I really like the term 'next practice' as used by Mike.
I may have misunderstood Mike's point about the ZPD and its extrapolation to
the level of an activity system, but I will try to respond to his challenge
as I understand it.
Just for the sake of saving those who still need to look it up from having
to do so, Vygotsky defined a ZPD as:
"the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by
independent problem solving and the level of potential development as
determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration
with more capable peers" (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86).
My favourite definition of an activity system comes from Engestrom et al
(1995) Learning and Instruction vol 5. pp319-336 "Polycontextuality and
boundary crossing in expert cognition: learning and problem solving in
complex work activities." ;
" An activity system is a complex and relatively enduring community of
practice that often takes the shape of an institution. Activity systems are
enacted in the form of individual goal directed actions. But an activity
system is not reducible to the sum total of those actions. An action is
discrete, it has a beginning and an end. Activity systems have cycle rythms
and long historical half-lives." (p.320).
My understanding (and I am sure it is very imperfect, so I am consciously
entering a ZPD here knowing that I am the inferior end of an asymmetrical
relationship) is that people like Wertsch have turned to Bakhtin, in
particular, to extend Vygotsky's definition of the dialogic nature of the
ZPD, on the grounds that this is where Vygotsky was clearly heading. In
these extensions power relationships, the presence of Bakhtin's 'third
voice', and the significance of other linguisitc modes than external
dialogue, are incorporated to provide a richer and more complex notion of
the ZPD.
Now I want to shift to our research group seeking to make sense of a field
situation in a workplace. Imagine something akin to Thomas Edison's Menlo
Park laboratories. What we see in such places is a community of practice -
an institution - whose very nature is to constantly create, break and
reformulate (in cycle rythms with long historical half lives),
expert-novice asymetrical dialogues where, as the novice reduces the
asymmetry within the ZPD, there emerges a collective capacity to break out
of existing constraints and to become truly creative.
It seems to me that such a place is an activity system which is understood
primarily as a place where the concept of the ZPD defines ths system, and
that we can understand many of the contradictions that are found within it
in terms of the kinds of extension of its meaning as found it Wertsch, and
more recently in the work of people like Cheyne and Tarulli (1999) (i.e. in
the nature of power imbalances, in whatever is functioning as the third
voice at any particular moment, in the relationship between dialogues which
occur in the strictly external sense used by Vygotsky, and those that occur
in other ways, as suggested by Bakhtin).
Given the foregoing I will poke the Mike Cole bear with my little stick and
tentatively suggest (but not assert) that while it may not be proper to give
an activity system the title of 'ZPD', there are activity systems which
are not what they are but for the presence of ZPD's, and that therefore it
is reasonable to extrapolate ZPD's to the level of activity system as a
natural evolution of meaning
Phillip Capper
WEB Research
PO Box 2855
(Level 9, 142 Featherston Street)
Wellington
New Zealand
Ph: (64) 4 499 8140
Fx: (64) 4 499 8395
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Cole [mailto:mcole@weber.ucsd.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, 23 May 2001 03:47
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: improved practices?
Bill and Phil--
As I interpret the work of the change lab idea, the notion is that
participants
are led to reflect on current practices and their histories, contradictions,
and possible futures. In this process, they look not only what they have
done but what others have done in what appear to them analogous or
relevant circumstances and decide on a course of action which should
probably
be called "next practices" with issues of "best practices" and the etymology
of this term bracketed.
An issue I have not found discussed is the extrapolation of zopeds in LBE
to the level of activity systems; clearly a lot of meanings change from
those put forth by Vygotsky in the context of testing in relation to
learning and development in schools and play.
I am still reading and considering Paul's summary of the second half of
4th ch.
mike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 01 2001 - 01:01:35 PDT