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Abstract. The paper discusses the differences between remediating education and general education and its main tasks and principles based on the cultural-historical theory by L.S. Vygotsky. Basic functional systems formed during remediation are analyzed. Individual, group and dyadic methods of remediation are described with regard to their potential for mediating child's activity.
Key words: remediating education, learning disabilities, cultural-historical psychology, L.S. Vygotsky, mediation, play therapy
INTRODUCTION
Learning disability is now a major concern of psychology and education all over the world because of the growth in the number of children with learning disabilities and maladjustment at school and within family, without evident medical problems. It means that mental and social functioning of such children does not correspond to their psychophysiological abilities and to their needs as well as to the demands of their micro social environment.
A.R. Luria used to stress that nothing is more practical than a good theory. How can the cultural-historical neuropsychology help these children?
In 1917 L.S. Vygotsky began his works on assessing and helping children with vision and hearing loss as well as with mental retardation in his home town Gomel (Belarus). In 1925 he carred them out Moscow, where he setup the Medico-Pedagogical Station of Narkompros (Ministry of Education) of Russian Federation, which was later transformed into the Research Institute of Defectology (now the Institute of Corrective Pedagogy). These works were fundamental for the creation of the cultural-historical theory - L.S. Vygotsky showed that a defect interferes with the child's appropriation of the culture, but cultural means help the child to overcome the defect. By this, the cultural-historical approach has become a methodological basis for remediating education.
According to Vygotsky the natural processes such as physical maturation and sensory mechanisms, interact with culturally determined processes in order to produce the psychological functions of adults and the variety of ways in which the functions are carried out, through "[a] bifurcation in the course of a child's behavioral development into the natural-psychological and the cultural-psychological development" (Vygotsky, Luria, 1930, p. 20).
These new formations have a cultural origin, a dynamic psychological structure, and a dynamic brain (body) organization. Thus, a word is considered to be an external material sign, a psychological tool for the organization of human behavior.
The...