HISTORICAL-CRITICAL PEDAGOGY AND CULTURAL-HISTORICAL PSYCHOLOGY: MARXIST FOUNDATIONS FOR TRANSFORMATIVE EDUCATION IN THE CLASS STRUGGLE

Abstract

This article examines the convergences between Historical-Critical Pedagogy and Cultural-Historical Psychology, taking historical-dialectical materialism as their common foundation for understanding schooling in a society marked by class antagonisms. The guiding question is: to what extent can the articulation between these two theoretical traditions support transformative educational practice, especially in the face of the inequalities and territorial specificities of the Brazilian Amazon? The general objective is to examine the Marxist foundations of these approaches and discuss their implications for the social function of school, the teaching of systematized knowledge, and the development of higher psychological functions. Methodologically, this is a qualitative, bibliographic, and theoretical-conceptual study based on Marx and Engels, Gramsci, Saviani, Duarte, Gasparin, José Paulo Netto, Vygotsky, Luria, Leontiev, Davydov, and Brazilian authors who develop the historical-critical and cultural-historical traditions. The analysis shows that both perspectives reject naturalizing explanations of the individual and pedagogical conceptions that separate teaching, history, and social relations. In the Amazon, this articulation requires considering the concrete conditions of urban, rural, riverine, Indigenous, and multigrade schools without turning cultural diversity into a justification for curricular impoverishment. It is concluded that transformative education, within this theoretical framework, depends on the critical appropriation of humanity’s cultural heritage, intentional teacher mediation, and the articulation between universal knowledge, Amazonian reality, and the struggle to overcome social inequalities.