Recovering History in the Study of Schooling: From the Longue Durée to Everyday Co-Construction

Although the search for more effective schooling is frequently invoked in Vygotskian research, schools themselves are rarely studied from a cultural-historical perspective. By examining three intersecting planes – the longue durée, relative continuity, and everyday co-construction – we may be able to integrate both the historicity and cultural diversity of school environments, and the profound subjectivity of school experience. All three dimensions are needed to reexamine the question of the cognitive consequences of schooling, for child development, as well as for the history of humanity.