ABSTRACT
It is a pleasure to be given the opportunity of re-editing this book some eight years after its first publication. As I said at the time, the chapters in this book were selected to provide an introduction to some of the issues that have arisen in the development of the cultural historical schools which have sought inspiration from the work of the Russian scholar L.S.Vygotsky. I wish to emphasize the phrase ‘an introduction’ because through the use of this phrase I wish to signify that it is one of a range of possible introductions. This text seeks to provide the reader, already familiar with the basic tenets of the theory, with a range of readings which point to particular theoretical and empirical areas of contestation and thus potential development. It is not a basic introduction to the work: rather, it intends to introduce some of the dilemmas that the development of the theory has raised.
