ABSTRACT
Beginning from Vygotsky’s early work with elementary school children, as well as through his work at the Gomel Teacher Training School (Yaroshevskij 1989), we find that practical educational processes were an important preoccupation. This concern both for education as well as for the general mutuality of theory and concrete institutional change were central to his approach. These were concerns that shaped the CHAT tradition from the beginning, and they were also concerns shared by his closest collaborators. Leontiev, for example, spent considerable time on the question of medical rehabilitation, intertwined with theoretical development. Luria’s work attempted to deal with literacy, 75learning and developmental changes associated with farm collectivization policies in Central Asia, while his applied research on criminal rehabilitation pioneered a unique qualitative interview method. Amongst later CHAT researchers, this pattern of engaged practical–theoretical development is repeated, and again there is a special place for matters of education specifically. Prominent CHAT researchers such as the philosopher Ilyenkov worked closely with special needs students in school settings even while developing sophisticated philosophical treatises. Davydov’s research was intensively guided by focused collaborations with working teachers, through which was produced arguably the first comprehensive application of CHAT thinking to pedagogy and curriculum studies.
