Category of Development as the Basis of Psychologicaland Pedagogical Research in Education

The article dwells on the fundamental problem of a person’s psychological development within the joint activity context. The starting point for the author are L.S. Vygotsky’s and D.B. Elkonin’s positions on the source and conditions of development, its psychological mechanism determining the internal dynamic of development. The article presents a systemic view of development as an objective process thus providing the opportunity to specify D.B. Elkonin’s position represented in his conception of child’s development stages periodization. The “dual” character of a subject’s mode of activity is outlined. It means that in the course of joint activity it always finds its realization within the subject’s system of relations by way of the subject’s modes of actions thus providing the possibility to avoid the disruption between motivational (personal) and operational technical (object-oriented) domains of activity still characteristic for the present-day psychology views. The psychological mechanism of a subject activity development is considered as resolution of contradictions that emerge in the course of his involvement into the new forms of joint activity, which demands the respective changes of the modes of actions previously formed which in its turn causes the transformation of the subject’s relations system. It is claimed that in the course of joint activity the concrete modes of the subject’s actions at every stage of his development cease to correspond to the system of his relations being formed thus leading to the transformation of the activity motivational base that determine these modes development.