THE FOUNDATIONS OF COLLECTIVE DEVELOPMENTAL LEARNING IN VYGOTSKY'S WORK: FOUNDATIONS AND GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Abstract

This article is partly based on my Master's dissertation and aims to provide a historical overview of the term "learning" from a Vygotskian perspective. In a contextual approach to Brazilian educational institutions, we should be an institution that values ​​equity and effectiveness in learning. However, the way the school system functions is not naive and without purpose; on the contrary, it is authoritarian, organizing time and space in a way that imposes a single learning pace. Through this article, I intend to contextualize L.S. Vygotsky's ideas regarding learning in school contexts. What is the place and role of learning and education in human development? For the analysis of these conceptions of learning, the work of Roberto Valdés Puentes (2024) has been important, as his theoretical research has allowed him to verify the different meanings of the term "learning," in conjunction with Vygotsky's work, aided by the works of V.V. Davidov. Vygotsky developed different conceptions of learning, which are not explicitly stated in his works, around the 1930s, bringing important concepts about the relationship between learning and the social environment. To this end, we propose an analysis of research that examines these different conceptions of learning. The Theory of Developmental Collective Learning emerged in the former Soviet Union from the second half of the 1950s, associated with pedagogy, philosophy, and especially the cultural-historical psychology of activity. Developmental learning theories, within the framework of historical-cultural theory, present different interpretations of Vygotsky's legacy. Based on these points and concepts, the objective of this work is to show that, within the historical-cultural perspective and the approach of L. S. Vygotsky, there is not just one learning process, but two: collective learning (Obutchénie) and individual learning (Utchénie). The first is an external, social, and interpsychic process that takes place in collective activity; The second occurs in individual activity as an internal, individual, and intrapsychic process. Thus, the development of collective learning generates individual activity that is the result of the assimilation process. In this way, we can understand that development is a prerequisite for meaningful learning, but also its product or result. L. S. Vygotsky (1935/2024) establishes the thesis that properly organized learning can come before development, and that it generates or establishes the appropriate conditions for the development of theoretical concepts and human characteristics.