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This book contains a new translation of the second half of the Pedology of the Adolescent by the renowned Soviet thinker, educator and teacher L.S. Vygotsky. It was a correspondence course written by Vygotsky for teachers across the Soviet Union, and it constitutes the longest work published in his lifetime. Four chapters have never been translated before and appear here for the very first time. With this volume, Vygotsky concludes the sustained argument he commenced in Vol. 3 Pedology of the Adolescent I: Pedology in the Transitional Age, establishing the borders of pedology, the nature of the transition between childhood and adulthood, and the concrete nature of the distinction between the lower psychological functions we largely have in common with animals and those that are specific to fully social humans. In this volume Vygotsky "puts flesh on the skeleton" of his working hypothesis concerning the interests and the development of concepts in the psychology of the adolescent. He then frames concepts as a special case of developing higher psychological functions, and demonstrates the roots of that development in the social environment. Many of the problems Vygotsky broaches in these new chapters--the choice of a profession, the initiation of the adolescent into working life--are still of immediate, not to say urgent, relevance today. The volume concludes with a remarkable vision of a society "where production is organized for the producers" that still seems far ahead of its time and still ahead of our own.
List of contents
1. The development of interests in the transitional age.- 2. Development of thinking and concept formation in the adolescent.- 3. Development of higher psychological functions in the transitional age.- 4. Imagination and creativity in the adolescent.- 5. Choice of profession.- 6. Social behaviour in the adolescent.- 7. The working adolescent.- 8. The structure and dynamics of the adolescent personality.
About the author
L.S. Vygotsky was a teacher, writer, and thinker in the early Soviet Union who worked in the fields of psychology, "defectology" (special education), and "pedology" (the holistic study of the child). In a meteoric career that lasted little more than a decade, he was able to lay the foundations of what has become cultural-historical psychology today. By analysing the specifically human, cultural-historical roots of higher mental functions and emphasizing the role that language plays in development, Vygotsky provided a research method that is monist, non-reductionist, and dialectical.
About the Translators
David Kellogg is an assistant professor at Sangmyung University in Seoul, South Korea, where he teaches courses on language and linguistics. He and his former students have published ten volumes of Vygotsky translations in Korea. He is the author of The Great Globe: Narrative and Dialogue in Story-telling with Halliday, Vygotsky, and Shakespeare.
Nikolai Veresov is currently an associate professor at Monash University. He has published widely on Vygotsky in many languages, including Vygotsky's native Russian. He is the author of Undiscovered Vygotsky (1999), and the translator of Vygotsky's "Consciousness as a Problem in the Psychology of Behaviour" (1999) and "The Role of Play in the Development of the Child" (2016). He has also translated D.B. Elkonin's work on periodizing child development (2000).
