Dear all,
"his or her zone" -- should be taken to mean that we are focusing on a
particular individual (maybe not always a child -- as Vesna suggested --
we on this discussion maybe are in a ZPD about the ZPD right now :-)).
It does not mean that the zone is not distributed across the social
situation, interpersonal relations, particular activities and events.
However, we do have a difficulty in defining it -- Does the "zone"
manifest itself always as an observable interactive activity? From the
examples given by bb -- the two boys were partly in a class dealing with
whatever the class was doing and partly in a "zone" (more in
Csikszentmihalyi sense of the "flow") they created for themselves apart
from the ongoing social activity.
In addition, ZPD also implies the notion of internalization - that the
activity which is at the start done interactively with others, becomes
progressively internalized (so that the child can do more and more
"alone" to achieve the same effect) -- which means that the ZPD is
probably always comprised out of partly observable interactive activity
and partly out of imagined "private" and internalized psychological
functions.
Isn't that interesting??
Ana
Peter Smagorinsky wrote:
> But surely he was in A zone, if not the teacher's. If the teacher was
> trying to get him to fill out worksheets, he's better off, methinks,
> working on his music or finding patterns in the ceiling. p
> At 01:08 PM 6/10/2006 +0000, you wrote:
>> Yes, this makes sense. I know of a child whose elementary school
>> teacher complained that he would not pay attention -- he was doing
>> tihngs like looking at the ceiling (when I asked he said he was
>> finding patterns in it) -- and she would have been surprised to find
>> years later that he scored 99%ile in math. His middle school
>> teacher, who complained of his constant foot tapping, was surpised to
>> find that he was a drummer... but in all this, is it also not true
>> that these teachers instincts were right -- that this kid was not in
>> the zone because he was not attending to the moment?
>>
>>
>> -------------- Original message ----------------------
>> From: Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu>
>> > At 05:36 PM 6/8/2006 -0400, you wrote: Since, by definition, ZPD is a
>> > construction zone, a time of dynamic changes where everything is
>> "up in the
>> > air", a longer period of time and more play and non play observations
>> > should be made on a child in order to be able to make any decisive
>> > conclusions about that child's position in her/his ZPD.
>> >
>> > I haven't contributed much to this discussion--am teaching a summer
>> class
>> > and trying to get some writing done. I'm wondering, though, about
>> the idea
>> > that a child has "his/her zpd." If cognition is distributed, it
>> seems that
>> > the zpd isn't the child's alone, but extended to mediational tools,
>> their
>> > histories, and the community of practice in which they're used (and
>> more
>> > I'm sure). In 1990 Luis Moll equated zpd's with social contexts
>> (his intro
>> > to Vygotsky and Education), and I've always found that to be a useful
>> > reformulation of Vygotsky's relatively brief account of the zpd:
>> It's not
>> > an individual capacity, but using Vygotskian logic, the setting
>> (including
>> > the learner) in which potential may be realized. Peter
>> >
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>>
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-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ana Marjanovic'-Shane,Ph.D.151 W. Tulpehocken St.
Philadelphia, PA 19144
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