Vasily Vasilyevich Davydov

Soviet Union state institutions Marxism–Leninism 1930–1998 ○ Died

Soviet educational psychologist who with Elkonin brought the ascent from the abstract to the concrete into the classroom

A 1953 psychology graduate of Moscow University, he worked all his life in the institutes of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences; he studied under Daniil Elkonin and was close to Evald Ilyenkov. From 1959, experimenting with Elkonin at Moscow School No. 91, he built the developmental education system, which teaches children not to memorise cases and extract what they share (empirical generalisation) but first to explore the basic relation from which a concept arises (theoretical generalisation). It carried the ascent from the abstract to the concrete and activity theory into the school. For his criticism of official pedagogy he was expelled from the party in 1983 and removed as director of the Institute of General and Pedagogical Psychology; rehabilitated with the Ushinsky Prize in 1986, he was director again in 1989 and vice-president of the Russian Academy of Education from 1992.

Also known as: Vasilii Davydov · Vasili Davydov