Cultural-Historical and Critical Psychology - Common Ground, Divergences and Future Pathways

This book opens up a critical dialogue within and across the theoretical traditions of critical psychology and cultural-historical psychology. It explores and addresses fundamental issues and problems within both traditions, with a view to identifying new avenues for productive discussion and cooperation between these two important movements in contemporary psychology. Accordingly, the book gathers contributions from a range of internationally respected researchers from both fields who have demonstrated a willingness to look critically, and self-critically, at their theoretical allegiances and trajectories. This book provides readers with the opportunity to both appreciate and reflect on fundamental differences of perspective across the 'cultural-historical'/'critical' psychology divide and, thereby, to consider and debate key issues facing the discipline of psychology more generally.

Laureate Professor Marilyn Fleer holds the Foundation Chair of Early Childhood Education and Development at Monash University, Australia. She was awarded the 2018 Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Fellowship by the Australian Research Council and is a former President of the International Society of Cultural-historical Activity Research (ISCAR). Additionally, she holds the positions of honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Education, University of Oxford, and a second professor position at the KINDKNOW Centre, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences.

Fernando Luís González Rey held the posts of  Professor in the Faculty of Education and Health Sciences, University Centre of Brasília, Brazil, and  senior Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Brasília. He obtained his Ph.D at the Institute of General and Pedagogic Psychology of Moscow and the degree of Doctor in Science from the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. At the University of Havana, he was  Professor in the Faculty of Psychology (1973-1999), Dean of this Faculty (1987-1991) and Vice Rector (1991-1995). Awarded the Inter-American Prize of Psychology in 1991, his research interests focused on the problem of subjectivity within education and psychology from a cultural-historical perspective. 

Peter E. Jones is  Reader in Language and Communication in the Department of Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University. His research interests include general linguistics, communication theory and the philosophy of language, Marxism and the cultural-historical and activity theory traditions. He is currently preparing a book on the linguistic infrastructure of Vygotsky's psychology. Other current projects focus on the pathologisation of nonstandard linguistic varieties in educational contexts, the communicational dimensions of cooperative activity, and the inter-dependence between perspectives on communication and radical social theory.