Full Human Development And School Psychology: Some Cultural-Historical Perspectives

The aim of this keynote address is to show how theoretical ideas from the cultural-historical tradition have been used to address issues that fall within the scope of interest for Brazilian school psychologists. The first part of the conference discusses the idea of radical-local teaching and learning, which was inspired by Davydov’s ideas about theoretical thinking and learning activity, and further developed by Hedegaard and Chaiklin to link the contents of school teaching with the pupil’s life situation. Examples with primary school-age children (social studies in the New York City, and mathematics teaching in Ghana) are presented. The second part of the conference introduces the idea of development-practice analysis, as part of a consultation-based intervention strategy, developed by Hedegaard, drawing in part on the concept of motive from the theory of activity. An example is presented which explains how this perspective was used with lower secondary school boys in Denmark who had been expelled from several schools. These two parts will be used to illustrate a perspective about full human development, expressed through cultural-historical theoretical concepts, as an orientation for all professional approaches to school psychology.