This essay focuses on Vygotsky’s attention to long-term, mediated human development, with primary emphasis on the role of play, imagination, and games in the socialization of children and adolescents, and on the role of schooling in shaping the experiences of students toward cultural ends. To Vygotsky, both play/imagination/games and schooling have long-term goals and effects in human development, designed to promote the labor available to Soviet Marxist citizens. Vygotsky is often represented as a daily instructional planner via scaffolding, in spite of its absence in his writing. Vygotsky’s attention to cultural development is quite different from the short-term teaching and learning for which he is primarily, and erroneously, referenced in much educational writing. Furthermore, his view of play is often treated as an immediate experience rather than as a key facet of a lifelong developmental process. This essay is designed to interrogate such misconceptions and integrate two areas of his work that are not ordinarily treated as a continuum in educational writing.
Design history is a culturally organised way of seeing, yet school materials often reduce it to names, dates, and isolated styles. This post-test-only study compared two existing vocational classes taught through different instructional arrangements. One class received a 100-min bundled lesson combining redesigned visual representations, explicit comparison dimensions, cross-period cases, a team quiz, and collaborative judgement; the other received established textbook-supported instruction. Valid samples were 28/29 participants for a selected-response Renaissance knowledge test and 27/28 for adapted questionnaires. The bundled-lesson class had higher post-test factual and conceptual knowledge (Hedges’ g = .91, 95% CI [.36, 1.46]) and exploratory self-reports of core competencies and situational interest, but not self-efficacy or social participation. Experimental-class open responses associated joint visual attention, comparison, peer correction, and reason-giving with their experience, while negative and blank cases showed uneven participation. These perceptions offer provisional clues, not direct measures of visual reasoning. With no pretest, random assignment, fidelity record, or direct reasoning task, the findings describe class differences and motivate stronger tests rather than establish intervention effects.
Vygotsky, basing himself on Spinoza, identifies the driver of the differentiation of psychic functions as the development of the affects themselves. This transformation of affectivity is played out through the ludic imagination of the child. Since, according to Spinoza's Ethics, one affect may only be overcome by a stronger affect, the child can free herself or himself from the temptations of reality and from his or her own affective tendencies only by opposing them with a stronger affectivity, born of the imaginative pleasures of playing by rules-born, therefore, from the transformation of a concept into an affect. It is this concept becoming an affect that brings the child to a zone of proximal development-to "a notch above himself/herself." We examine, through this use of Spinozism by Vygotsky, in what sense the ludic imagination of the child, but also the esthetic imagination of the poet, is a true work of de-realization-what Vygotsky also called, from Shklovsky, "enstranging" [making strange]-such that the experienced emotions become intelligent ones.
The increasing presence of digital technologies in primary education has led, in recent years, to an intensification of the discourse regarding their overall impact on children's development. The present study aims to contribute to this debate by organising and synthesising current evidence on the main applications, pedagogical benefits and structural challenges of digitalisation. The research is built on a systematic analysis of existing academic documents. The findings show that digital technologies are consistently associated with increased student engagement, greater learner autonomy, improved collaborative practices and enhanced conceptual understanding across subject areas. However, a series of enduring limitations could reduce or even exceed these beneficial effects. The most significant challenges include cognitive overload, insufficient teacher training, infrastructural inequalities and misalignment between digital tools and pedagogical objectives. The conclusions emphasise the need for a strategic plan for digitalisation, based on carefully integrating digital technologies into instructional practice and focused on pedagogically grounded, equity-oriented approaches. Furthermore, significant research gaps were identified regarding evidence on long-term cognitive outcomes, socio-emotional impacts, pedagogical scaffolding, adaptive learning frameworks and institutional roles.
A critical phase in professional identity formation is the 'trainee dilemma'. This dilemma marks the transition from formally qualified to a capable professional. During this period, individuals are qualified but not yet capable. Using concepts from Cultural-Historical Theory, we consider how the development of professional competence extends beyond formal education to include development of a new professional identity shaped by workplace experiences and interactions with senior colleagues. Formal educational achievements do not fully equip trainees for the practical demands of professional life. The workplace introduces new stimuli that require the integration of scientific and everyday concepts through experiential learning and social interaction. This analysis was developed drawing on the literature, interviews with professional educators, and our own research data. The concept of perezhivanie is central and used to show how transformative experiences are integrated into the trainee's personality, reshaping their professional identity through impactful events and interactions. Measured support systems, such as mentorship and authentic tasks involving risk, are essential for fostering the trainee's growth while providing safety nets to mitigate failures. Becoming a competent, confident, and committed professional is a transformative journey that not only enhances practical skills but also aligns the trainee's professional and personal identities.
