Exploring a Vygotskian Theory of Education and Its Evolutionary Foundations

Bibliographic Data

ID21314530
AuthorsAline Nardo (0000-0002-8570-1118, Moray House School of Education and Sport University of Edinburgh, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume71
Issue3
Pages331-352
Publication date2021-06-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEducational Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-2004 • E-ISSN: 1741-5446
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/edth.12485
OpenAlexW3196799116
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited4

Despite his popularity in educational discourses, Lev S. Vygotsky tends to be read mainly as an educational psychologist or learning theorist. His potential contribution to a theory of education remains largely undiscussed. The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is often misunderstood as a sort of “educational tool,” which severely reduces the richness of the concept emerging from Vygotsky's works. In this essay, Aline Nardo argues that acknowledging the evolutionary underpinnings in Vygotsky's thinking would enrich an educational discussion of Vygotsky. This substrate in Vygotsky's educational works, she argues, has been strikingly underappreciated, and her analysis seeks to address this gap by building upon the analogy between Vygotsky's Marxist negation of a Darwinian adaptation paradigm and his conceptual differentiation between learning and development in order to draw out the pedagogical dimension of the ZPD. Pedagogical interaction, in an evolutionary reading of Vygotsky, is qualitatively different from peer interactions, as it is connected to development rather than learning. This perspective, Nardo concludes, has important implications for the role of the teacher and a definition of “the pedagogical.”

Analogy · Cognitive science · Education theory · Epistemology · Higher education · Pedagogy · Popularity · Reading (process) · Sociology · Zone of proximal development · Educational and Psychological Assessments · Innovative Education and Learning Practices · Innovative Teaching and Learning Methods · Psychology · Social Psychology

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