L. S. Vygotsky’s Cultural-Historical Approach: The Method and Its Development Revisited / El enfoque histórico cultural de L. S. Vygotski: revisión del método y su desarrollo

The article attempts to reconstruct the roots and the development of the mediacy model as the core of cultural-historical psychology. The author believes that this model can be used as a basic explanatory model, helping to more accurately and concretely understand and describe the changes experienced by humans (especially children and adolescents during ontogenesis) in the context of the emerging hybrid socio-digital reality. The author demonstrates how Vygotsky understood the mediacy model and the key role of the so-called psychological tools in it. A distinction is introduced between the concepts of mediation and mediacy based on the principle of the directionality of action. The article shows that for some reason, many researchers tend to lose sight of this distinction and focus only on interaction between an individual and the external environment. The point is that according to Vygotsky, the act of development is accomplished precisely through the subject mastering one’s behavior by means of a psychological tool. Thus, the concepts of mediacy and mastery are interdetermined and interconnected in a single act.