This dossier, “(Im)Pertinence of Vygotsky’s Studies in Defectology (1924-1935) for Contemporary Research about Pedagogy and Clinical Practice from an Inclusive Perspective,” responds to the 2023 Call for Papers issued by the School and Educational Psychology Journal, published by ABRAPEE. Edited by Daniele Nunes Henrique Silva, Ana Paula de Freitas, and Fabricio Dias de Abreu, it features nine texts with content derived from theoretical essays, bibliographical, and field research, covering the foundations of the historical-cultural perspective about society, the relations established within it between people with and without disabilities, and their impacts or implications for their development.

The texts not only list concepts and problematization of theorists who founded and continued this school. They also present discussions problematizing the demands of 21st-century society, its contradictions, and the need for academia to provide resources for understanding these, their origins, and their implications for individuals.

Thus, in such a productive society-as attested by the volume of publications in scientific journals and patent applications, for example-which gather materials that reveal the intense creative process of this society, yet which is also so exclusionary, as the most diverse statistics and social practices reveal-it is essential to have lenses that allow us to “see” reality. This perspective, which can capture reality, is supported by knowledge that allows us to unveil the multiple determinations that influence it, which allows us to grasp it and, from an ethical-political position, intervene within it.

Recovering authors and works from another historical moment and from a society so different from today’s, allows us to engage in a historical-dialectical analysis of the questions they sought to answer and the theories they developed about it. At the time, there was no proposal for educational and school inclusion as there has been since 1994; however, L. S. Vygotsky (2022, ²⁰¹⁹) had already presented philosophical, epistemological and methodological foundations for a new Defectology and for understanding the human development of people with and without disabilities, difficult childhoods, a new conception of normality and “defect”. He vehemently criticizes a science without an object and without a method, like the old Defectology, which listed what was missing in the subjects rather than explaining them, which shed light or a prospective look at the layers and layers of what was whole in them and which could, contradictorily, subsidize the overcoming of what was limited, sick or undeveloped.

At a time when there is so much talk about human rights, fundamental rights, and inclusion-precisely because of their neglect and attacks on the rich theoretical, legal, and educational work of education professionals, students, and society in general-this Dossier reveals its importance in the commitment to the process of humanization of all free, emancipated cultural subjects.

Initially, it addresses Vygotsky’s theoretical contributions to the field of Special Education with the interview “Beyond the Normative Character of Psychology,” with Professor Luciano Mecacci-theorist and translator of historical-cultural theory in the field of defectology, by Alessio Surian.

Mônica de Carvalho Magalhães Kassar and Flavia Faissal de Souza present the article Vygotsky in the context of the emergence of special education as a field of knowledge, in which the author’s ideas about the critique of Therapeutic/Curative Pedagogy present in Special Education in the 1920s and 1930s are explored. At the confluence of Vygotsky’s pedological and defectological studies: the child with intellectual disability, written by Daniele Nunes Henrique Silva and Ana Paula de Freitas, critically analyzes Vygotsky’s pedological texts written between 1931 and 1934, addressing the issues of age and disability.

Fabrício Santos Dias de Abreu and Lavínia Lopes Salomão Magiolino are authors of the text Affect-intellect relation and the proposition of semantic unity in the Vygotskian approach to intellectual disability, which analyzes the main concepts developed by Vygotsky regarding mental retardation, and issues involving the idea of ​​an interfunctional system, the inseparability of intellect and affect, the notion of dynamic unity of the semantic system, highlighting the centrality of the word in the systemic formation of psychological functioning.

Cristina Broglia Feitosa de Lacerda, Christiane Thatiana Ramos de Souzaand Maria Cecília Raphael de Góes are authors of the article Deaf people education in Vygotsky’s writings: mimicry among forms of speech, where they seek to problematize the reorientation of Vygotsky’s ideas about deafness, from oralism to polyglossia, from 1931 onwards, revealing the general Vygotskian theses about the centrality of the semantic dimension for the constitution and development of higher psychic functions.

Marina Teixeira Mendes de Souza Costa and Fabiana Alvarenga Rangel wrote the article “ The Drawings of children with visual impairment and their reading and writing processes.” In it, they address the literacy processes of visually impaired children (blind and visually impaired), using drawing as a starting point. This activity demands the same functions observed in children without visual impairment, but with specialized techniques and tools.

Dealing with issues more related to education and inclusion, Régis Henrique dos Reis Silva and Anna Maria Padilha present “Contributions of Vygotsky’s Defectological Studies to the School Inclusion of Students with Disabilities,” revisiting the main concepts developed by Lev Vygotsky in his studies about defectology and, in light of these, critically discussing how ableism affects people with disabilities. They begin with a dialectical analysis of disability education, seeking to overcome exclusionary models of educational relations that are still based on what children with disabilities cannot do: their incapacity and lack.

Luciana Schlindwein, Marilene Proença, and Olivia Milléo, in the article “Vygotsky’s Defectology, Medical Reports, and Inclusion Policies in Santa Catarina,” critically address current special education policies from an inclusive perspective, problematizing the processes of medicalization involving children diagnosed with a wide range of syndromes, generating exclusion both inside and outside of school.

“Art and Inclusion in Vygotsky: Cultural Accessibility in Music” is authored by Regina Jodely Rodrigues Campos Aguiar, Patrícia Lima Martins Pederiva, Elisângela Moreira Peraci, and Lucia Helena Cavasin Zabotto Pulino. In it, they address the role of art in the interface with inclusion. They discuss cultural accessibility and the role of music as a necessary experience for human development, given that it is a topic still rarely addressed in academic research, as well as the exclusion of people with disabilities from artistic experiences.

This dossier will certainly contribute greatly to the training and practice of professionals in different fields of knowledge and to the strengthening of this theoretical perspective, at a time of so many contradictions and uncertainties regarding the direction of science and public policies in favor of human emancipation