Yuri Lapshin

Yuri Lapshin

I would like to take part in this sumerschool because my interests  as a researcher and practitioner strictly linked to Cultural-Historical Approach as wel the Theory of Activity.

My work as a practitioner psychologist was related with developing people and organizations, personal growth and motivational development, conscious transformation of activity and lifestyle people, teams and organizations, professional projects of changing people’s life. This work based on the ideas of Vygotsky on zone of proximal development and intermediated acts of interaction between people in their ZPD. I tried to build a fruitful contact with adolescents and organized developmental activities with them in their and my ZPDs such as a club for deviant teenagers “Teritory of free communications” and was the leader of it for more than 5 years. In this work I also based on Leontyev’s ideas of motivational structure of activity and tried to find methods to meet teenager’s personal needs with objects of our joint activities. I took part in many projects of developing activities of school specialists for this type of tasks and wrote for methodical handbook with my colleague.

My nowadays job is a head of Laboratory for Activities Research in MSUPE, aimed to developmental research of collective activities in educational organizations and other professional teams and communities. My main research interests linked with the problem of forming and development of collective agency of activity, and my current research project related to educational school’s collective activity. I am interested in research on how people can help themselves and each others to transform their activity based on their motives and personal needs of development in their whole life and especially in professional work; how people learn something new and transform their life in contact with another people who try to develop themselves and their activities.

Also I am a student of doctoral program of “Developmental Work Research and Adult Education” (DWRAE class 2012), which is conducted by professor Yrjö Engeström and his colleagues of Center for Research on Activity, Development and Learning (CRADLE),  Faculty of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki (Finland). The topic of my doctoral research related to the problem of collective agency ( or “subjectness” in Russian psychology term) of activity, so this summerschool is very useful for me as a doctoral student.

During this school I hope to discuss the ideas about collective ZPD and concept formation inside a collective activity of professional team and how these topics

Also I strongly want to take part in including of Russian psychology into international community of researchers on activity because I see great potential in sharing the ideas, experience and work practice for both side to develop this field of science and culture.

Presentation “The collective subjectness of activity of the innovative school in the situation of reform”
Download presentation of the speech (PDF; 756KB