RE: [xmca] neoformation / zpd

From: Andy Blunden <ablunden who-is-at mira.net>
Date: Fri Feb 08 2008 - 17:52:12 PST

That word "onus", Michael! You say much of the onus was put on the child,
but the placing of onus is very much a social act, isn't it?
Andy
At 08:24 PM 8/02/2008 -0500, you wrote:
>Andy,
>
>This issue has special salience to me at the moment because I have been
>reading about the child welfare movement in the United States - the ideas
>of the right to childhood, and the "whole child." It was spearheaded by
>the women who worked within the Settlement House movement - Jane Addams,
>Lillian Wald and Florence Kelly. In some ways development, child
>develolpment, at least as it was originally envisioned by G. Stanley Hall,
>was at odds with dealing with the whole child, and the understanding that
>society creates the child as much as the child finds a place in
>society. This was a political fight in many ways, so much of it was about
>who takes responsibility for children. Developmentalists at the time saw
>the child's entry in to society as something of an individual endeavour -
>they develop different skill sets, abilities, like cognition, and emotion,
>and social skills (and at one point I think foot size). This puts much of
>the onus on the child in finding his or her place in society. When
>considering the whole child it seems like we consider was makes the
>child's life better - a more Pragmatic view of life (not surprising - many
>of these women were Progressives and had ties to the Pragmatists). Is
>that then what we consider learning.
>
>Is it possible to get development out of this individualistic box, and
>then what does that say about social responsibility if we can't.. I think
>the learning/development question may be more profound than we often give
>it credit for. Of course Vygotsky wasn't party to any of this. Does his
>brand of development get us out of this box. The whole neoformationist
>strand led me to think about that.
>
>Michael
>
>________________________________
>
>From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Andy Blunden
>Sent: Fri 2/8/2008 8:10 PM
>To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>Subject: Re: [xmca] neoformation / zpd
>
>
>
>"Listening" to what everyone is saying about zpd, it seems that people see
>zpd as relevant to learning in general, and not tied to development. Is
>this true?
>
>If I ask myself what it is that make a step forward *development* rather
>than *learning*, then I'd say it's a step forward that entails *losing*
>some abilities while acquiring new ones, whereas learning means just adding
>new skills., not losing them Whenever a development first takes place, that
>is to say we have a *re*-structuring taking place, then necessarily every
>other aspect of a person's activity and their relations to others around
>them has to change / restructure as well. That's the nature of structure,
>after all. So what was learnt has to grow over into other areas of
>activity. But isn't this process an important aspect of the concept of zpd?
>Or is that just incidental? Given that development is definitively and in a
>much more profound way, something that is driven by the demands and
>expectations of others and the person's relation to others, it would seem
>that zpd is a concept which ought to have special significance for
>development, not just learning.
>
>How do people see the concept of zpd in relation to *development*
>specifically?
>
>Andy
>
>At 02:55 PM 8/02/2008 -0800, you wrote:
> >Yes, XMCA is a zoped, though it can also be a confessional and a tribunal
> >too. I think the main reason why XMCA is a zoped and the confessional and
> >tribunal are not is that the latter have an EVALUATIVE rather than a
> >DEVELOPMENTAL function. So the proper function of a confessional and a
> >tribunal (and SOME forms of teaching) is ASSESSMENT rather than LEARNING.
> >That's what I meant about having our backs to the future.
> >
> > Many of the on-line presentations (Mike's, Pentti Hakarainnen's, and of
> > course the Seoul presentations) have to do with a text called "Problem of
> > Age" in Volume Five of the Collected Works, eric. In it, LSV really does
> > describe disappearing neoformations ("autonomous speech" and "negativism"
> > are mentioned, and that's why Dr. Subbotsky talks about negativism in his
> > remarks at the on-line seminar). And of course in Chapter Five and Six of
> > Thinking and Speech he also talks about everyday concepts "blazing a
> > trail" for scientific concepts.
> >
> > That's for the tribunal. Now for the confessional part! My statement
> > that the "Goliath" was developmentally inert but the "Feast of
> > Belshazzar" is somehow catalytic was simply wrong: I think they were BOTH
> > catalytic, but only ontogenetically. Neither one was catalytic
> > socioculturally; neither one really had a future with other painters. (I
> > certainly don't want to paint bug-eyed Belshazzars with bunches of
> > bananas on the ends of their arms.)
> >
> > An example of a socioculturally catalytic form of painting would be the
> > small devotional miniatures which Elsheimer did. They were so small
> > people wouldn't pay good prices for them, and Elsheimer died of
> > starvation with his whole family. His art prefigured the slightly larger
> > devotional works that made Poussin's fortune, and even today it survives
> > in cameo art.
> >
> > (I even knew a guy in Paris who survived by frequenting auctions where
> > they would calculate how much money you got per square inch for your last
> > canvas and then start bidding with that price for your next one. He'd
> > show up with a tiny canvas and bid the price up ridiculously high, and
> > then come the next week with an ENORMOUS one!)
> >
> > David Kellogg
> > Seoul National University of Education
> >
> >
> >---------------------------------
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> >_______________________________________________
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>
> Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
>mobile 0409 358 651
>
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>
>
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  Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
mobile 0409 358 651

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Received on Fri Feb 8 17:53 PST 2008

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