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P.Y. Galperin's Development of Human Mental Activity: Lectures in Educational Psychology
Several years ago, on the last day of a seminar on the scientific legacy of L. S. Vygotsky, I came across a bookstore in Moscow. Among other books in psychology, a book entitled P.Y. Galperin. Lectures in Psychology [Lekcii po psikhologii] (Galperin, 2002), edited by A. Podolskiy and his team and published in Russian for the commemoration of the centenary of Galperin’s birthday in 2002, caught my attention. The following day, on my way back to Oslo, I read the book of lectures, and such a detailed introduction to Galperin’s work considerably shaped my understanding of cultural-historical theory and affected my further research seeking to position it as an attempt to understand how to educate agentic and conscious learners in the twenty-first century. However, despite numerous reviews and discussions of the contributions of Piotr Galperin (1902–1988), that have been published subsequently (Arievitch, 2003; Arievitch & Haenen, 2005; Arievitch & Stetsenko, 2000; Stetsenko & Arievitch, 2002), his scientific legacy is still little known in the vast community of researchers. In these overviews, Galperin is introduced as an educational psychologist and a scholar who contributed to the further theoretical and experimental development of the cultural-historical activity theory (Haenen, 1996). However, due to limited translations, the holistic structure of Galperin’s conceptual thinking has remained undiscovered by a wide community of international scholars. This volume is composed of eight seminal lectures that have been translated into English for the first time from the collection of Lectures in Psychology (Galperin, 2002). They comprise the Study of the Development of Human Mental Activity which is presented in full for the first time in English. A brief summary, written by the Editor, precedes each lecture. The translation of the lectures was a challenging endeavour and it required particular efforts and several rounds of discussions of the experts in order to understand Galperian thought and to convey it in English without changing its original meaning. The translations were first conducted by Prof. Irina Engeness and then discussed and validated with the team of experts: Prof. Anne Edwards, Prof. Andreas Lund and Dr. Gethin Thomas. In addition, other experts were invited to provide credibility to the translated materials. Professor Igor Arievitch, who is a native Russian speaker, expert in English and Galperin’s Ph.D. v student, provided his feedback on the translated lectures. Professor Andrej Podolskiy, Galperin’s Ph.D. student, who collected and edited Lectures in Psychology in Russian also provided his feedback on the translated lectures. The comments of both Prof. Igor Arievitch and Prof. Andrej Podolskiy were carefully addressed in the revised drafts of the lectures. In addition to the collection of the translated lectures, the volume presents extended commentaries, which aim to position Galperin’s contributions to cultural-historical traditions and outline the implications and significance of Galperin’s legacy for contemporary educational research and practice. The article that precedes the lectures, Devoted to the Matter of Science: The Life and Professional Career of Piotr Galperin, introduces Piotr Galperin to the readers and briefly presents the personal and professional milestones of his biography and scientific legacy. In the article Freedom as a Pursuit of Human Development: P.Y. Galperin on the Historical Psychology of L. S. Vygotsky, Engeness and Zavershneva present and discuss Galperin’s speech The System of Historical Psychology of L. S. Vygotsky: Analytical Considerations, which he delivered at the internal conference and mourning gathering on 6 January 1935, in Moscow, dedicated to Vygotsky, who had died six months prior. The speech is a unique historical document that makes a considerable theoretical contribution by presenting a concise and consistent summary of the theory of consciousness Vygotsky outlined at the end of 1932. In doing so, Galperin’s speech exemplifies his profound understanding of Vygotsky’s theory. In the article, Engeness and Zavershneva discuss how the ideas central to Vygotsky’s theory, which Galperin outlined in his speech, were further elaborated in the legacy of Galperin presented in this volume. Galperin’s Study of the Development of Human Mental Activity comprises eight seminal lectures. Although each lecture elaborates on a specific aspect of Galperin’s theory, they have to be read in a sequential order to follow Galperian thought unfolding his legacy.
