Over ninety years ago Lev Vygotsky warned of a growing crisis in psychology and social science research. Vygotsky’s warning has been echoed on many occasions but his solution to the problem has not been widely acknowledged. He advocated for a form of meta-science which he called “general science”, an integrative science that could connect and guide the development of specialised disciplines and schools of research. In this paper I explore the parallels between Vygotsky’s general science and contemporary forms of meta-level research and discuss their relevance and implications for addressing global challenges.
This article analyses adult and child development in the zone of proximal development in an educational practice based in Vygotsky's theories of play: the playworld educational practice. The playworld educational practice is a central component of a Scandinavian play pedagogy that promotes shared responsibility amongst adults and children for engaging in adult-child joint play. The playworld practice, which is based on a work of children's literature, includes joint adult-child scripted and improvisational acting and set design. We explore conditions under which playworld activities create a zone of proximal development that fosters development in both adult and child. Our analysis, based on data from a K-1 classroom, expands Vygotsky's concept of the zone of proximal development so that we see not only the unidirectional development of a child toward an adult stage of development but also the simultaneous development experienced by adults participating in the zone with the child.
Until recently scholars have placed the emergence of perezhivaniya in the later stages of childhood or in adolescence. This article clarifies the meaning of the term perezhivanie by describing perezhivaniya across the life span. We also delineate stages of perezhivaniya. We take into account the work of a range of scholars and artists whose studies of the properties of perezhivaniya have converged, often without their using, or possibly even being aware of, the term perezhivanie. We derive our claims from empirical material from a Swedish preschool and a playworld that took place in an elementary school in the United States.