Cultural-historical reflection on learning, place, and legacy of Vygotsky

Abstract

<p><strong>Context and relevance.</strong> This reflective paper explores the significance of personal academic experience in advancing understanding of Cultural-Historical Theory (CHT) and Activity Theory (AT). <strong>Objective.</strong> Drawing on Rolfe’s (2001) reflective framework of What? So What? Now What? the paper situates the ten authors' participation in the Summer University and a visit to Lev Vygotsky’s grave as moments of both intellectual and affective engagement with the cultural-historical tradition. <strong>Hypothesis.</strong> Engaging in structured reflection through Rolfe’s (2001) framework enables participants to connect their personal experiences with broader cultural-historical concepts, thereby deepening their understanding of Vygotsky’s legacy and identifying pathways for future research and practice. <strong>Methods and materials.</strong> The section What? provides a descriptive account of lectures, discussions, and embodied encounters with the historical legacy of Vygotsky. The section So What? analyses the meaning of these experiences for deepening conceptual awareness of key CHT/AT principles, including the concepts of zone of proximal development, contradiction, perezhivanie, and mediation, while highlighting the inseparability of theory, history, and lived experience. The section Now What? considers implications for future research and teaching, particularly the methodological potential of reflective practice in the study of contradictions within activity systems. <strong>Results.</strong> The results demonstrated that participants’ reflections clustered into four themes learning CHT and AT concepts, visiting and participating in events, reflecting on the Summer University experience, and envisioning future research and applications. <strong>Conclusions. </strong>The paper concludes by proposing reflection as a valuable scholarly practice for linking history, and theory, thereby enriching cultural-historical psychology, as well as educational research based on it, and sustaining Vygotsky’s intellectual legacy in contemporary contexts. Our findings suggest that future Summer Universities may benefit from adopting a reflective approach to support both the structuring of the educational process and the development of its reflective dimension.</p>