On Tue, 7 Oct 1997, George McKinlay wrote:
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> <fontfamily><param>Geneva</param>Many thoughts, but time....
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> However, I do like your description on the ZPD, specially because you
> do not try to define it as a precriptive point. I too am am trying to
> examine this aspect, I will include a small passage, from a paper of I
> am working on. I'm attempting introducing the ZPD with what I hope is a
> slight twist on the "standard" definition
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> <paraindent><param>right,left</param>The ZPD is another key tenet of
> Vygotsky=B9s theories.=20
It is definitely key to neo-Vygotskiians in the West. I'm not so sure it
was key to Vygotsky. He actually doesn't devote too much time or attention
to it in the context of his entire body of work, or at least all that has
been translated to date.
It can be simplisticly defined as: That space
> between where the cognitive activity of the student can be successfully
> carried out with a fair degree of ease and where the cognitive activity
> can only be performed with the assistance of a teacher or skilled peer.
I don't see it as only cognitive
Vygotsky noted psychology's separation of intellect and affect
as a "fundamental defect" of psychology (1926/97)
Also - this conceptualization does not allow for a dialectic, which I
think is critical.
> For Vygotsky it was the focused activity within the ZPD, established
> and sustained by a skilled teacher, that made the student-teacher dyad
> so effective. However, society tends not to invest so many resources as
> to allow a dyadic environment, and given the social nature of modern
> society the tutor-student dyad is not the most appropriate method .
Others (including Mike Cole) have called a focus on the dyad=20
too narrow and a "major shortcoming" (1996, p. 220) of Vygotsky's work.
How do you reconcile your view with theirs, George?
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> For Vygotsky the most important social interactions for the acquisition
> of scientific thought occurred during formal schooling, and in
> particular,<italic> teacher-student</italic> and <italic>capable
> peer-student</italic> interaction. It is in such dyads that students is
> better able to develop cognitively because a teacher is more adept at
> keeping the learning activity within each student=B9s Zone of Proximal
> Development (ZPD) and maintain the requisite abstractness. A capable
> peer can also maintain the ZPD, though not so consciously, simply
> because the peer is more likely to be operating cognitively in a very
> similar way as the learner, they are both operating within their own
> ZPD.
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> The ZPD can also be illustrated along similar lines as the model of
> dialectic interaction but with some modifications. In the
> Scientific-everyday Interaction Model (SIM) the red probability cloud
> (Figure 3a) would imply the unique, and not necessarily related, areas
> of activity and understanding of the individual student as he or she
> moves from concrete or everyday knowledge toward abstract, or
> scientific thought. Scientific knowledge (represented by the blue
> probability cloud) acquired in abstract or conceptual forms in the
> school environment, is moving toward a concrete form. The ZPD would be
> that area of greatest interaction between the two types of knowledge
> (the purple area). This model also attempts to illustrate the
> discontinuity of knowledge by avoiding a linear interaction and showing
> that many areas of human thought can remain outside of the ZPD but that
> the possibility of cognitive development still continues.=20
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> Fig. 3a Probability Cloud of the Scientific-everyday Interaction Model
> of the ZPD.=20
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> Fig. 3b Space Filled Scientific-everyday Interaction Model of the ZPD.
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> The Scientific-everyday Interaction Model is in keeping with the
> dialectical approach; it permits interactions to occur but does not
> deny that other reactions can and do occur outside of the ZPD and that
> those interactions can and do have an effect upon other interactions.
> The ZPD is simply that area where the forms of knowledge are
> <italic>more likely</italic> to interact with each other and further
> the cognitive development of the student. Teachers, in the classroom
> environment, attempt to maintain student activities within the ZPD in
> an attempt to maximize the probability that scientific-everyday
> interactions will occur. The SIM model of the ZPD attempts to combine
> the conventional Westernized perception of Vygotsky=B9s ZPD (what the
> student can do alone and what the student can do with help) with the
> more dialectical perspective posited by Vygotsky in <italic>Development
> of Scientific Concepts</italic>:
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> =8Awe can say that <italic>the child=B9s spontaneous concepts develop fro=
m
> below to above, from the more elementary and lower characteristic to
> the higher, while his scientific concepts develop from above to below,
> from the more complex and higher characteristics to the more
> elementary.</italic> (Vygotsky 1978 p. 219)
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> </paraindent>
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> I know illustrations are rather important to help visualize the ideas,
> but my key point is that;
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> the ZPD is merely the "area" we create socially (ie., classroom) where
> the interaction betwen concrete and abstract knowledge is more likely
> to occur.=20
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> George
The SIM model sounds more promising. I am not familiar with it and would
like to know more. Do you have any sources or diagrams available on the
web or in print?
The main point I was trying to make seems to hold true of your ZPD model
too (I don't know enough about SIM to say) -- conflict is the critical
process in Vygotsky's writings. The ZPD is a reorganization through
conflict to create new meaning. The ZPD works by creating a tension
between present and future capabilities; the intersection of external
needs and internal possibilities. The dialectical character of the
process has been neutralized in the West where its conflictual aspects, so
critical to VygotskyUs conceptualization, are glossed over, leaving no
room for concepts like agency and resistance. Western psychologists have
shifted Vygotsky's notion by an emphasis on the interaction between a
child and adult through the process of negotiating meaning, assuming
reciprocity and positive, cooperative interaction. =20
In Vygotsky's ZPD (1935/94), there is no active agent encouraging or
"teaching" or "helping" the child. The "other" is not an agent but a part
of an informationally rich environment that holds the potential for the
child to appropriate (like the 5th dimension??). Vygotsky's ZPD is closer
in meaning to Winnicott's potential
space (1953) or Lewin's life space (Lewin, 1943; 1951/76). It assumes
meaning is neither socially based nor reducible to the social. It is a
social condition of society itself. Vygotsky clearly recognized the
complexity of this relationship. It is not so clear that all of his
intellectual descendants do.
refs
Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lewin, K. (1943). Defining Rthe field at a given time.S Psychological
Review, 50, 292 - 310.
=09Lewin, K. (1951/76). Field theory in social science. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1935/94). The problem of the environment. In R. van der
Veer & J. Valsiner=20
(Eds.) The Vygotsky Reader. (pp. 338 - 354). Oxford: Blackwell.
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Vygotsky, L. S. (1926/97). The historical meaning of the crisis in
psychology. In R. W. Rieber & J. Wollock (Eds.), R. Van der veer, trans.=
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The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky. Vol. III: Problems of the theory
and history of psychology (pp. 233 - 370). New York: Plenum Press. > >
Werner, H. (1948/61). Comparative psychology of mental development. NY:
Science Editions.
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> >
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> >Stephanie Urso Spina
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> >City University of New York
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> >sspina who-is-at email.gc.cuny.edu
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> The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways;
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> the point, however, is to change it.
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> Karl Marx Theses on Feuerbach, no. 11
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