Vygotsky and Creativity: A Cultural-historical Approach to Play, Meaning Making, and the Arts

This text presents a Vygotskian perspective on children's and adults' symbolic engagement in play, multi-modal meaning making, and the arts. Psychologists, artists, and educators present research and practice in a variety of learning environments through the lens of Vygotsky's cultural historical theory. The connections between creative expression, learning, teaching, and development are situated in a theoretical framework that emphasizes the social origins of individual development and the arts. The authors share a view of learning as an imaginative process rooted in our common need to communicate and transform individual experience through the cultural lifelines of the arts.

This book is suitable for readers or courses in the following areas: art and aesthetics; art education; art therapy; cultural historical activity theory; communication; creativity studies; early childhood education; education; educational perspectives; educational psychology; emotional development; cultural and societal foundations; language, literacy, and sociocultural studies; learning and development; mental health and catharsis; multiliteracies; multimodal meaning making; play; play therapy; psychology; semiotics; social construction of meaning; trauma, resilience, and therapeutic processes and practices; and Vygotskian approaches to psychology.

M. Cathrene Connery is Assistant Professor of Education at Ithaca College. A bilingual educator, professor. and advocate, she has drawn on her visual arts education to inform her research and professional activities in language, literacy, and sociocultural studies for the past 25 years.
Vera P. John-Steiner is Emeritus Regents' Professor of Linguistics and Education at the University of New Mexico. She is an international authority on creativity, collaboration, and cultural-historical activity theory, and is the recipient of two lifetime achievement awards from the American Educational Research Association.
Ana Marjanovic-Shane is Assistant Professor of Education at Chestnut Hill College. She has assisted children and their families of the former Yugoslavia as president and program director of the Cultural Education Center ZMAJ in New York City for the past six years.