Vygotsky and Creativity

M. Cathrene Connery, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Literacy and Children’s Literature at Salisbury University in Salisbury, Maryland. A bilingual educator and advocate, she has drawn on her visual arts education to inform her research and professional activities in language, literacy, and sociocultural studies on behalf of culturally and linguistically diverse children and their teachers across the United States.Vera John-Steiner, Ph.D., Emerita Presidential Professor of Linguistics and Education at the University of New Mexico, served as an authority on creativity, collaboration, and cultural-historical activity theory, having published and presented internationally for the past 50 years. Dr. John-Steiner sustained a lifelong interest in dance.Ana Marjanovic-Shane, Ph.D, is a founder and a deputy editor-in-chief of Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal. A former Fulbright Scholar, she is interested in dialogic meaning-making, creativity and democracy in education and human development. Her articles on critical dialogic pedagogy, drama in education, and democratic educational approaches have been published in various journals and books related to play and education.

• List of Figures and Table – Acknowledgments – Vera John-Steiner/M. Cathrene Connery/Ana Marjanovic-Shane: Dancing with the Muses: A Cultural-Historical Approach to Play, Meaning Making, and Creativity – M. Cathrene Connery: The Historical Significance of Vygotsky’s Psychology of Art – Lois Holzman: Without Creating ZPDs There Is No Creativity – Anna Stetsenko: Agentive Creativity in All of Us: An Egalitarian Perspective from a Transformative Activist Stance – Biljana C. Fredriksen: Where Is the Body?: Understanding Children’s First Signs and Representations from Their Point of View – Patricia St. John: Crossing Scripts and Swapping Riffs: Preschoolers Make Musical Meaning – Artin Göncü: Constructing the Ensemble: Negotiating Life with(in) Play – M. Cathrene Connery: The Social Construction of a Visual Language: On Becoming a Painter – Barry Oreck/Jessica Nicoll: Dance Dialogues: Creating and Teaching in the Zone of Proximal Development – Peter Smagorinsky: The Inscription of Self in Graphic Texts in School – Seana Moran: Commitment and Creativity: Transforming Experience into Art – Beth Ferholt: A Synthetic-Analytic Method for the Study of Perezhivanie: Vygotsky’s Literary Analysis Applied to Playworlds – Michelle Zoss: Keeping Ideas and Language in Play: Teaching Drawing, Writing, and Aesthetics in a Secondary Literacy Class – Ana Marjanovic-Shane: From Yes and No to Me and You: A Playful Change in Relationships and Meanings – Larry Smolucha/Francine Smolucha: New Frontiers for Vygotsky’s Theory of Creativity: Neuropsychological Systems of Cultural Creativity – Carrie Lobman: Creating Developmental Moments: Teaching and Learning as Creative Activities – Ana Marjanovic-Shane/M. Cathrene Connery/Vera John-Steiner: A Cultural-Historical Approach to Creative Education – Contributors – Index.