An Historical and Political Re-Assessment of Lev Vygotsky's Legacy for Teacher Education

Abstract

The importance of Vygotsky contribution to theories of learning and teaching that underpin teacher education virtually goes without saying. However, theorists using a Vygotskyan paradigm have been criticised that his "authority seems more to do with the way Vygotsky has been assimilated into people's schema of things, than it has with the very perspective that he was constructing" (Rowlands, 2000, p. 537). This is especially the case with claims that Vygotsky's pedagogical paradigm encompassed the fundamentals of constructivist and progressivist education. Recently, as a corrective what Rowlands calls "Vygotsky's debt to Marxism," particularly Lenin's theoretical interests, has been explored. That Vygotsky's own socio-cultural context warrants exploration has also been proposed. In light of these calls for a theoretical and historical corrective to the distortion of Vygotsky's intentions, this paper provides an overview of the historical and political context in which Vygotsky developed his theories and then advances the idea that Vygotsky's pedagogical paradigm has to be placed in the context of the debate over, and practice of democratic centralism in the USSR.