Dear Carmen and everybody--
Despite the fact that Vygotsky dreamed about an intelligence test based on
his ZPD construct, I doubt that it is possible (thanks, God!). Any test
based on ZPD construct will be unreliable exactly because the way it is
defined. ZPD by the definition is relational and
socially-culturally-historically constructional. ZPD is not about an
individual but about relations, practices, cultures, institutions, and
histories. It depends on who, how, with whom, where, under which
circumstances, in what contexts, with what backgrounds, by whom being
observed and judged, for what purposes, and so on. The very beauty of the
ZPD concept that you cannot measure it (but you can observe and document
it) -- it escapes as water between fingers. You cannot grab it, objectivize,
and make a "black box" (using Latour's term) out of it. Well, you can try to
make an "object" of ZPD (e.g., "the standardized ZPD scale of learning to
read") but hopefully someone can show you the violence that you did with the
concept by giving your cultural and historical examples when "the
standardized ZPD scale of learning to read" does not make sense at all.
I think that the ZPD concept nicely illustrates the principle of uncertainty
is social science: the more meaningful the conceptual construct, the less
reliable it in measuring and vice versa: the more reliable the conceptual
construct, the less reliable it is in measurement. Of course, I mean
inter-coder reliability and not ecological validity here. The historic flirt
between social sciences and measurement led to spreading and multiplication
of easily measurable and reliable but meaningless conceptual constructs
(like IQ).
In past, I remember we discussed on xmca a possibility of development
"unscrewdable" concepts. I argue that ZPD is a good candidate for this
program :-) Try to develop a ZPD test and you will fail because of
reliability issues.
What do you think?
Eugene
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carmen [mailto:catu@cs.com.uy]
> Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 8:13 PM
> To: Xmca who-is-at Weber. Ucsd. Edu
> Subject: ZDP
>
>
> Hello, all.
>
> I would like to know where can I find references about applications of
> vygotskyan's ideas of ZDP in intelligence evaluation with Weschler III if
> that exists, and if somebody has experimented with that test and this kind
> of application.
>
> Thank you
>
> A los colegas de habla española: me gustaría saber si tienen
> experiencia en
> la aplicación del Weschler III sobre evaluación de la inteligencia con
> adaptación a las ideas vigotskyanas sobre ZDP y si pueden
> facilitarme alguna
> referencia y comentarios sobre el asunto.
> Muchas gracias
>
> Carmen Torres
>
> Facultad de Psicología
> Montevideo
> Uruguay
>
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