Revisiting Vygotsky for Social Change

Contemporary thinkers and researchers from different parts of the world involved in achieving human development employ Vygotsky’s theory in order to deal with new social challenges arising in a global but deeply divided world (Santos, 2000; Souza e Santos, 2008; Martín-Baró, 1998). The chapters of this book shed light onto Vygotsky’s initial principles adding critical and social perspectives as a way of expanding his legacy to global contemporary needs such as a critical reflection from the perspective of social change, social dynamics and human development, ethical-political situations of action power, dialectic relationship of the human being with society, contradictions in an individual’s dramatic life events and awareness of the social environment to actively change the existing forms of life.

“"Cultural-historical psychology offers strong conceptual and methodological tools to understand and promote social innovation and change, which are most needed in a fast-changing society. Therefore, the book Revisiting Vygotsky for Social Change: Bringing Together Theory and Practice is much appreciated by students, academic researchers and practitioners. It gathers a range of talented colleagues and highly interesting ideas both at the theoretical and practical level. I'm happy to recommend it to my colleagues, students and librarians."--Laure Kloetzer, Assistant Professor, Institute of Psychology and Education, University of Neuch'tel, Switzerland”

“Cultural-historical psychology offers strong conceptual and methodological tools to understand and promote social innovation and change, which are most needed in a fast-changing society. Therefore, the book Revisiting Vygotsky for Social Change: Bringing Together Theory and Practice is much appreciated by students, academic researchers and practitioners. It gathers a range of talented colleagues and highly interesting ideas both at the theoretical and practical level. I'm happy to recommend it to my colleagues, students and librarians.”—Laure Kloetzer, Assistant Professor, Institute of Psychology and Education, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Adolfo Tanzi Neto is head of the Department of Anglo-Germanic Languages, College of Languages and Arts, at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). He is a researcher in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics (PIPGLA-UFRJ) and leader of the Nucleus for Studies and Research of Vygotsky School in Applied Linguistics (NUVYLA/CNPq). His research interests are in the fields of discourse and social practices as for human constitution and development, in the dimensions of cognition, semiotics, symbolic, and aesthetic sense. His interests are related to social activism, linguistic mobility, social change/justice, identity and agency based on critical and dialectical epistemologies of the Socio-Historical-Cultural Activity Theory.

Fernanda Liberali is a teacher educator, researcher and professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, in the English Department, in the Program of Graduate Studies in Applied Linguistics and Language Studies and in the Graduate Program in Education: Education of Educators. She is one of the leaders of the Research Group / CNPq / PUC-SP Language in Activity in the School Context and an advisor to CNPq and FAPESP. Within the framework of Socio-Historical-Cultural Activity Theory, her main research interests are related to teacher education, teaching-learning, multimodal argumentation, and multilingualism/bilingual education.

Manolis Dafermos is an associate professor in the epistemology of psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Crete. His interests include cultural-historical psychology, critical psychology, the history of psychology, and methodological and epistemological issues in the social sciences. He is the author of Rethinking Cultural-Historical Theory: A Dialectical Perspective to Vygotsky (2018) in addition to being the author or co-author of papers and chapters in various journals and collective volumes focusing on dialectics and its significance for social research.

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