“Dificuldades de aprendizagem”: uma análise a partir da Teoria Histórico-Cultural

Abstract

This theoretical research aimed to explain and analyze the conceptual bases of the Cultural-Historical Theory that allow to present a historical-dialectical materialistic explanation for what has been spread in the educational context as "learning difficulties", contrasting the hegemonic conceptions based on a biologizing and individualizing bias. This study was configured as theoretical, theoretically-methodologically based in the Cultural-Historical Theory which its premise understands the human being as a historical, social and cultural being and that the psychological constitution is established from the inseparability of the relationship of the individual with his social reality. The nature and sources of the research data were established as bibliographic, drawing on Vygotski’s “Obras Escogidas” as its primary textbook reference, focusing on Tomos III and V. The methodological procedures were based on the bibliographies recognition reading, pertinent information location to the research topic, bibliographies choices closer to the object of this study, carrying out critical readings, seeking information used for the conceptual deepening and realization of integrative synthesis presenting the investigation process product. The results showed that by undertaking a genetic analysis on the problem of so-called "learning difficulties", from its historical reconstruction, it is possible to highlight the causal dynamic links that are at the origin of this phenomenon and, finally, to understand it in its entirety. Among the conceptions that are at the essence of this phenomenon, we have the relationship established between the processes of teaching, learning and development that, in the hegemonic view, start from premises that, inadvertently, fall into biological determinism. The Cultural-Historical Theory, in turn, by offering a materialistic historical-dialectical interpretation for such processes, allows to reverse the logic of analysis by which the problem of “learning difficulties” is regarded. Concerning the results, we highlight four Cultural-Historical Theory fundamental propositions that allow us to build another theoretical interpretation to the phenomenon of “learning difficulties:” 1)The concept of a human being as a socio-historical being, 2) The social-nature of the development of the superior psychological functions, 3) The dialectic relationship between learning and development, 4) The method of the analysis of the phenomenon through the Cultural-Historical Theory. Thus, by offering another theoretical interpretation for this phenomenon, the Cultural-Historical Theory allows to demystify the view that blames students and their families for school difficulties and, consequently, collaborates to the proposition of more effective pedagogical practices to overcome this problem, we highlight that: 1) Teaching must be planned to encompass the students’ concept of proximal development zone to the content to be learned; 2) Assessment of learning and development are vital to the process of educational planning, 3) The Cultural-Historical Theory presumptions allow the teachers to change their perspectives about what would be perceived as “student limitations” into a transforming learning power. Finally, we consider that this study presented only an initial analysis on the possible relations between the Cultural-Historical Theory and the problems encountered during the schooling process, among them what the literature has identified under the terminology “learning difficulties”, and that more studies on this topic are necessary, from theoretical approaches committed to the educational institutions, education itself and society transformation.