ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will discuss the implications for inclusion of the theoretical framework which has been developed on the basis of the work of the Russian social theorist L.S. Vygotsky. In so doing I will draw on terminology which may seem, at best, to be inappropriate in contemporary debates. I will attempt to draw on the original meanings of these now ‘strange’ culturally and historically located terms to try and bring a relatively unfamiliar perspective to bear on current debates. This chapter falls into three sections. First, I will discuss some of the difficulties of ‘reading’ work which was written more than seventy years ago in a radically different culture from that which obtains today in almost any national context. Second, I will outline aspects of his general social theory which are relevant to his writings on disability, educational difficulty and pedagogy. Last, I will identify the core issues and implications that such writing has for debates concerning inclusion.
