Re: [xmca] Zebra Crossing into Poehner and Lantolf

[Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu>]

Greetings to all during our stretched-out U.S. Thanksgiving holiday long-long weekend!

I've been occupied these last few months with too many other things to have been able to keep up with xmca, regrettably. But Mike asked me if I had anything to contribute around the Lantolf & Poehner article discussions, which I've now more or less caught up with as well as the MCA article itself.

While I'm quite interested in language as a mediator of learning/development, I've never really gotten much into the L2 literature, though Diane Larsen-Freeman was my colleague at Michigan and tried mightily to engage me with it! :-) to a lesser extent, Nick Ellis, too. I've know Jim Lantolf casually for quite a while, and it does seem a shame that all this discussion is going on without the authors having given us their responses to the reactions being posted. In my experience, thoughtful scholars are usually smarter in discussion than what they write.

Or maybe I should say that, as my friend Michael Halliday often says, spoken conversational uses of language are just a better vehicle for meaning-making than our rather stiff and limited written registers.

Which is not, I think, entirely irrelevant to the wider issues around Dynamic Assessment. Dialogic assessment of learning and/or development simply has to be more useful and flexible a tool for diagnosis and assistance to learners than any possible written test, or for that matter any monologic assessment practice (i.e. one in which the questions, focus, and manner of interaction with the learner do not change in fundamental ways as a function of the learner's responses).

An issue in the discussions here seems to have been about what DA has to say to CHAT? I agree that L&P have perhaps not written with an explicit focus on that, but they have shown how CHAT-informed practices both differ from those in mainstream L2 teaching and why, and how they are superior. What is different about DA? it's dialogic, as practiced in the examples, it's spoken and quasi-conversational. It's more diagnostic than evaluative. In trying to fuse instruction and assessment, it's almost as much oriented to helping the learner along as to drawing conclusions about where the learner does well or needs more help/learning/development.

Relative to mainstream testing, it's a bizarre hybrid. Relative to what good teachers would really want to do in the best of all possible educational environments, it's closer to a widely shared ideal. Still, it perhaps falls a bit short of what an ideal tutor would be doing along similar lines. It is still compromising with the fundamentally oppressive presumption that "testing" is necessary, or for that matter a morally defensible practice at all. But at least it offers something shifting in a better direction, towards diagnostic practices whose main purpose is to help the learner, rather than evaluative practices whose main purpose is to pseudo-legitimate giving some people better lives and others worse ones (i.e. grading, relative standing, sorting, denigrating, relegating, etc.).

Ask yourselves, based on the descriptions we have in the article, how does DA change the relative power relations of learner and assessor-partner? and how does it not? How does it serve some institutional functions better and others less so, and which ones? On what timescales and how does the practice itself promote learning/development? during its immediate enactment, and in the days and weeks after?

Good instruction is, I think, continuously diagnostic and responsive-dialogic. It does have to balance constantly among telling, asking, suggesting, guiding, and most of all figuring out About What and When. DA is more like good teaching and less like irredeemable testing. But at the end of the article, L&P propose a future course of automating the process to accommodate the largely hopeless 35+ to 1 classroom model of language teaching, and with it, it seems, something more like the mass-testing evaluative-ranking function of schooling. Or maybe not. They don't really say, except that they want to respond to critics of DA, and this is my guess as to what the critics prefer. The technology does not, I believe, exist to make a computer program that could do what we read in the transcripts. The nearest things are so-called intelligent tutoring programs (e.g. for the "language" of algebra), which are, indeed, heavily, continuously diagnostic and pseudo-dialogic.

I could say a bit more on some of the theoretical issues raised in the xmca discussion, but for now, this is my ten cents' worth.

JAY.


Jay Lemke
Research Scientist
Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
University of California - San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, California 92093-0506

Adjunct Professor
School of Education
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke 

Professor Emeritus
City University of New York





On Nov 22, 2010, at 3:50 PM, mike cole wrote:

> Yesterday I had one of those long days most sitting in airports or
> airplanes. The only good thing about such passages in life I can abide these
> days is the opportunity to read. For me, the reading was the issue of MCA in
> which the Poehner and Lantolf paper appears. Very much enjoyed the
> David-Rod-Robert discussion that in my email stream precedes David's
> comments below.
> 
> I will respond to a couple of specific issues below in hopes of
> enlightenment. I will cc Jim Lantolf who said he would alert his co-author
> whom I do not know. My comments will NOT be in red or *itals  *for fear it
> would not come through, although perhaps we have fixed my glitch there. So
> see below in CAPS. I AM not YELLING! Just trying to make clear what is
> response, what is initial statement!
> 
> FIRST, A META QUESTION. IN THEIR INTRO, DA SILVA IDDINGS AND MOLL HAVE THE
> FOLLOWING FOOTNOTE: ""Semiotics and cultural historical activity theory
> (CHAT) are, of course, also a part of the L2 research, but publishers in
> applied linguistics have not wanted designation to change from SCT (Social
> cultural theory)."
> 
> WHAT? SINCE WHEN DO PUBLISHERS DO THIS AND ACADEMICS ROLL OVER AND SAY "BOW
> WOW"? THE QUESTION CAME UP IN DIFFERENT GUISES AS I READ THROUGH THE
> ARTICLES IN THE ISSUE, INCLUDING P&L. WHAT INTELLECTUAL, AS CONTRASTED WITH
> THE LINKED ISSUE OF INSTITUTIONAL, CONSEQUENCES ARE AT STAKE HERE?
> 
> AND WHY SHOULD CONCERNS ABOUT WHAT PUBLISHERS IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS WANT TO
> CALL SOMEONE'S IDEAS IN MCA MATTER A WHIT? SEEMS LIKE ITS COLLEAGUES IN
> ONE'S DEPARTMENT WHO VOTE ON TENURE AND PROMOTION THAT ARE THE CONTROLLING
> AUDIENCE HERE. NO?
> 
> ENOUGH FOR ONE NOTE. I WILL SEND A NON-ITALICIZED WITH THE FIRST OF THE
> QUESTIONS THAT MY READING OF THE ARTICLE HAS AROUSED FOR ME.
> 
> *mike*
> 
> The question:
> 
> 
> On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 3:16 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:
> 
>> At first I was a little annoyed. I have read, now, three articles touting
>> DA from either Matt Poehner (singly, Modern Language Journal, 91 3 pp.
>> 323-340) or Poehner and Jim Lantolf together (Language Teaching Research 9
>> 1-33). Some of the data is exactly the same (e.g. pp. 325-326 in MCA which
>> corresponds to pp. 331-332 in MLJ, and p. 324 in MCA which corresponds
>> to 330 in MLJ).
>> 
> 
> BEING ALMOST ENTIRELY IGNORANT OF RESEARCH IN THIS AREA, I WAS GLAD TO READ
> THE ARTICLE WHICH CONTAINED A LOT OF IDEAS  I FOUND INTERESTING. THE ISSUE
> OF PUBLISHING "THE SAME" ARTICLE IN SEVERAL SOURCES HAS ITS DOWN SIDES. IF,
> AS IN THIS CASE, THE REVIEWERS AND EDITOR(S) DID NOT KNOW OF THE PROBLEM, OR
> DID NOT THINK IT A PROBLEM FOR MCA READERS, IT MEANS THAT AT LEAST SOME IN
> THIS COMMUNITY HAVE SOMETHING NEW TO LEARN.
> 
> Some of us cannot publish at all and others over-publish; it seems to me
>> that the latter have a duty to the former to at least always be publishing
>> something new. But let me banish the green-eyed monster for a moment and
>> concentrate on the important issues we have at hand. I have a couple of
>> questions about the title:
>> 
>> a) What is the relationship between the "Teaching-Assessment" dialectic
>> (e.g. in the title) and the "teaching-and-learning (obuchenie)-development"
>> dialectice in Chapter Six of Thinking and Speech? Are they the same or not?
>> 
> 
> LIKE DAVID, THIS QUESTION, AND VARIANTS OF IT BELOW, SEEM IMPORTANT TO ME. I
> AM NOT SURE IT IS ADDRESSED ANYWHERE IN THE PAPER, NOR DO I RECALL WHAT
> PEOPLE LIKE FEURESTEIN, BUDOFF, AND OTHER DA HAVE TO SAY EXPLICITLY ON THE
> SUBJECT. FEURESTEIN, FOR SURE, ASSUMES A DEVELOPMENTAL SEQUENCE IN HIS
> WORK.  IT DOES SEEM TO APPEAR IN THE jANG AND DI SILVA IDDINGS PAPER BUT
> THAT IS NOT UP FOR DISCUSSION AND I AM UNSURE OF HOW THE AUTHORS VIEW THE
> MATTER. WHETHER OR NOT ONE TAKES THE LEARNING/DEVELOPMENT DISTINCTION AS
> IMPORTANT OR NOT CLEARLY MAKES A DIFFERENCE IN LINKING LINE OF THEORIZING TO
> ANOTHER, AND LSV IS SURE HERE ALONG WITH STATEMENTS ABOUT ZPD'S SO IT SEEMS
> WORTH FINDING OUT ABOUT. MY GUESS IS THAT THE IDEA OF TRANSCENDENCE IN THE
> SECTION ON DA AND L2 DEVELOPMENT, IS WHERE DEVELOPMENT COMES IN. I WOULD
> LOVE TO HEAR MORE ABOUT THIS FROM THE AUTHORS.
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> b) When we make a "case" for DA with people who are (for the most part)
>> interested in and involved with cultural-historical psychology, or at least
>> with "mind, culture, and activity" as they are integrated with each other,
>> shouldn't it be rather DIFFERENT from the case for DA made with those
>> involved in TESOL or language testing? In particular, shouldn't it focus on
>> the the specific insights that LANGUAGE TEACHING offers cultural-historical
>> psychology rather than the other way around?
>> 
>> 
> I AM NOT CERTAIN IF THIS IS WHAT THE ABOVE PASSAGE IS REFERRING TO, BUT I
> HAD A DISTINCT FEELING WHILE READING THAT ARTICLE THAT IT WAS NOT DIRECTED
> AT THE MCA
> AUDIENCE-- WHO HAS TO TELL A BUNCH OF CULTURAL HISTORICAL THEORISTS THAT
> DYNAMIC ASSESSMENT IS BETTER THAN STANDARDIZED TESTING? THE TRICK IS TO
> ACTUALLY MANAGE TO DO THIS KIND OF TEACHING/LEARNING!! SOME NICE EXAMPLES OF
> THE EXPECTED DYNAMICS IN SAMPLE DISCOURSE STRIPS.
> 
> 
> 
> c) Isn't there an EXPLICIT tendency in DA to collapse teaching-and-learning
>> (obuchenie) and development, since as an assessment technique it has to
>> produce results based on microgenesis (teaching-assessment) but its
>> professed theoretical aims.
>> 
> WHAT STRIKES ME AS CENTRAL WITHIN THE DA APPROACH, HOWEVER ARRIVED AT, IS
> THE LINKAGE BETWEEN INSTRUCTION AND EVALUATION AND I AM TOTALLY ON BOARD
> WITH APPROACHES THAT WED THE TWO. ELABORATION ON THIS ISSUE WOULD BE
> HELPFUL. DAVID INDICATES WITH HIS ZEBRA METAPHOR WHY ELABORATIONS MIGHT
> HELP/
>> 
>> 
>> Another (dis)advantage of the rather whimsical "Zebra Crossing"
>> formulation: it doesn't actually explicitly include development. So it is
>> open to the idea that a zone of proximal learning might work quite
>> differently from a zone of proximal development. For example, the
>> transformation of an everyday concept into a scientific concept might take
>> place in a very different way from the transformation of primarily action
>> based activity in early childhood to primarily speech based interactivity in
>> preschool children.
>> 
>> Zebra crossings can be dangerous.
>> 
>> David Kellogg
>> Seoul National University of Teaching-and-Learning and Development
>> .  ,
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --- On Tue, 11/16/10, Robert Lake <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> From: Robert Lake <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu>
>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Zebra Crossing
>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>> Date: Tuesday, November 16, 2010, 5:15 PM
>> 
>> 
>> Thanks for the resources and examples David.
>> 
>> The beauty of Vygotsky's work is that dialectical entities is that  the can
>> exist holistically without having to resolve the thesis/antithesis dynamic.
>> 
>> Repetition can certainly be filled with NEW  LIFE. Ask any mother.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 6:46 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com
>>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Robert (and Rod):
>>> 
>>> First of all, here's the Ernica article:
>>> 
>>> http://www2.unil.ch/slav/ling/recherche/biblio/08LGGPENSEE/Ernica.pdf
>>> 
>>> Secondly, here's the missing Sapir; if you have the Minick translation,
>> it
>>> should go JUST at the top of p. 49, after "man reflects reality in a
>>> generalized way" and before "Virtually any example":
>>> 
>>> "In the sphere of instinctive consciousness, in which rules perception
>> and
>>> passion, only infection and contagion is possible, not understanding and
>>> social contact in the true sense of the word. Edward Sapir has
>> wonderfully
>>> explained this in his work on the psychology of speech. Elements of
>>> language,” he says must be connected to an entire group, to a defined
>> class
>>> of our experience. “The world of our experiences must be enormously
>>> simplified and generalized before it is possible to make a symbolic
>>> inventory of all our experiences of things and relations; and this
>> inventory
>>> is imperative before we can convey ideas. The elements of language, the
>>> symbols that ticket off experience, must therefore be associated with
>> whole
>>> groups, delimited classes, of experience rather than with the single
>>> experiences themselves. Only so is communication possible, for the single
>>> experience lodges in an individual consciousness and is, strictly
>> speaking,
>>> incommunicable.
>>> To be communicated it needs to be referred to a class which is tacitly
>>> accepted by the community as an identity.” For this reason Sapir
>> considers
>>> the value of a word not as a symbol of an isolated perception, but as the
>>> symbol of a concept."
>>> 
>>> Thirdly, a thought on "performance" and "acting". It seems to me that the
>>> distinction is too coarse: it includes variation vs. repetition,
>>> self-directed repetition vs. other-directed repetition, deliberate
>>> self-directed repetition vs. inadvertant self-directed repetition.
>>> 
>>> Everything we say about repetition can also be said about variation:
>> there
>>> is self-directed variation vs. other-directed variation, deliberate
>>> self-directed variation vs. inadvertant self-directed repetition (i.e.
>>> error), etc.
>>> 
>>> An all of these distinctions apply not only to the actual actions
>>> themselves but also the imaginary entities we call actors. In order to
>>> teach English verbs to children in class we do an activity which is
>> called
>>> "Listen and Do" ("Stand up", "sit down", "sit up"). But sometimes the
>> actual
>>> actions become performative, e.g. "stand on the ceiling", "sit on a
>> cloud".
>>> 
>>> The actors, and not simply the actions, are also varied: "I am Andre Kim,
>>> the clothes designer. You are Jeong Jihyeon, supermodel. Stand! Sit!
>> Oooooh!
>>> Lovely! (said rather campily to uproarious laughter)".
>>> 
>>> All of these distinctions are important, and I am always very hesitant to
>>> assign pedagogical value to one over another. In an elementary school
>>> classroom, God has a blessing for everything, even for the Czar....
>>> 
>>> David Kellogg
>>> Seoul National University of Education
>>> 
>>> --- On Tue, 11/16/10, Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> From: Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>
>>> Subject: RE: [xmca] Zebra Crossing
>>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>> Date: Tuesday, November 16, 2010, 9:17 AM
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Robert,
>>> 
>>> Your comments on performance v. acting reminded me of my own take on the
>>> relationships between informing, transforming and performing. I see
>>> performance as a play between the form of a convention (a script, a
>> musical
>>> score) and the interpretation of the performer - the communication which
>>> becomes possible when performer and audience share a common set of
>>> conventions (when the audience knows the play or the piece of music) is
>> much
>>> greater and much more subtle than when there is no shared form to play
>> with.
>>> For me it is a shame that the etymology of 'perform' is not from per-form
>>> (playing THROUGH a form) but things are not always neat!
>>> 
>>> All the best,
>>> 
>>> Rod
>>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
>> On
>>> Behalf Of Robert Lake
>>> Sent: 16 November 2010 14:30
>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Zebra Crossing
>>> 
>>> David,
>>> I am very much taken with your comments on imitation and
>>> intra-revolu-turn-ation in the  Zeta Pi Delta because in my own schema it
>>> connects with Newman and  Holtzman's view of imitation. _We take great
>>> pains
>>> in our own psychological, cultural and political work......to distinguish
>>> performing from its dialectical opposite, acting." (1993, p. 153) . They
>> go
>>> on to describe acting as "representational- it is copying, mimicking,
>>> repeating without being ahead of one's self.....performing is the varied
>>> and
>>> creative imitation of revolutionary activity, i.e. making history, making
>>> meaning, to reinitiate a learning (cognitive, emotional, cultural) that
>>> leads to development).
>>> 
>>> I am reminded of Bob Dylan's early "performances" of Woody Guthrie. He
>>> sounded like him, dressed like him and he even imitated an Okie accent in
>>> his early work as a singer/songwriter yet all the while he was developing
>>> "ahead of himself". Or look at Vera John-Steiner's work in CHAT,as it
>>> evolved from translating LSV, to her work in cognitive pluralism and
>>> creative collaboration.
>>> 
>>> Where can I get a copy of Mauricio Ernica's article?
>>> 
>>> It is also amazing to me to see the ways that Maxine Greene's work in
>>> aesthetic education  intersects with "Psychology of Art".
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Where can we get the passage on Sapir in Chapter One ? Did you translate
>>> it?
>>> 
>>> Thanks again for the Truffles David!
>>> 
>>> RL
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 6:57 AM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com
>>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> I have just read a remarkable article on "Thinking and Speech" and the
>>>> "Psychology of Art" by Mauricio Ernica in Brazil. He argues that there
>>> are
>>>> three clear links between the two:
>>>> 
>>>> a) The social formation of consciousness ("art as the social tool of
>>>> emotion")
>>>> b) The distinction between higher and lower emotions ("the aesthetic
>>>> response")
>>>> c) The mutual annihilation of content and form (catharsis)
>>>> 
>>>> He points out that only a) is really EXPLICIT in T&S. But he argues
>> that
>>> b)
>>>> is implicit in the idea, most clearly expressed in the passage on Sapir
>>> in
>>>> Chapter One which is unfortunately missing from all the English
>>>> translations, on how the emotional, or affective volitional, side of
>> word
>>>> meaning is what really gets transformed when words develop into
>> concepts.
>>>> And c) is implicit in the idea that lexicogrammatical subjects,
>>> predicates,
>>>> and even categories like number and gender are quite different from the
>>>> psychological subjects, predicates, and other semantic categories of
>>> inner
>>>> speech.
>>>> 
>>>> I think all that is really true, and it came a shock to me. I've spent
>>> the
>>>> last month or so rootling around in Psychology of Art for the truffles
>> of
>>>> Thinking and Speech. And here is Mauricio Ernica doing exactly the
>>> opposite,
>>>> rummaging around in the later work and coming up with some real jewels
>> of
>>>> the earlier one.
>>>> 
>>>> But one thing that is simply NOT in the Psychology of Art in any
>> implicit
>>>> form at all is the zone of proximal development. I think Andy is right
>> to
>>>> question whether the Zoped applies to fully developed humans in exactly
>>> the
>>>> same way it does to children who are in the process of catastrophic,
>>>> revolutionary ontogenetic developments every three years or four years
>> or
>>>> so.
>>>> 
>>>> But for precisely that reason we have to question whether withdrawal of
>>>> support is the crucial, essential, typical moment of development!
>>> Vygotsky
>>>> says that IMITATION provides the actual content of the zone of proximal
>>>> development--not imitation in a narrow sense, it is true, but
>> intelligent
>>>> imitation which includes the understanding of the purpose of the action
>>> and
>>>> the possiblity of "intra-revolu-turning". It's very hard to see how you
>>> can
>>>> "imitate" a lack of support or intra-revolu-turn-ate it.
>>>> 
>>>> Yet this is basically the "scaffolding" interpretation of the ZPD put
>>>> forward by Bruner (in, among other places, his preface to Thinking and
>>>> Speech). Sure enough, it is an interpretation which CAN apply to adults
>>> in
>>>> almost exactly the same way that it does to children, because it does
>> not
>>>> distinguish between microgenetic teaching-and-learning and ontogenetic
>>>> development.
>>>> 
>>>> In the nineteenth century, the key problem which vexed the first
>>> ecologists
>>>> (Haeckl) anthropologists (Levy-Bruhl) and psychologists (Hall) was
>>> whether
>>>> ontogeny recapitulates or somehow retraces phylogeny. I think this
>>>> semi-obsession (definitively rejected by Vygotsky in the very first
>>> chapter
>>>> of the History of the Development of the Higher Mental Functions) was
>>> partly
>>>> the result of the discovery of evolutionary "stages" in embryological
>>>> development (e.g. a "plantlike" stage, a "fish" stage, a "rodent"stage,
>>> and
>>>> a simian one). The eighth century Tibetans, who were quite familiar
>> with
>>> the
>>>> stages of embryological devleopment because of their high rate of death
>>> in
>>>> child birth and their custom of dismembering corpses to feed them to
>>> birds
>>>> of prey, had already rejected the parallels as being striking but
>>> ultimately
>>>> overstated.
>>>> 
>>>> In the twentieth century, the semi-obsession has been whether or not
>>>> microgenesis recapitulates the sociogenesis of knowledge; that is,
>>> whether
>>>> children have to recreate knowledge through "discovery learning" or
>>> "project
>>>> work" that mimicks the way in which the original discoverers were
>>> thinking.
>>>> The verdict from Bruner (and also from Bereiter, and many many others)
>> is
>>>> YES; the ontogenesis of knowledge is simply a fast-forward replay of
>> its
>>>> sociogenesis. But I think there too we have to say that the parallels
>>>> are seductive but ultimately grossly overstated, and ultimately founded
>>> on a
>>>> lack of faith in the power of language to communicate.
>>>> 
>>>> Besides, if microgenesis is just the recapitulation of sociogenesis,
>> then
>>>> what is ontogenesis?
>>>> 
>>>> David Kellogg
>>>> Seoul National University of Education
>>>> 
>>>> PS: I think we should refer to the Zoped as a Zebra Raising, or maybe
>>> just
>>>> a Zebra Crossing. But what we really need is a new name for the
>>> functional
>>>> method of dual stimulation. The Fumedvastym? Fume Distillation?
>>>> 
>>>> dk
>>>> 
>>>> --- On Tue, 11/16/10, Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> From: Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>
>>>> Subject: RE: [xmca] zpd zbr zedpd and zoped
>>>> To: "ablunden@mira.net" <ablunden@mira.net>, "eXtended Mind, Culture,
>>>> Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>>> Date: Tuesday, November 16, 2010, 1:43 AM
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> But Mike's ironic point also highlights the fact that our experience
>>> before
>>>> birth (and immediately after in most parts of the world and for most of
>>>> history) has been an undifferentiated 'we' (the Ur we or
>>> "Primordial-We").
>>>> While the infant may have no independent experience of being treated as
>>> an
>>>> independent person the mother has and this is available to the 'we' one
>>> too.
>>>> 
>>>> All the best,
>>>> 
>>>> Rod
>>>> 
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
>>> On
>>>> Behalf Of Andy Blunden
>>>> Sent: 16 November 2010 00:01
>>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] zpd zbr zedpd and zoped
>>>> 
>>>> Ah! Apologies. I hadn't noticed that "Mike's ironic point" was off
>> line.
>>>> The irony was "Why not just withhold 'support' from birth, Andy?"
>>>> Andy
>>>> Andy Blunden wrote:
>>>>> Before you can "perform who you are not yet," i.e., an independent
>>>>> person, others have to treat you as an independent person. I take
>>>>> Mike's ironic point, that /prior to/ that one must have some
>>>>> opportunity to know how an independent person acts, but so long as
>> you
>>>>> are treated as someone who need help ...
>>>>> 
>>>>> Andy
>>>>> 
>>>>> Helen Grimmett (Education) wrote:
>>>>>> Interesting angle Andy! I suppose it depends on the view of learning
>>>>>> and development you are taking. I came to the zpd via the work of
>>>>>> Rogoff and Lave & Wenger so came to view learning as transformation
>>>>>> of participation in cultural activities. Then I came to Lois
>>>>>> Holzman's work and take the definition of development as the
>> activity
>>>>>> of creating who you are by performing who you are not yet. In my
>>>>>> understanding of these views, learning and development is only
>>>>>> possible with the support of others, by participating in the
>>>>>> activities of (and with) others. I have never thought about the
>>>>>> relevance of the withdrawal of support - I'll have to ponder on that
>>>>>> for a while to see how (or if) it fits in my schema!
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Interested to hear what others think,
>>>>>> Helen
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On 16 November 2010 01:47, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
>>>>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>    Mike, for whatever reason, zoped has never been a concept which
>>>>>>    figured very largely in my thinking.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>    Apart from my interest in understanding social change and
>>>>>>    zeitgeist my practical interest in Vygotsky's ideas has been in
>>>>>>    relation to practical activity with mature adults, mostly where
>>>>>>    the learner is not so much a person, but a group of adults, such
>>>>>>    as a union branch or suchlike. But I have also developed an
>>>>>>    interest in disability support.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>    In both these cases, it has always seemed to me that it is the
>>>>>>    withdrawal of support which facilitates development, not the
>>>>>>    provision of support. Of course, the very act of withdrawal of
>>>>>>    support is itself assisting the "learner" in making the
>>>>>>    development. Withdrawing support is a variety of support.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>    Does this fit into the general schema of theorising with zoped?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>    Andy
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>    mike cole wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>        Armando.
>>>>>>        It seems to me that people can use any term they like in
>>>>>>        seeking to index
>>>>>>        the processes they believe
>>>>>>        to be indicated by Vygotsky. Proximal in English refers to
>>>>>>        both time and
>>>>>>        space. In Spanish also, I believe as in:
>>>>>>        Hasta la semaina *proxima.*
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>        I was simply providing an explanation for my coinage.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>        mike
>>>>>>        On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 4:52 AM, Armando Perez Yera
>>>>>>        <armandop@uclv.edu.cu <mailto:armandop@uclv.edu.cu>>wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>            Mike:
>>>>>>            Why we do not work ZPD as zone of potencial development.
>>>>>>            ZPD as zone of
>>>>>>            proximal development taste as space dimension, Potencial
>>>>>>            development taste
>>>>>>            as time. Also Zone of colective potencial development
>>>>>>            taste as SSD (Social
>>>>>>            situation of development) And nbot anly as cognitive
>>>>>>            proce3ss but as process
>>>>>>            of development of pertsonality.
>>>>>>            Only some ideas.
>>>>>>            Armando
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>            ________________________________________
>>>>>>            From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>>>>            <mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>>>>>            [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>>>>            <mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>] On Behalf
>>>>>>            Of mike cole [lchcmike@gmail.com
>>>>>> <mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com>]
>>>>>>            Sent: Friday, November 12, 2010 8:23 PM
>>>>>>            To: eXtended Mind, Culture,Activity
>>>>>>            Subject: [xmca] zpd zbr zedpd and zoped
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>            I am answering David's question about "why zoped." I did
>>>>>>            not include it in
>>>>>>            my talk because I am uncertain of the audience's
>> national
>>>>>>            backgrounds and was assuming "mixed but mostly Russian
>>>>>>            speakers". The talk
>>>>>>            was supposed to be about 20 minutes long and I was
>>>>>>            uncertain of the time. And I was also mindful of the
>> fact
>>>>>>            that on Tuesday
>>>>>>            following its showing at the Vygotsky readings, I will
>> be
>>>>>>            discussing the
>>>>>>            issues raised, and whatever people feel like talk about
>>>>>>            via skype,
>>>>>>            sooooooo.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>            As many know, when i organize obrazovanie, I like to mix
>>>>>>            serious stuff with
>>>>>>            play. Also, I have a long term interest in the the
>>>>>>            enculturation
>>>>>>            practices and processes of peoples for whom literacy has
>>>>>>            not been a central
>>>>>>            part of enculturation until, perhaps, recent times. And,
>> I
>>>>>>            enjoy
>>>>>>            participating in the forms of activity that emerge when
>>>>>>            zopeds are created
>>>>>>            as a part of our research and educational practices.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>            With that context (add or subtract to taste) the notion
>> of
>>>>>>            a zoped came
>>>>>>            from
>>>>>>            two sources. First of all, it IS easier to say! :-)
>>>>>>            Secondly, it involves forms of pedagogy -- arranging for
>>>>>>            the young to
>>>>>>            acquire valued skills, knowledge, belief, behaviors, etc
>>> --
>>>>>>            Third, when it works, it seems like "something
>> happened,"
>>>>>>            a qualitative
>>>>>>            field that sometimes can be like flow, sometimes can be
>>>>>>            triggered by timely juxtapositions, montage-like. And it
>>>>>>            seems to lead to a
>>>>>>            more inclusive, more integrated way of relating to the
>>>>>>            world at least
>>>>>>            in that setting. Whatever this "something" is, it has a
>>>>>>            magical quality to
>>>>>>            it.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>            In Liberia when and where I pretended to work once upon
>> a
>>>>>>            time the most
>>>>>>            respected, revered, and feared members of the community
>>> were
>>>>>>            shamen, a concept referred to in Liberia at the time
>>>>>>            (across language
>>>>>>            groups, so far as I could tell) as a Zo, what popular
>>>>>>            culture refers to
>>>>>>            as "witch doctors." They were THE teachers. But they
>>>>>>            worked through magic.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>            That about sums up my idea of the zone of proximal
>>>>>>            development. It requires
>>>>>>            sage pedagogy and a touch of magic. When those are
>>> combined,
>>>>>>            they, of course, constitute a zo-ped.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>            I personally recommend spending time in such third
>> spaces.
>>>>>>            :-))
>>>>>>            mike
>>>>>>            __________________________________________
>>>>>>            _____
>>>>>>            xmca mailing list
>>>>>>            xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>>>>>            http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>            Universidad Central "Marta Abreu" de Las Villas.
>>>>>>            http://www.uclv.edu.cu
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>            Universidad Central "Marta Abreu" de Las Villas.
>>>>>>            http://www.uclv.edu.cu
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>        __________________________________________
>>>>>>        _____
>>>>>>        xmca mailing list
>>>>>>        xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>>>>>        http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>    --
>>>>>> 
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>>    *Andy Blunden*
>>>>>>    Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/<http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
>> <
>>> http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
>>>>>> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
>>>>>>    Videos: http://vimeo.com/user3478333/videos
>>>>>>    Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
>>>>>>    <http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
>>>>>>    MIA: http://www.marxists.org
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>    __________________________________________
>>>>>>    _____
>>>>>>    xmca mailing list
>>>>>>    xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>>>>>    http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>>> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/><
>> http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
>>>> Videos: http://vimeo.com/user3478333/videos
>>>> Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
>>>> MIA: http://www.marxists.org
>>>> 
>>>> __________________________________________
>>>> _____
>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>> 
>>>> __________________________________________
>>>> _____
>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> __________________________________________
>>>> _____
>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> *Robert Lake  Ed.D.
>>> *Assistant Professor
>>> Social Foundations of Education
>>> Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
>>> Georgia Southern University
>>> P. O. Box 8144
>>> Phone: (912) 478-5125
>>> Fax: (912) 478-5382
>>> Statesboro, GA  30460
>>> 
>>> *Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
>>> midwife.*
>>> *-*John Dewey.
>>> __________________________________________
>>> _____
>>> xmca mailing list
>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>> __________________________________________
>>> _____
>>> xmca mailing list
>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> __________________________________________
>>> _____
>>> xmca mailing list
>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> *Robert Lake  Ed.D.
>> *Assistant Professor
>> Social Foundations of Education
>> Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
>> Georgia Southern University
>> P. O. Box 8144
>> Phone: (912) 478-5125
>> Fax: (912) 478-5382
>> Statesboro, GA  30460
>> 
>> *Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
>> midwife.*
>> *-*John Dewey.
>> __________________________________________
>> _____
>> xmca mailing list
>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> __________________________________________
>> _____
>> xmca mailing list
>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>> 
> __________________________________________
> _____
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> 
> 

__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca