Returning to Vygotsky, his theory, his teaching

Abstract

Vygotsky enjoys a privileged position in the Brazilian pedagogical field and concepts such as the Zone of Proximal Development, although not always well understood, are quickly endorsed by active and in-training teachers. However, judging by the low quality of public education in our country, they have not been effectively operative in pedagogical practice. The purpose of this article is to revisit Vygotsky's works published in Portuguese, specifying the meaning of his Socio-Historical Psychology and the school project that emanates from it, to assess to what extent they retain their vigor as a theoretical reference for reflection on the persistent problem of school failure among us. It is, therefore, a bibliographic research that goes beyond the mere revision insofar as it is thought in terms of this pressing challenge, which is the construction of a quality public school for the entire Brazilian population of school age. The result is the equation of the problem, pointing out possible ways to face it, to conclude that it is on the classroom floor that the Vygotskyan theory finds, after all, its raison d'être, in the teacher's daily work rather than in the macrosocial frameworks of the classroom educational politics.