5. Postgraduate studies. Start of research activity

In 1962, after five years of work in Sakhalin, Alexei Nikolaevich Leontiev invited Vladimir and Galina Repkin to attend graduate school. The proposal was interesting, but not very convenient for a young family: Galina would study in Moscow, and Vladimir would be offered a correspondence course, meaning he would continue to work and study in Sakhalin. They thought about it and agreed, and Galina came to Moscow to enroll in graduate school. At the university, she met Vladimir Petrovich Zinchenko, and he convinced her to contact his father, Petr Ivanovich Zinchenko, who was looking for two postgraduate students. P.I. Zinchenko was a well-known researcher of memory problems and worked in Kharkiv in the 30s of the last century together with Alexei Nikolaevich Leontiev. Before that, the Repkins weren't very interested in memory research, but after a few minutes on the phone with Pyotr Ivanovich, Galina was so fascinated by him that she immediately called Vladimir Repkin in Sakhalin.

They decided to go to Kharkiv. Vladimir Vladimirovich, in the last year of his life, remembered this moment and said that if he hadn't made this decision, he would never have solved the problems of study and would have had a boring life as a professor at Moscow University. Probably, he said, he would deal with personality problems, but he was a teacher and was more interested in a living school.

Petr Ivanovich Zinchenko, at the first meeting, began to discuss with Vladimir Repkin what he wanted to do when he entered graduate school. Of course, this had to correspond to the research object of the advisor.

The main problem of P.I. Zinchenko had been formulated by A.N. Leontiev as the question of the relationship between memory and activity. It was from these positions that Petr Ivanovich carried out his study of involuntary memory. Zinchenko understood that the results of his study of memory provided very incomplete data because in the laboratory the experimenter sets a ready goal for the subjects.

P. I. Zinchenko wanted to study the role of involuntary memory in real human activity, first in the student's study activity. To solve this and some other problems, P.I. Zinchenko invited V. Repkin to Kharkiv. Already when discussing the problem of Vladimir Repkin's research, it became clear that the existing model of school education was not suitable for carrying out such research because the teacher sets the goals for the student, as in a laboratory experiment. It was necessary to solve the problem of organizing this learning, which would be built according to the principles of the psychological theory of activity. Vladimir Repkin had pedagogical experience, so Pyotr Ivanovich immediately offered him this problem. Vladimir Repkin suggested that to carry out such a study it was necessary first to restructure learning according to the activity theory and only then to search for changes in involuntary memorization. At that time, neither the principles of learning nor the methods for diagnosing memory function under new conditions had been developed. A researcher can only do so much work. Vladimir Repkin suggested organizing such learning and pointed out that someone else should do the memory studies. Petr Ivanovich realized that he wouldn't be able to handle the research task of restructuring learning alone and, after much deliberation, decided that it was necessary to seek advice from other scientists. Therefore, he enlisted the help of Pyotr Yakovlevich Galperin, who advised him to contact a group of psychologists led by Daniil Borisovich Elkonin. Thus, an alliance with D.B. Elkonin and V.V. Davydov was immediately established.

Vladimir Repkin had known Danil Borisovich Elkonin for a long time - he used to listen to his lectures when he was a student at the Psychology Department of Moscow University. Before that, he hardly knew Vasily Vasilyevich Davidov - Davidov graduated from the Psychology Department when V. Repkin transferred there from Philosophy. But Davidov knew and remembered the Repkins, especially their daughters. Galina Repkina was surprised to learn this at a chance meeting with Davidov in Moscow, two years after her graduation.

The collaboration between Vladimir Repkin and Vasily Davidov became a long-term creative union. They didn't meet as often as they would have liked, but they always communicated in a very meaningful way. These conversations were not like the so-called soft academic communication. Davidov and Repkin always had a meaningful and emotional dialogue, which often turned into an emotional argument about certain developmental learning issues. These arguments could last for hours and only seemed to strengthen their friendship, respect, and mutual interest. Vladimir Repkin met with Davidov in Moscow two or three times a year. However, it was very difficult to talk there - Davidov was constantly distracted by phone calls, questions from officials. They met only in the evenings at Vasily Vasilyevich's house, quietly, without distractions. They often agreed that V.V. Repkin would spend the night with V.V. Davidov (Davidov always found a place for guests, even when he lived in a minimal apartment with a few neighbors).

They managed to work especially fruitfully when Davidov came to Kharkiv. After meeting Vladimir Repkin and his colleagues in the laboratory, Vasily Vasilyevich came to visit the Repkins at home. And it was always excellent! The Repkin daughters were pleased. The traditional beginning of Vasily Vasilyevich's meeting with the girls was his question about what had changed in them recently. The adults present at the meeting were very surprised to see how Vasily Vasilyevich could remember that half a year ago the oldest daughter had problems with a history teacher and the other with a wonderful chemistry teacher. Then there were questions about books read, interesting lessons, difficult subjects, and so on. The girls looked at him with loving eyes and giggled with delight when, at the end of the conversation, Vasily Vasilyevich deliberately pronounced (or rather sang) in a stern voice: "Cut and tear, whip and tear, on Saturdays!

From the very beginning, the working relationship between Vladimir Repkin and his group and the Elkonin-Davidov team was based on mutual interest, partnership, and cooperation. V. Repkin's laboratory was never an experimental platform for testing the hypotheses of Elkonin and Davidov, as both groups solved problems independently. In those years, D. B. Elkonin and V. V. Davidov were mainly studying the development of thinking in schoolchildren, while Repkin's research group was interested in the role of memory in learning, based on meaningful generalization and activity theory. Over time, Vladimir Repkin's research became focused on building a system for this type of learning, which was later called "developmental.”

Let us go back to 1963, to the beginning of the learning experience. After some doubts, thanks to the possibility of cooperation with the Moscow group of D. Elkonin and V. Davidov, P. Zinchenko gave V. Vladimir Repkin the problem of the development of experimental learning, and former professor Grigory Sereda, who was then in graduate school, took over the study of involuntary memory. During the study, G.K. Sereda and Vladimir Repkin often discussed converging problems. After obtaining the results confirming the possibility of effective use of involuntary memory in learning in the defense of his dissertation, G.K. Sereda abandoned further study of the problems of memory in learning and concentrated on his purely theoretical problems.

In 1963, Vladimir Repkin began looking for a school in Kharkiv to organize experiential education. Despite the active support of the Kharkiv Regional Department of Education, Vladimir Repkin had great difficulty in finding School No. 62, where the headmaster agreed to organize experiential education. In general, at that time, there was no tradition in the country of conducting psychological experiments with schoolchildren, and the government had banned them for many years. The talented mathematics teacher Felix Grigoryevich Bodanskii was the deputy headmaster of the school that agreed to conduct the experiment. He found Vladimir Repkin and his plans for organizing experimental learning of great interest. Felix Bodanskii began to lead a part of the study devoted to the development of mathematics learning, and Vladimir Repkin to the development of a psychological theory of study activity and the creation of learning programs and teaching materials based on this theory for the Russian language course, and later on various other subjects. From the very beginning, Vladimir Vladimirovich took a great interest in the development of the mathematics course. Repkin and Bodanskii solved the theoretical and practical problems of experiential learning together, and were friends until Felix's premature death.

In 1963, the experiment was started by a group of four people (V.V. Repkin, G.K. Sereda, F.G. Bodanskii, and G.V. Repkina). From the very beginning of his work, Vladimir Repkin sought and found like-minded people among teachers and researchers, inspiring them to search for arguments to design a new education. Vladimir Vladimirovich spoke about the theses of the new education in a very convincing, interesting, and emotional way, and talented researchers and teachers were taken by these plans and included in the study. Employees of the Kharkiv Pedagogical Institute - Polina Zhedek, Yuriy Barkhaev, Elvira Aleksandrova, and others - participated in the development of experimental learning. In close contact with the Kiev Scientific Research Institute of Psychology, Repkin studied the problems of schoolchildren's study activities.

Source: Family personal archive.

Photo 12 In Petr Ivanovich Zinchenko's laboratory (elementary school teacher, Petr Zinchenko, Galina Repkina, the first teacher of developmental learning, Galina Grigorenko, Vladimir Repkin, Felix Bodanskii, and Rimma Skotarenko. 

V. V. Repkin understood from the beginning that the study required the solution of very complex theoretical and practical questions for which there were no answers in psychological science and educational practice. Moreover, discovering these problems and defining them as research goals was also a complex creative process. Careful and time-consuming experimental testing of hypotheses was always necessary.

For example, one of the first problems that Vladimir Repkin discovered was the relationship between the conditions for the formation of theoretical knowledge and practical skills. He understood that to design new learning as an integral system, there must be unified methods. In the laboratory of V. Davidov and D. Elkonin, this problem did not arise; the task of developing practical skills and habits was solved by traditional methods. For the sake of illustration, let's focus on the solution of this problem in the construction of a comprehensive system of learning the Russian language for elementary school. V.V. Repkin with P.S. Zhedek showed that significant generalization of spelling methods could be ensured only if the learning of spelling is consistently oriented to the phonetic theory from the very beginning. The development of programs and the corresponding implementation of learning have shown that by the end of the 1st grade students can master the phonetic principle of Russian writing, the further implementation of which ensures, on the one hand, the assimilation of a system of linguistic concepts and, on the other hand, the intensive formation of spelling concepts based on these linguistic concepts and actions and their transformation into solid skills. It differed fundamentally not only from the traditional program, but also from the variants of experimental programs created at that time in the laboratory of Elkonin-Davidov: L. I. Aidarova and E.E. Shulezhko (^{REPKIN, 1998}).

To solve any problem at any stage of research, Vladimir Repkin organized a joint creative search of researchers and teachers. In this way, every researcher and teacher who worked in the laboratory became a co-author of this creative process. It would be a mistake to portray this as a kind of peaceful, quiet community. The idea of solving a problem or new questions was born in often-emotional disputes. Vladimir Repkin was surprised that his colleagues didn't always recognize and understand the problems that arose. In fact, not every interlocutor could be as knowledgeable in various fields of science (psychology, linguistics, philosophy) as V. Repkin. Repkin. In addition, most importantly, he had not only knowledge but also a profound understanding of the problems and the ability to see the connections between them, a surprisingly quick "view" of the situation as a whole, highlighting significant connections in it. Vladimir Repkin often didn't understand that other researchers didn't have the same level of development in thinking, understanding, and memory as he did. He sometimes wondered how a researcher or teacher could forget something. In the process of posing problems together and solving them experimentally, in this complex joint creative activity, the independent creative researcher and the creative teacher "grew up".

Today, after many years, it is difficult to imagine how Vladimir Repkin managed to do so much work with his small team.

Each lesson was designed by the author, and then the author and teacher together implemented a real lesson in a real classroom. But every day it was necessary to prepare two or three new lessons with different teachers in different classes. The lesson designs had to be tested in practice, i.e., a lesson had to be carried out in the presence, and sometimes with the active participation, of the researchers with whom it was designed, as well as fellow teachers and school leaders. Colleagues, psychologists, and the headmaster, Petr Ivanovich Zinchenko, actively participated in the discussion of the lessons. A detailed analysis of what was possible and what wasn't was carried out, and a draft of new lessons was created, considering the mistakes made and the new ideas that emerged. And so on, day by day, month by month, year after year.

Source: Family personal archive.

Photo 13 Vladimir and Galina Repkin with their daughters came to Kharkiv to enroll in graduate school. Summer 1962 (wife Galina and daughters). 

Through this enormous amount of work, a new educational system was created and improved, and teachers of a new kind emerged - teachers - co-authors of a new experiential education (the concept and term of a developmental learning system would appear much later). Teachers who had worked in the developmental learning system for at least a few years could no longer reject it. For them, it became the only possible form of pedagogical activity. The teachers who worked with Vladimir Repkin maintained a deep spiritual contact with him until the last days of his life and were grateful for the opportunity to become a creative person.

I'd like to tell you a little about the living conditions of Vladimir Repkin and his family at that time. When the Repkins came to Kharkiv to study, the family had three daughters. Natasha was in the third grade, Tonya was almost seven, and Alyonka was less than two.

While in graduate school and then for several years at work, the Repkins lived with their three daughters in a 19-square-foot dormitory at Kharkiv University. The girls' "nursery" was a narrow part of the common room, surrounded by closets. They had classes, played, and slept on folding beds in the same place. Vladimir made shelves for them all along the wall under the window. This shelf served as a table where classes were held, and under it were shelves for books and toys. The bathroom and kitchen were in the hallway and were used by the tenants of 19 other rooms. Almost every day, several staff members and teachers came to work with Vladimir Repkin at the same time. After work, they often sat down to eat together. At the table, they often continued to talk about work. Occasionally, they listened to music, told interesting stories, and read poetry. The children sat quietly behind the screen and listened. Surprisingly, everyone was happy. They lived like this for 8 years, and then the city authorities gave Vladimir Repkin a comfortable apartment.

6. Defense of dissertations and continuity of research

The dissertations of Vladimir and Galina Repkin were defended at Moscow University in 1967. Like the dissertation, they defended their papers in one day, but each on a different topic. Vladimir Repkin's paper "Psychological Organization of Scientific Material and Learning Success" was received with great interest. Naturally, there was a lively discussion, in which Vasily Davidov and Daniil Borisovich Elkonin took an active part. After the defense, Vladimir and Galina Repkin went home with Vasily Davidov, where they continued to discuss the research and made plans for the future. They went to bed very late and woke up at five in the morning to the loud beeping of a car under the window. Davidov looked out the window and saw that what was under the window was a taxi. It turned out that the Repkins had forgotten their dissertations and all their documents in the car. They didn't realize it yet, but losing documents and theses was a huge problem in those days. The driver found the documents, tried to remember which of the passengers might have forgotten them, where he was taking these people, and found the address!

After defending his thesis, Vladimir Repkin headed the Department of Elementary Education at the Kharkiv Pedagogical Institute and gave lectures on psychology to students - future teachers. The main task that occupied the rest of his time was work in the laboratory. At that time, the laboratory was located in a small house in the yard of school No. 17, where V. Repkin moved in 1965 together with teachers, students, and a research group. It was called the "Laboratory of Study Activity of Elementary School Students". While in the beginning, in 1963, the experiment was started by a group of 4 people, from the end of the 1960s, between 10 and 15 researchers took part in the work at different times. G. K. Sereda completed the study of involuntary memory and left the laboratory. The study included talented people who loved new ideas. Vladimir Repkin had his own postgraduate students (N.I. Matveeva, I.I. Veshtak, V.T. Dorokhina) and Ph.D. candidates (P.S. Zhedek, A.K. Dusavitskii, and others).

The main problems that V. Repkin worked on at that time were the concept of learning activity, detailed analysis of its structure and components (cognitive interest, acceptance of the learning task, goal setting, control), and construction of a Russian language course for the first years of primary school because of phonetic theory.

In 1968, the Kharkiv Television Studio shot the film "2 x 2 = X" at the Experimental School, which aroused great interest when it was shown on Central Television. The film won an award at the International Documentary Film Festival and has remained relevant to this day. No subsequent film on developmental education could match its quality. Vladimir Repkin took an active part in all stages - from discussing the script to commenting on the film. The script for the movie was written by Alexander Dusavitskii, who was so enthusiastic about the experiment that he resigned from his job as an engineer and joined the research. The main problem he studied together with V. Repkin was the development of cognitive interest in elementary school students in the conditions of experiential learning. Later, Alexander Dusavitskii wrote a popular scientific book, "2 x 2 = X, in which he gives a fascinating and accessible account of the experience of Kharkiv psychologists on the development of schoolchildren in the process of study activity.

7. Work at the Department of Psychology at Kharkiv University.

In 1972, thanks to the active support of Alexei Nikolaevich Leontiev, who had headed the Kharkiv Psychological School in the 1930s, a psychology department was opened at Kharkiv University. Vladimir Vladimirovich Repkin was invited to move from the Pedagogical Institute to the university. He taught "Introduction to Psychology", "General Psychology", "Personality Development" and "Psychology of Study Activity" at the Psychology Department. The lectures of Vladimir Repkin can be called a theoretical problem. However, this will be his formal classification, which does not reflect the essence. I fully agree with what A.K. Dusavitskii wrote about V.V. Repkin's lectures.

Psychology as a science appears in V.V. Repkin's lectures and seminars in all its attractive complexity, consistency, and problems. V.V. Repkin's lectures are not a collection of psychological knowledge and concepts; they are the key to thinking about the development of psychological science and its historicity. Vladimir Vladimirovich talks to first-year students without considering their "young" age; he makes them read monographs and not just answer an exam based on the textbook prepared for teacher training colleges. The first graduates of the Psychology Department of Kharkiv University received a real university education, according to V.V. Repkin, which allowed many of them to later work successfully in many branches of theoretical and practical psychology (DUSAVITSKII; REPKIN, 2002, p. 16).

I would like to add that each lecture resembled a good detective story, where the audience held its breath (but quickly took notes) and waited for the events to unfold - unraveling this tangle of contradictions in the understanding of psychological problems. In addition to psychology students, the lectures were always attended by almost the entire staff of the university psychology department, the laboratory staff, and many other interested parties. The notes, as former students later said, are still kept. Those who work as psychology professors use them as a basis for constructing lectures, while those who did not work as professors said that they sometimes simply reread and remember these lectures as a respite for thought.

In 1975, V. Repkin held a course on the theory of study activity for psychology students at the Kharkiv University. In 1976-78 Vladimir Vladimirovich published a series of theoretical articles devoted to the concept of learning activity, a description of its structure, the formation of learning activity as a psychological problem, and the conditions for its formation at the elementary school age⁹ These texts were later used by Vasily Vasilievich Davidov in the book Theory of Developmental Learning (1986) and in the section "Learning Activity" in the Psychological Dictionary prepared under his direction.

8. Preparing for the transition from developmental learning to a mass school

In the mid-1970s, at the behest of the Ministry of Education, Vladimir Repkin and his research team, together with V.V. Davidov's group, began new work: preparations for the transfer of the developmental learning system from its experimental form to mass education of a new kind. Vladimir Repkin's research group independently developed educational materials in Russian, and work on materials in mathematics was carried out by the Kharkiv group under the leadership of F.G. Bodanskii together with V.V. Davidov's laboratory.

For several years, V.V. Repkin and his group of researchers specified the content and logic of building Russian language programs for elementary school, prepared teaching materials, developed learning methods at various stages, etc. In addition, the content and methodology of conducting all Russian lessons from the 1st to the 3rd grade were repeatedly tested in real conditions and recorded in the form of detailed notes.

Vladimir Repkin spoke about the need to create a new type of textbook for elementary school students. As early as 1967, he considered the creation of textbooks to be the main task for the near future. Considering the accumulated experience of experiential learning up to the end of the 1970s, V. Repkin believed that the system of education for mass schools could not be viable if it was not based on appropriate textbooks. This opinion provoked serious and justified objections from V.V. Davidov: after all, how can you solve a learning problem in class if the textbook already has a solution path and answers? It was clear to V. Rekpin that the existing textbooks did not correspond to the principles of developmental learning. V. Repkin and his group began to develop a new type of textbook. In the early 1980s, they managed to create the first version of Russian textbooks for grades 1-3. These textbooks, in terms of content, structure, and methods of presenting the material, meet the objectives of developmental learning and can be used as one of the most important means of shaping students' learning activities.

During these years, Repkin established close contacts with a group of employees of the Russian Language Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences under the direction of M.V. Panov, who for the first time offered the mastery of the system of scientific concepts of modern linguistics to middle school students. Vladimir Repkin greatly appreciated this cooperation and believed that it helped him to better understand the language course for elementary school and to begin to build its continuation in secondary school.

Work on the creation and improvement of educational subjects for primary and secondary schools continued for many years, but in the early 1980s the preparation of materials in Russian language and mathematics was completed. This created the conditions for the implementation of a system of developmental learning in the mass primary school.

9. Prohibition of developmental learning

However, these conditions could not be met at that time because the work of V.V. Davidov's laboratory in Moscow and V.V. Repkin's group in Kharkiv was unexpectedly completely stopped by the order of the country's leadership. Experiments in schools were forbidden; inspectors of the authorities came to the school, unexpectedly entered the classrooms, and looked through the books from which the children were learning. But Vladimir Repkin and some of his colleagues continued to work (without pay, since the laboratory was closed), hoping that the ban would be lifted. Some teachers couldn't work according to the traditional programs. They remember with a smile that any book was on the children's desks, but the experimental book was under the table, and the children studied in it.

D.B. Elkonin and V.V. Davidov remained hopeful about the possibility of continuing the experiment. Vladimir Repkin continued to communicate with them. Once, when Davidov was dismissed as director of the Institute of Psychology and another director was appointed, Vladimir Repkin showed great sympathy for Davidov and gave him a recording of a song in which the author jokingly explained why an incompetent person often occupies a "sacred place". The author of this article took this tape personally and can confirm that Vasily Vasilyevich, who had a great sense of humor, enjoyed the song.

During the years of the ban on developmental education, Vladimir Repkin worked as the head of the Russian language department at one of the technical institutes in Kharkiv and actively tried to implement the main ideas of developmental education in the Russian for foreign students there.

Source: Family personal archive.

Photo 14 V.V. Repkin with a Kharkiv student, 1985. 

10. The developmental learning system in a mass secondary school

Only five years later, in 1988, when the general situation in the country had changed, V. Repkin resumed the interrupted research with a small group of former laboratory employees. But immediately a new task arose: to discover the possibilities and conditions for mastering the system of developmental learning by students in mass general education schools. Vladimir Repkin and Vasily Davidov, on the initiative of the head of the non-profit educational organization "Evrika" Alexander Adamsky, began to familiarize teachers with developmental learning. Such a meeting of V. Repkin with the teachers of the city of Sochi aroused great interest, as the participants recalled.

Source: Family personal archive.

Photo 15 V.V. Repkin gives lectures on Developmental Learning. Summer 1989. 

In 1988, under the leadership of his group, 13 teachers were working in Kharkiv and the Krasnodar region. A year later the number of classes working in developmental learning programs reached several dozen, and since 1990, it has been in the hundreds. In 1995, it was estimated that the number of students in the developmental learning system was just under 10% of the total number of primary school students. Separate classes and entire schools began to operate in Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, and the Baltic countries.

On the initiative of V.V. Davidov, the research group of V.V. Repkin joined the Institute of Pedagogical Innovations of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR as an independent laboratory. V.V. Repkin actively used these opportunities to expand experiential learning.

Probably this active work and creative outburst helped V.V. Repkin survive the tragedy that befell his family in the spring of 1988. Unexpectedly and tragically, his middle daughter Tonya died (a complication of childbirth). Vladimir Repkin loved her very much, and it was not just love for his daughter, but a deep spiritual affection. Tonya was only 31 and half years old; six children were left motherless, the youngest was three months old...

Source: Family personal archive.

Photo 16 Antonina Repkina. 

V.V. Repkin's work in Moscow at the Institute of Pedagogical Innovations of the APS of the USSR didn't last long: in 1991, the USSR ceased to exist and Ukraine became an independent country. It became impossible for V. Repkin to lead the laboratory in Moscow. But the developmental learning was already in the mass schools, and the work had to continue. Therefore, together with A.M. Zakharova, V.V. Repkin founded the Independent Scientific and Methodological Center of Developmental Education in Kharkiv. In addition, Vladimir Vladimirovich continued the work of the laboratory, but was already transferred to school ¹ 4 and then to school ¹ 85 in Kharkiv.

V. V. Repkin maintained creative and friendly working relations with V. V. Davidov, but, as before, it was a rather autonomous cooperation. Repkin and Davidov disagreed on a number of theoretical and practical issues (cf. PUENTES, 2022). For example, on the one hand, Davidov gave lectures to teachers with great interest and enthusiasm, but on the other hand, he was very cautious about the dissemination of developmental learning in mass schools. Moreover, until the last years of his life, Davidov believed that the presence of textbooks would hinder the organization of developmental learning. We have written about some differences in the understanding of the theoretical problems of developmental learning between V. Repkin and V. Davidov (^{REPKIN; V. Davidov). Davidov (REPKIN; REPKINA, 2019}).

Source: Family personal archive.

Photo 17 Vasily Davydov, Zinaida Lozing, Vladimir Repkin, Vyacheslav Lozang. Krasnoyarsk, 1993. 

According to V.V. Repkin, the main and most difficult problem in the transition from developmental education to mass education was the training of teachers to implement the system.

Vladimir Vladimirovich believed that it was impossible to prepare teachers for this work using traditional methods of information transfer. He proposed the "inclusive" method of learning, in which teachers receive relatively little preliminary training, begin to actually work on developmental learning programs, periodically, under the guidance and with the participation of experienced methodologists, collectively discuss the problems that have arisen and ways of solving them, and outline a program of future actions. Vladimir Repkin has always played a very active role in this work, together with the Center's methodologists.

Vladimir Vladimirovich believed that teachers-in-training should acquire not only knowledge of language learning and mathematics, but also an understanding of the psychological foundations of developmental learning. Therefore, he taught the psychology of developmental learning from the very beginning of these courses for teachers in various cities. In these courses, he always paid close attention to the basic concepts of developmental learning and the theory of learning activity. The content changed every year, and a version of the lectures given in Riga in 1992 was published.

He also gave lectures to teachers on the peculiarities of developmental learning of Russian in primary and secondary schools. During his work at the Siberian Institute of Developmental Learning (more on this below), he taught a unique course entitled "Methodology of the Russian Language in the System of Developmental Learning".

Vladimir Repkin's idea of a "School of Excellence in Learning" for developmental education teachers was very fascinating and promising. These teachers had already completed the courses for teachers and methodologists, but they wanted to strengthen their theoretical skills. V. Repkin invited these teachers from different cities to the Kharkiv School of Developmental Learning, which had a laboratory. The teachers planned the lessons together and conducted them in the presence of other teachers, methodologists, and authors of school subjects. After the lessons, they discussed them together, the problems that arose, and planned the next lessons. The work proved to be extremely effective both for the professional growth of the teachers and for the understanding of the authors of the programs, as well as for the systematic improvement of the proposal.

Source: Family personal archive.

Photo 18 V.V. Repkin with a group of students from the School of Pedagogical Excellence, 1996. From left to right in the bottom row, Russian language methodologist Tatiana Nekrasova, and psychologist Galina Viktorovna Reepkina, Vladimir Vladimirovich Repkin. 

An interesting incident occurred when the teachers at the "school" were teaching Russian. The teachers planned and conducted the lessons together, but it didn't work when the students had to "find out" what a phoneme was. It was necessary to hold the fifth lesson on this topic, but it was completely incomprehensible how to do it, firstly, because the students had already lost motivation, and secondly because during the lessons it was discovered that for various reasons some students were not sufficiently trained to understand the material. The teachers (and they were well-experienced Developmental Learning System teachers!) were confused because all the ideas had been exhausted. Then Vladimir Vdazhimiolvich Repkin said that if there was really nothing to be done in this situation, developmental learning should be closed.

V. V. Repkin began by suggesting that the students use the time "just to talk" because he wasn't a teacher and wasn't going to lecture. This immediately solved the problem of motivation. Vladimir Vladimirovich, as an excellent director, organized this "conversation", or rather study dialogue. The problem of some students' lack of skills was solved by Repkin in an elementary way, exactly according to Lev S. Vygotsky. Vladimir Vladimirovich carried out these actions with the students, and the children coped with everything. It was an excellent example of work in the zone of possible development. The lesson ended with a total victory - the students clarified the concept for themselves, demonstrated a good understanding of it, and demonstrated mastery of the method in solving the proposed practical tasks.

During the work of the school of pedagogical excellence and in the laboratory schools of the cities of Kharkiv, Lugansk, and Samara, on the initiative of Vladimir Repkin, a professional video of numerous lessons and their discussion and design process was made. Based on these materials, films were made for teachers with commentary by Vladimir and Galina Repkin. These films were very valuable material for teachers and methodologists of the developmental learning system.

Throughout all the years of the existence of the Kharkiv research group, Galina Repkina always took part in it. At the beginning of Vladimir Repkin's research on the organization of experiential learning, she was constantly involved both in the discussion of the learning project and in the analysis of lessons. Galina Viktorovna took an active part in Vladimir Repkin's dissertation research. Together with Vladimir Repkin, she conducted a learning experiment with students to study the influence of the method of psychological organization of the material on the structure of the study activity.

After defending her dissertation, Galina Viktorovna worked for many years as a professor of psychology and was involved in research on memory problems in the field of engineering psychology. At the same time, she actively participated in the development of the problems of developmental learning with Vladimir Repkin. Discussions of programs, textbooks, and lessons often took place at the Repkin home, and Vladimir Vladimirovich often asked Galina Viktorovna to listen and give advice in difficult and controversial moments. She was especially active in designing and analyzing the results of research in the field of study.

Later, during the formation of the theory of developmental learning in public schools, Galina Viktorovna Repkina left her job as a teacher and joined the research and study activity in the Kharkiv Laboratory of Developmental Learning. She attended classes in Kharkiv schools and in different cities, where teachers worked according to the programs of V.V. Repkin. In the course of this work, Galina Viktorovna developed a scheme of diagnosing the characteristics of learning activity of pupils in the first years of primary school, which was used by the teachers of developmental learning. Together with Vladimir Vladimirovich, Galina Viktorovna took part in holding courses for training teachers in the system of developmental learning.

Vladimir Vladimirovich always appreciated Galina Viktorovna's wisdom, intuition, and profound understanding of psychology. All the years they lived together, she was his main interlocutor on all subjects. He discussed all his ideas with her and never failed to read her finished articles.

Source: Family personal archive.

Photo 19 Galina Viktorovna Repkina. 1978. 

Galina Viktorovna was an incredibly kind and sympathetic person. Many laboratory workers and professors turned to her for psychological advice on professional and personal matters. Above all, she was the soul of the family, the soul of the house.

For 10 years, Vladimir Repkin, as the rector, supervised the training of teachers at the Siberian Institute of Developmental Learning in the city of Tomsk. This work was different from teacher training or retraining programs. The students, many of whom had not been teachers before, needed to be prepared, not retrained, as was the case with developmental education courses. Moreover, this was not an opportunity for short-term training but for systematic study according to a complete curriculum, as in a pedagogical institute. V. Repkin, together with a creative and truly interested team of teachers from the institute, found new approaches and methods for training teachers in the system of developmental learning and successfully implemented them.

Source: Family personal archive.

Photo 20 V.V. Repkin with the professor of the Siberian Institute of Developmental Learning, Irina Markedonova. City of Tomsk, 1998. 

With the help and direct participation of V. Repkin, centers of developmental education were established in Tomsk, Samara and Lugansk. Several times a year he came to the teachers, gave lectures, discussed the teaching, and offered consultations. His communication with teachers was always very dialogical; he was truly interested in their opinions, problems, and difficulties. Vladimir Repkin treated teachers with deep respect and really did everything possible to make teachers co-authors of the developmental learning system. Because of this work, several teachers became co-authors of textbooks and learning aids.

Source: Family personal archive.

Photo 21 V.VRepkin reads a book about Russian teacher Galina Sokolova. City of Samara, . ¹⁹⁹⁸. 

According to Vladimir Repkin, the second most important task of work in a mass school according to the system of developmental learning was the development of teaching materials. He analyzed the new requirements and the experience gained during the years of the system's implementation, and together with his co-authors, he made fundamental adjustments to the previously prepared materials and developed new ones.

After 1991, Ukraine became an independent country. In this context, the state gradually began to pay more attention to the development of the Ukrainian language. For many years, the Russian language was artificially imposed in Ukraine. Children studied Ukrainian as a foreign language in far fewer school years than Russian. In the first years of primary school, only 1 lesson per week was devoted to the study of Ukrainian, while 8 lessons per week were devoted to the study of Russian. In addition, during the alphabetic period, children were taught Russian first, and half a year later, they were taught Ukrainian. Vladimir Vladimirovich understood the need for knowledge of the mother tongue and attached great importance to the creation of Ukrainian textbooks. The problem was very difficult because it was necessary not only to think about the system of study tasks and, at the same time, to correlate it with the system of study tasks of the Russian language, but also to somehow "place" the necessary teaching material in this lesson. The development of textbooks in the Ukrainian language began in 1991 with the Kharkiv methodologists Petrovna Sosnitskaya Nadezhda and Galina Nikolaevna Vlasenko under the leadership of Vladimir Vladimirovich Repkin. They worked all day, discussed the program, and the students made lesson plans. By the beginning of the second half of the first year, a new textbook had already been developed. It wasn't published, but the students received printed text for each lesson. For each student (there were 62), Petrovna Nadezhda and Galina Nikolayevna printed the text on carbon paper on a typewriter. The same text had to be printed 11 times. Each lesson was taught in two experimental classes at schools #146 and #64 in the city of Kharkov. The developers were always present during the lessons. Afterward, they discussed the results with Repkin and decided what needed to be changed. The book was published in 1994. The authors then developed textbooks for the following years of elementary school. In the school year 1996-1997, the textbook of the authors was successfully tested in two classes of the Kharkiv school ¹ 85. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the authors E.A. Perepelitsyna, N.P. Sosnitskaya and I.P. Staragin have developed a program, textbooks, and teaching materials for the Ukrainian language for elementary school students, which have been repeatedly revised and republished. The programs and textbooks were always approved by the Ministry of Education and received its seals.

Today, developmental education classes operate in many regions of Ukraine. In the Kharkiv region alone, there are 31 such schools.

Vladimir Vladimirovich understood that the introduction of developmental learning in mass schools strongly raised the problem of organizing its succession in middle school. To ensure the continuation of developmental learning in the middle years, he and his co-authors prepared a series of textbooks in Russian for grades 5 to 8. When working on new textbooks for this level, V. Repkin organized the work of a creative group of teachers, methodologists, and co-authors who lived in different cities. They came to work with V. V. Repkin, discussed the results of the work, the problems that arose during the implementation of the projects in real school classes, etc.

Vladimir Repkin knew that a teacher in a mass school, in mastering developmental learning, has many questions every day but no one to ask. That is why, in the 1990s, V.V. Repkin wrote a book called The Beginning of Time. In it, Vladimir Vladimirovich analyzed the psychological and methodological problems of the initial stage of Russian language learning for younger students according to the system of developmental learning. This was only the beginning of methodological work. In the 1990s, under the leadership and with the participation of V.V. Repkin, a lot of work was done on the preparation of methodological manuals for teachers of developmental learning (T.V. Nekrasova and others).

A significant event for developmental education was the publication of a fundamentally new educational dictionary of the Russian language. Vladimir Repkin worked on it for a long time and with great care. The idea of such a dictionary has been discussed several times, since there is no analogy to such a dictionary. The dictionary for grades 2-7 was published in 1993. Subsequently, Vladimir Vladimirovich significantly revised it and on the birthday of Alexander Pushkin, he declared that it was a unique dictionary in which the grammatical classes of words in modern Russian were clearly marked. Each word is explained, and synonyms and antonyms are given. The use of words in Russian speech is illustrated by excerpts from the works of A.S. Pushkin¹⁰.

Source: Family personal archive.

Photo 22 Dictionary of Russian educational vocabulary. 

In December 1994, Vasily Davidov and Vladimir Repkin met in the city of Tomsk while attending a conference on developmental learning. In the evening, they discussed many problems related to the spread of developmental learning in public schools. They concluded that in order to identify and solve them, it was necessary to combine the efforts of scientists and teachers dedicated to this concept. It was then decided that the creation of the International Association for Developmental Learning would contribute to this. The Association was founded in October 1995 at a conference in Moscow, with Davidov and Repkin as its leaders. Shortly thereafter, Vladimir Repkin, along with Alexander Dusavitskii and academician Sergei Maksimenko, founded the Ukrainian Association for Developmental Learning. Vladimir Vladimirovich took a very active part in the work of both associations. The last time he spoke at the conference of the association was in 2020.

In the late 1990s, Galina and Vladimir Repkin flew to Sakhalin to give lectures to teachers studying at the Siberian Institute of Developmental Learning. The Repkins were happy to see their beloved island, its nature, and its teachers again. The teachers were happy to listen to the Repkins' lectures, get answers to their questions, and talk to them personally. Vladimir Vladimirovich discovered that the headmaster of the school where he had worked 30 years ago was now his favorite student. Naturally, this was perfect news for Vladimir Vladimirovich.

Source: Family personal archive.

Photo 23 V. V. Repkin and G. V. Repkina with teachers of developmental learning. Sakhalin Island^{, 1998}. 

11. Moving to Lugansk

That same year, Vladimir and Galina Repkina moved to Lugansk with their youngest daughter, Alena. Their eldest daughter, Natalya Repkina and her family lived and worked there.

Vladimir Repkina continued to work actively on textbooks and scientific articles. Even in the last years of his life in Kharkiv, Vladimir Vladimirovich learned to work on computers, which helped him a lot. He continued to cooperate with teachers. Teachers came to him from other cities. At that time, Vladimir Vladimirovich was pleased to work with co-authors of textbooks. He worked with Elena Vostorgova and Tatyana Nekrasova: sometimes it was necessary to change something in the textbooks for the first years of primary school, but most of the time during these years they worked on high school textbooks. The work was especially pleasant in the summer. A desk was set up in the yard of the house, under the grapevines. And after work, Vladimir Vladimirovich would recite poems commissioned by the audience. Tatyana and Elena remembered those happy, romantic days for a long time.

Vladimir Repkin hadn't had good eyesight since childhood, but he always adapted to the fact that it was getting worse: he got new glasses, changed the monitor... At the age of about eighty, Vladimir Vladimirovich lost his sight completely - he got up in the morning and found that he couldn't see anything. He didn't want to go to the doctor because he didn't think he could be helped. It didn't take more than a week, and he adapted. He could locate objects by touch, mainly because he had always been cautious - he put everything in its proper place.

He continued to work on books and teaching materials. Everyone who worked with Vladimir Repkin was amazed at what a rare memory he had. He remembered perfectly all the materials from previous years, very seldom asked to reread something from new developments, and explained exactly where, on what pages, to look for the text he needed. The student secretaries helped with the technical work (typing texts, reading the necessary materials, etc.). Vladimir Vladimirovich had a touching and tender relationship with them. Every day after work (and they worked 4 hours straight), Vladimir Vladimirovich spoke with the girls about his life, the problems of studying at the university, and often read poems or talked about writers or poets. The relationship continued even after the end of their work together; until the end of their lives, they would sometimes call and continue to talk to each other.

Source: Family personal archive.

Photo 24 Alena Repkina - V.V. Repkin's youngest daughter. 

During this difficult time in his life, Vladimir Repkin had a surprisingly tender relationship with his youngest daughter, Alena. When he lost his eyesight, Alena began to take care of him. She didn't work due to health problems and devoted all her spare time to her father. She liked to go to him as soon as he called, jokingly calling him "my son," and everyone, especially Vladimir Vladimirovich, loved this game. "Look what my baby is doing!" - He would say about his father, and that made things easier and more fun for everyone. Vladimir Vladimirovich would sometimes deliberately indulge himself and play. Alena loved everyone in the family; she took care of everyone, and they all loved her very much. Therefore, it was a great sorrow when Alena died prematurely, before her 50th birthday. Often, and especially on each of her birthdays, Vladimir Vladimirovich remembered her with great gratitude and sadness. He and all his relatives felt her absence at every turn.

Source: Family personal archive.

Photo 25 V.V. Repkin with grandchildren and son-in-law. 1994 

Of course, Vladimir Repkin was not alone: always, and especially in the most difficult moments of his life, he was supported by his whole family: his wife Galina, his daughter Natalya, 11 grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren. And, it seems to me, there's no point in trying to understand Vladimir Repkin if you don't know his greatest love. For many years, he had a touching and very romantic love for his wife Galina. He never forgot to give her flowers on the memorable dates of their life together, the day they met, the first time they went to the theater together... And on Galina's 80th birthday, he gave her 80 beautiful red roses. He had already lost his sight, but he explained to his grandson in detail what kind of rose to buy, what size, and what color. And when Galina left this life, he often asked if we had forgotten to put our favorite daisies in front of her portrait.

Source: Family personal archive.

Photo 26 Vladimir and Galina Repkin at their 60th wedding. Year 2013. 

12. The war.

In 2014, after the occupation of Lugansk by Russian troops, it became dangerous to live there. The Repkins decided to move with Natalya's family to central Ukraine. Vladimir Repkin sadly joked that the war drove him out of Vinnitsa in 1941 and brought him to Vinnitsa in 2014.

During these years, Vladimir Repkin's health deteriorated, and he practically stopped walking by himself. In his youth, he led a very active life - he walked with children, went sledding with them, taught them to ride bicycles, etc. During his life in Kharkiv, he regularly walked not only to work, but also to go shopping. After a serious leg fracture at the age of 70, he continued to travel to other cities and go shopping, but gradually his activity decreased.

After losing his eyesight, Vladimir Repkin stopped walking. He often refused to go anywhere, joking that you can see nature on TV, and on TV, it's even more beautiful. After the war began, and he left Lugansk, he agreed only once to go out on the terrace and drink tea with Galina and Natalya. He spent all his time in his room: listening to news on the Internet and much more - music on a special recorder for the blind. For a long time, he just lay there and thought (of course, mostly about the problems of developmental learning). Vladimir Vladimirovich was very upset that he couldn't read Braille. He didn't like listening to audiobooks, the only exception being Galina Repkina's memoirs. He replaced reading with mentally reading poems to himself, which he remembered surprisingly well. When he realized that he had forgotten a line somewhere, he would ask someone to read it to him, but he rarely forgot. Above all, Vladimir Repkin was sad that he had lost many contacts with some relatives, colleagues, and friends: some of them had died, others were very far away. Some of them came to visit him very seldom, he communicated with them only by phone.

Of course, there was communication with the family: the eldest daughter Natalya was there, sometimes one of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren came, and Vladimir Repkin liked to talk to them, read them poems (and only for something, but he tried to guess what exactly they would like), and tell them interesting stories. Surprisingly, well, he remembered what problems and adventures each of them had in childhood, about which he told fascinating stories.

And in this difficult period of his life, Vladimir Repkin continued to work. Despite all the difficulties, he managed to work fruitfully on Russian-language materials (in the Internet mode, of course) with co-author Tatyana Nekrasova. They talked a lot on the phone every day, especially after Galina Repkina's death. Tatyana was seriously ill during those years, and Vladimir Vladimirovich supported her cautiously: he discussed her problems, recited poems for her, and different ones every day, and even sang songs.

He continued to work with his daughter Natalya on the psychological problems of developmental learning. The last years of his work were devoted mainly to the analysis of the core concepts of the system of developmental learning and to the construction of its theoretical model.

It was very difficult for Vladimir Vladimirovich Repkin to experience about a large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. For him, it was also a personal tragedy, the destruction of values, the loss, in many ways, of the meaning of life. Perhaps it was this military situation, or rather the experiences associated with it, that led to a sharp deterioration in his health. Wisdom allowed Vladimir Repkin to maintain self-control, dignity, and even the meaning of life. His incredible mind could not exist without work, and Vladimir Repkin maintained the hope that there would be a peaceful life and that developmental learning would be necessary in it. Vladimir Vladimirovich's last words were a question: "Are we still going to write about developmental learning?" I replied that, of course we were. He fell asleep and never woke up...

Postface

Heinrich Heine¹¹ said: "Every human being is a world that is born with him and dies with him; under every tombstone lies a world history.

We do not and cannot estimate the size of this world. We see something, we guess about it. The main part of Vladimir Repkin's life was developmental learning.

I entered this world called "developmental learning" while I was still in school. My sister Tonya studied in the first Developmental Learning class, where the first teacher was Galina Petrovna Grigorenko. Sporadically, I saw her math and Russian classes. I could go to her chemistry class, which was in the 3rd grade. Later, in the class where my sister Alenka studied, I watched the film "2 x 2 = X" being shot. The classroom door was open, and you could watch silently from the hallway. Rails were placed around the classroom, and the camera moved along them. Sometimes the camera would come close to a student who was talking or writing. I was very surprised that the students paid no attention to the camera, to the adults, to the camera operators walking around the classroom, or to us in the hallway. They were truly interested in learning!

I began to study the problems of developmental learning two years after graduating from the Psychology Department of the University. Vladimir Vladimirovich and I decided to study the role of goal setting in the memory development of schoolchildren in the conditions of directed formation of study activity (now it would sound like "in the conditions of developmental learning"). The work was surprisingly interesting, and I fell in love with developmental learners and their amazing and completely unusual teachers. The study was completed in 1983, but the dissertation defense didn't take place until 1987, when the government ban on developmental education was lifted.

In December 1994, Vasily Vasilievich Davidov and Vladimir Vladimirovich Repkin, after a conference on developmental education in the city of Tomsk, were discussing various issues, and both of them were very concerned about one topic: what happens to the development of students in developmental education classes in mass schools. After all, there the teacher works independently, without the control and help of authors and methodologists, sometimes without training in the courses. Vladimir Vladimirovich decided to organize such a study and suggested I solve this problem. The idea was supported by Vasily Vasilievich Davydov - he knew my dissertation research well, as he was my advisor. I was very interested in finding out what was really going on in these schools. Vladimir Vladimirovich took a very active part in the study, especially in the analysis of the results. The study lasted 10 years, and this work was entirely in the tradition of developmental learning: the more you learn, the more questions arise. From the beginning of this research until the last days of Vladimir Vladimirovich Repkin's life, I had the fortunate opportunity to participate with him in the search for and study of various psychological problems of developmental education.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Repkin's world of Developmental Learning has been preserved in published and unpublished articles, notes, textbooks, methodological materials, and films. Vladimir Vladimirovich believed that his understanding of Developmental Learning was most clearly recorded in his Russian language textbooks. He sometimes said that even if the work of developmental learning is closed everywhere, after many years there will be a teacher who will look at the textbook and understand the meaning of developmental learning. And, he said, he would build a perfect system out of it.

The main place where Vladimir V. Repkin's world of developmental learning lives is the living school. Fortunately, despite all the difficulties, developmental learning continues to exist in Ukraine. A variant of the system of developmental learning, developed by the Kharkiv research group under the leadership of Vladimir Vladimirovich Repkin, not only exists, but also is actively developing. In different regions of Ukraine, classes and whole schools are working according to this system. Textbooks for mathematics and the Ukrainian language have been significantly revised to meet modern requirements and conditions. Developmental learning continues into secondary school. Teacher training to work from this perspective in primary and middle schools has been organized at the state level. The Kharkiv Independent Scientific and Methodological Center of Developmental Learning, founded in the 1990s by Vladimir Vladimirovich and Anna Mikhailovna Zakharova, continues to participate in all this work.