Galperin's legacy and some current challenges of educational research and practice: Agency, technology, and design

Abstract

At the risk of being overly selective and superficial, we argue that Galperin's legacy might offer a valuable contribution to somecurrent and future-oriented themes in educational research and practice. Our intention is not to“map”Galperin's framework onto aparticular problem space or phenomenon but rather to indicate how his approach might inspire, inform, and provide explanatorypower to examine the process of learning and how knowledge is constructed and advanced. AsDafermos (2016)has shown withregard to translations and the use of the Vygotskian legacy in international academia, there is a risk of overlooking importantcultural-historical contextual factors in Galperin's work and over extrapolating current issues of educational research and practiceonto his framework. With this in mind, we briefly discuss some aspects of Galperin's legacy presented in the translated lectures in thisspecial issue in relation to three current and future-oriented issues in education: i) agency and transformative agency, ii) digitalartefacts as material and materialised resources, and iii) teaching as design.