My learning of teaching and pedagogy did not include Russian / Marxist theorists at all, but I’ve recently realized that a lot of turn-of-the-century “learning to read” theory was based on a Marxist dialectic (by the way, I don’t mean that in an insulting sense).
Did the names Vygotski or Baktin make their way into common education, or did their theoretical influence come in without their names?
As a teacher, I am a huge fan of Vygotsky. His Zone of Proximal Development is key to really get students to learn but even more important IMO is the use of dialog in learning. I can watch students use talking to peers to develop understanding on a daily basis.
I read Vygotsky in my training, probably around when we read Piaget.
Yes, I second this.
Vygotski is very familiar, but Batkin doesn’t ring a bell.
Another vote for “Vygotski is very familiar, but I don’t know Batkin”.
I couldn’t have told you what Vygotski did, though, because so much of what we learn in education classes is utter nonsense that it’s tough to keep straight who was what nonsense, or which few weren’t.
[Moderating]
Oh, and since this is framed in terms of our personal experiences, IMHO is a better forum for this thread than FQ. Moving.
That’s Baktin.
I think that perhaps theorists are remembered only for what they get wrong, everything else becomes “common sense” and perhaps would have emerged anyway, with different names attached. I don’t know that the important things from Vygotski are really different than the valid things from Dewey, or that Baktin actually made any contribution to Dialogic education practice.
Arguably, that’s a point both Vygotski and Baktin would be making 
For those that answered, at what point did you become aware of Vygotski? From my own background, I would have said that “everybody” is aware of Piaget, and American educationalists might know about Dewey, but at the time and from the sources I was learning about these things, Vygotski wasn’t specifically mentioned.
The American’s misinterpret his work. Europeans get him right. That’s why IMHO that’s one reason PhD programs in the UK are better than in the USA.
Very few PhD candidates are children, so I’m not sure how any work on child development could be relevant. And his work is unrigorous to the point of being meaningless garbage, anyway, and once people tried to replicate his results rigorously, they couldn’t.
The zone of proximal development is something I think about on an almost daily basis. My role as a gifted education specialist means that I am constantly working with students whose core classes are outside of their own proximal development. My job hinges on providing them with material inside that zone.
I remember very little of Vygotski’s other ideas, and am unfamiliar with Baktin.