Vygotsky and the Promise of Public Education ― Linking Theory and Practice

Vygotsky and the Promise of Public Education recontextualizes the scholarship of educator and psychologist Lev Vygotsky, highlighting its relevance to contemporary issues in public education. Emphasizing the historical, social, and cultural formation of conscious awareness, Vadeboncoeur advances Vygotsky’s project with current research in psychology, enabling the redefinition of central concepts such as learning, teaching, and developing. This attention to how we conceptualize learning and teaching is vital to the project of crafting schools to fulfill the promise of public education. Written for teacher candidates, educators, researchers, and policy-makers, this book both recognizes the complications of teaching and learning in public schools and contributes to the scholarship on the critical possibilities of schools as social institutions. The significance of public education for each and every child and teacher, and the future that is created in each student-teacher relationship, is re-centered as, perhaps, the most worthwhile project of our time.

Jennifer A. Vadeboncoeur is Associate Professor of Human Development, Learning and Culture in Education at The University of British Columbia. She earned her PhD from The University of Colorado-Boulder. Recent publications include, Imagined futures in the present: Minding learning opportunities, with Murray (2014), for NSSE.