Re: [xmca] Playfully Answering Ana--

From: Peter Smagorinsky (smago@uga.edu)
Date: Fri Jun 09 2006 - 03:12:16 PDT


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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