Developmental didactic of activity: V. V. Repkin's contributions to the Elkonin-Davidov system.

Abstract

The Ukrainian philologist, philosopher, psychologist and didactic V. V. Repkin (1927) is the third most important figure in the Elkonin-Davydov system, however, his work is virtually unknown in the West, especially in Brazil. This educator and scientist made important contributions to the system and, in general, to the developmental didactic of activity in fields as diverse as: theory of study activity, Russian language teaching methodology, teacher training, transition between different levels of education, system diagnosis, creation and consolidation of groups and research centers, as well as the foundation of the International Association of Developmental Education. This article specifically approaches Repkin’s theoretical and methodological contributions in three specific fields of knowledge: 1) activity (content, objectives, tasks and structure); 2) transition from the primary to the secondary level of studies (the new contents of the learning activity, new methods and teacher training)and; 3) developmental teaching of language and the problem of orthographic alphabetization (the phonetic principle, the formation of the phoneme concept, and orthographic writing).