Cultural-historical psychology and development of a conceptual response to the challenges of digitalization / La psicología histórico-cultural y el desarrollo de una respuesta conceptual a los desafíos de la digitalización

Abstract

The paper presents an overview of articles by authors who took part in the International Congress ‘L. S. Vygotsky and A. R. Luria: Cultural-historical psychology and issues of digitalization of social practices’, held 15–17 November 2022. Using various empirical and theoretical materials, the authors tried to formulate their answers to questions related to such processes as virtualization, digitalization and others that qualitatively change both the person himself/herself and his/her environment. The authors of the works chose the cultural-historical approach developed within the framework of the school of L. S. Vygotsky as the basis for developing their position. It is shown that the cultural-historical approach has developed such concepts and models of human development that have a very strong potential that must be used to develop explanatory models of development. Such concepts include such motions as a psychological tool, a model of mediation, cultural development, mediation, mastery of a method of action, etc. The approach itself, developed within the framework of the cultural-historical approach, considers a person not as a passive, reactive being but as an active subject of development mastering one’s behaviour, which distinguishes this approach from many other development concepts adopted in the humanities and natural sciences. The mediation model overcomes the still dominant naturalistic and behaviouristic approaches to man, opening up new opportunities for both scientific research and new scientific and educational projects.

The broad transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach used by the authors of works written on the basis of the congress materials allows one to overcome narrow disciplinary and departmental boundaries. A special issue of the journal Culture and Education, dedicated to the above-mentioned topics, expands the problem field of modern scientific practice-oriented research and gives readers a rich understanding of modern achievements in the transdisciplinary field of human sciences and the problem of the impact of digitalization on the man.