1st Edition

The Vygotsky Anthology A Selection from His Key Writings

Edited By Myra Barrs, John Richmond Copyright 2024
198 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

198 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

198 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

The Vygotsky Anthology brings together, for the first time, a selection of extracts from the best translations available of Vygotsky’s writings, spanning the entire arc of his career. Vygotsky was arguably one of the greatest educational psychologists of the 20th century. Grounded in his experience as a teacher, an expert in special education, a research psychologist and an outstanding... Read more

1. Vygotsky’s roots in psychology: extracts from Educational psychology
2. Vygotsky’s passion for literature and drama: extracts from the psychology of art
3. Vygotsky the defectologist
4. On the crisis in psychology
5. Discovering the power of the sign: extracts from Tool and symbol in child development
6. In pursuit of a unified psychological structure: extracts from The history of the development of higher mental functions
7. Vygotsky the pedologist
8. Play, imagination and creativity
9. The zone of proximal/proximate development
10. Word meaning develops: extracts from Thinking and speech, Chapters 1, 2, 4 and 6
11. The final ‘why’: extracts from Thinking and speech, Chapter 7, ‘Thought and word’

Biography

Myra Barrs was the author of many books and other publications on language and learning in education. She was Honorary Senior Research Associate at the UCL Institute of Education, UK, and former director of the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education, UK. Her book Vygotsky the Teacher: A Companion to his Psychology for Teachers and Other Practitioners was published by Routledge in 2022. She died in 2023.

John Richmond has been an English teacher, an adviser of teachers and an educational broadcaster. He has published books and articles on English teaching and language and learning.

The most remarkable thing about this collection, as proper in any serious anthology, is its careful selection of articles, chapters and passages, sometimes even lines, from a vast range of Vygotsky's works, from the earliest to the latest, thereby giving us a fundamental idea about most of Vygotsky’s important ideas and innovations.

- Suresh Chauhan, Cosmonaut Magazine