Lev Vygotsky 1931

Adolescent Pedagogy

Source: Vygotsky Reader, edited by René van der Veer and Jaan Valsiner, Blackwell 1994;

The development of thinking and concept formation in adolescence

This text formed part of chapter 10 of Vygotsky, L. S. 1931: Pedologija podrostka [Paedology of the Adolescent]. Moscow-Leningrad: Uchebrio-Pedagogicheskoe lzdatel’stvo. Paragraphs five to 24 were with slight alterations republished in his Myshlenie i rech’ [Thinking and Speech] (1934). As can be seen from its general format the book was intended to be used as a textbook for the (correspondence) courses at Moscow University. For a textbook Pedologija podrostka was surprisingly lopsided: the chapter from which this text is taken, for instance, covered no less than 130 pages, whereas other chapters totalled a meagre 15 pages. It seems, then, that Vygotsky used the textbook to publish the results of those investigations that were in the focus of his scientific interests at that time. A large part of the empirical work which is at the basis of his chapter was carried out by L. S. Sakharov, to whose memory the book was dedicated. Its theoretical orientation owes much to the work of Groos, Werner, Ach and others as Vygotsky himself acknowledges.


Imagination and creativity of the adolescent

This text was chapter 12 of Vygotsky, L. S. 1931: Pedologija podrostka [Paedology of the Adolescent]. Moscow-Leningrad: Uchebno-Pedagogicheskoe Izdatel’stvo. Parts of it (from part 2) have been translated into English on the basis of the Russian edition of Vygotsky’s Collected Works (Vol. 4, Moscow, 1984). See Vygotsky, L. S. 1991: Imagination and creativity in the adolescent. Soviet Psychology, 29. It is crucial to consider that the inclusion of Pedologija podrostka in the 1984 edition was itself abridged and its (abridged) translation into English was based on that version. The translation included here is made from the first Russian original published in 1931;


The Vygotsky Reader also has Introduction to the Russian translation of Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and Tool and symbol in child development, by Vygotsky and Luria; Principles of social education for deaf and dumb children in Russia, The methods of reflexological and psychological investigation; The problem of the cultural behaviour of the Child; The socialist alteration of man; The development of thinking and concept formation in adolescence; Thought in schizophrenia; Fascism in psychoanalysis; the problem of the environment and The development of scientific concepts in school aged children by Vygotsky; The problem of the cultural behaviour of the Child, by Luria; Methods for investigating concepts by Leonid Sakharov; The development of voluntary attention in the child by Alexij Leont'ev.