Why is it necessary to start learning activity through theoretical thinking?

Abstract

This article discusses the importance of starting learning activity as an activity of theoretical thinking. It aims to show the value of theoretical thinking for the student's personality. For this, it proposes that, when understanding this value as a development need, the limits of empirical thinking and the consequences of students' learning activity are also understood and, also, the critical possibility of unlimited development for the human personality if teaching activity takes as its goal the development of theoretical thinking. The analysis focused on theoretical thinking and personality is based on Cultural-Historic Theory and authors who based their ideas on it to understand human development, mainly in V. V. Davidov, D. B. Elkonin, V. V. Repkin, L. S. Vygotsky and A. N. Leontiev. For this purpose, it analyzes thought origin as a contradiction in relation to sensitive perception, its unity and overcoming by the need to think that emerges from the insufficiency of perception for the cognitive demands of the social being, that is, thinking as a need generated in social relationships. Finally, it considers how theoretical thinking becomes both the process and the product necessary for learning activity and this one as a vital activity of individuals, since theoretical thinking, in our analysis, reaches the status of revolutionary social practice for personality and society.