This book advances a cultural-historical understanding of school learning through Fernando González Rey’s Theory of Subjectivity. Moving beyond representations that reduce learning to cognitive, operational, or individual processes, it develops a conception of learning as a subjective process in which symbolic and emotional processes are inseparably articulated with learners’ life histories, relationships, and the social spaces in which they participate.

The book critically revisits contributions from cultural-historical psychology, particularly those of Vygotsky, Bozhovich, and Lomov, as a basis for expanding prevailing understandings of school learning. It then develops the concepts of subjective sense, subjective configuration, social and individual subjectivity, and subject to examine the complex and singular ways in which learning is subjectively configured. The learner is understood as an active participant in the production of subjective processes that may open new possibilities for learning and development.

This perspective also provides new ways of understanding learning difficulties and disability beyond their individualization, pathologization, and medicalization. Through theoretical discussion and empirical cases, the book explores how individual and social subjectivity are recursively articulated in classrooms, schools, families, and other social spaces, and how relationships, pedagogical practices, and institutional dynamics participate in learning. Particular attention is given to comprehensive and creative learning, the learner’s emergence as a subject, and the possibilities for learning to become a source of subjective development.

Finally, the book explores implications for educational practice, teacher education, family–school relationships, and the education and professional practice of psychologists. Addressed to researchers, professionals, and students in psychology, education, and related fields, School Education, Psychology and Subjectivity: A Cultural-Historical Approach offers a framework for understanding school learning in its complexity and its relationship to subjectivity and human development.

This is an English edition of a book originally published in Portuguese. The translation of the original manuscript into English was done with the help of artificial intelligence. The author, with the support of Daniel Goulart and Bruno Cobucci, subsequently revised the translation further to ensure its technical and conceptual accuracy and to refine the text stylistically.

Albertina Mitjáns Martínez is a Senior Collaborating Researcher at the Faculty of Education at the Universidade de Brasília, Brazil, and President of the Fernando González Rey Institute. She received her PhD in Psychological Sciences from the Universidad de La Habana, Cuba, and completed postdoctoral studies at the Faculty of Psychology at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain. Her research interests focus on education and psychology from a cultural-historical approach in three specific fields: (1) creativity and innovation in education; (2) subjectivity in human development and learning; and (3) disabilities and school inclusion. Her most recent books include: Subjectivity: Theory, Epistemology and Method (Springer, 2025); Theory of Subjectivity from a Cultural-Historical Standpoint: González Rey’s Legacy (Ed., Springer, 2021); and Subjectivity Within Cultural-Historical Approach: Theory, Methodology and Research (Ed., Springer, 2019).

Fernando González Rey (1949-2019) was a Full Professor of the Faculty of Education and Health Sciences of the Centro Universitário de Brasília (Brazil) and Senior Research Professor of the Faculty of Education of the Universidade de Brasília (Brazil). He was also Visiting Professor in several universities worldwide, such as Universidad del Rosario (Argentina), Monash University (Australia), Universidad Autónoma de Mexico (México), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), Universidad de Rio Piedras (Puerto Rico), Universidad del Valle (Colombia), École de Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales de Paris (France). He obtained his Ph.D. qualification at the Institute of General and Pedagogic Psychology of Moscow. He also obtained the title of Doctor in Science from the Institute of Psychology of the Sciences Academy of Moscow. He was awarded the Inter-American Psychology Prize in 1991. He received the Orden Carlos J. Finlay, the main recognition for Science in Cuba, in 1991. He was also posthumously awarded the ISCAR Medal in 2021. His intellectual legacy offers a new, complex and influential understanding of subjectivity from a cultural-historical perspective. His research interests focused on subjectivity, education, health, and psychology from a cultural-historical approach.