Development Makes History, Where Inside Meets Outside

1Bernard Schneuwly in his essay “Contradiction and Development: Vygotsky and Paedology” (1994a) elaborates a less examined set of implications of Vygotsky’s work, in order to consider how development occurs at the intersection of the individual student and the curriculum. In doing so, Schneuwly implies but does not make explicit a mechanism for the evolution of society through individual developmental discovery, as I will elaborate below. Since I am working only from Professor Schneuwly’s work published in English, however, I recognize he may well have covered everything I have to say and more in his extensive publications in French and other languages.

2In explicating Vygotsky’s idea of development in “Contradiction and Development,” Schneuwly highlights two points. First he notes that the individual confronts the contradiction between his or her own structures of thought formed from prior experience and the satisfaction of needs in the world outside oneself. Development, and t