching | learning), and drama.

Vol. 2 translated and with an introduction by Jane E. Knox and Carol B. Stevens.

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 development and education at different junctions of the human life span. It also opens new perspectives on atypical development, learning disabilities, and assessment of children's learning potential. Classroom applications of Vygotskian theory are discussed in the book. Teacher training and the changing role of a teacher in a sociocultural classroom is discussed in addition to the issues of teaching and learning activities and peer interactions. Relevant research findings from the US, Western Europe, and Russia are brought together to clarify the possible new applications of Vygotskian ideas in different disciplinary areas.

The Heart of the Matter explores the legacies of Ilyenkov and Vygotsky, two Russian thinkers who marshalled their passion for truth, enlightenment and independent thought to understand the human mind, not for the sake of knowledge alone, but to help create the conditions in which human flourishing can become a reality for all. The book renders their theories intelligible against the dramatic social and historical background in which they lived and worked, bringing their ideas into dialogue with themes and thinkers in Western philosophy to reveal how they illuminate philosophical issues of enduring significance.

Psychology, quantitative or qualitative, tends to conceive of the human person using metaphysical concepts and to separate the practical, affective, and intellectual aspects of participation in everyday life. Lev S. Vygotsky, however, was working towards a "concrete human psychology," a goal that he expresses in a small, unfinished text of the same name. This book articulates the foundation of and develops such a concrete human psychology according to which all higher psychological functions are relations between persons before being functions, and according to which personality is the ensemble of societal relations with others that a person has lived and experienced. Correlated with concern for the concreteness of human life and the psychology that theorizes it is the idea that to live means to change. However, none of the categories we currently have in psychology are categories of change as such. In this work of concrete human psychology, categories are developed on the basis of Vygotsky’s work that are suitable to theorize an ever-changing life, including the language humans use to take control over their conditions and to talk about the conditions in which they live.

Written by the team at Bard College's Institute for Writing and Thinking, this book is designed to provide practical guidance regarding the challenges and potential of writing-based teaching, and suggestions for how to adapt the practices to particular classroom situations. The contributors share candid, first-hand accounts of what it is like to make writing central to teaching in secondary schools and colleges. As teachers of literature, composition, poetry, mathematics, anthropology, and education, they offer philosophical and theoretical reflections, practical guidance, and personal stories about how to help students become better, more-fluent writers, close readers, and reflective thinkers. This book will be of interest to writing center directors, for what it says about how to do collaborative learning and revision and seeing writing as a way to build community, and to writing teachers for how it demystifies freewriting, focused freewriting, and dialectical notebooks.