The Development of Vygotsky’s Thought: An Introduction

Abstract

The first part of this volume contains Vygotsky’s classic monograph Thinking and Speech, a work which was first published in Russian in 1934. The second contains a series of lectures that Vygotsky delivered in Leningrad in 1932. In addition to differences in subject matter and style, these two works are separated by an important conceptual shift in Vygotsky’s thinking which occurred in 1932 and 1933. Indeed, since several chapters of Thinking and Speech were written prior to 1933, the papers which constitute that volume also span this conceptual shift in the development of Vygotsky’s thought. As a consequence, if we are to understand these works, their relationship to one another, or their significance as part of the broader Vygotskian corpus, it is critical to consider the major changes that emerged in Vygotsky’s thinking as his perspectives developed between 1924 and 1934.1