[Xmca-l] Re: The Diagnostic Zoped

[Greg Mcverry]

Larry,

Can you point me to Andy's article this sounds fascinating.

The conversation is a very concise description of the Zoped variants for us
noobs.

Thanks,
Greg

On Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 6:47 PM David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think that the Vygotskyan version of the Zoped differs from notion of the
> leading activity and of scaffolding in exactly the ways that Seth Chaiklin
> indicated in his 2003 article: it's much more precise. It's a "NEXT zone of
> development" not a vaguely "proximal" one, where the next "fruits" of
> development are stated twice: once as a process of maturing, and once as
> the mature product. For example:
>
> age period    PROCESS  (line of development)                 PRODUCT
> (neoformation)
>
> birth               instinctive forms of extrauterine mental life
> physiological independence
>
> infancy          primary intersubjectivity, imitation
> Ur-wir (the "Proto-We", an undifferentiated "you and me")
>
> crisis 1          autonomous speech,
> locomotion                  babble? crawling?
>
> early child-
> hood            dialogue
>           speech
>
> In the leading activity interpretation, development is inherent in the
> activity itself; there are essentially no internal products (what Chaiklin
> calls the potential assumption). In the scaffolding interpretation, the
> line of development is brought about by outside intervention and not by
> internalization (assistance assumption, in Chaiklin). In both
> interpretations, there is a zone of proximal development for everything
> (generalization assumption in Chaiklin). In Vygotsky, the idea of a zoped
> for everything is like saying that there has to be a blessing for the Tsar.
>
> David Kellogg
>
> On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 2:41 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > David,
> > What is the relevance you see in showing the disparity between a
> > scaffolding zoped, a leading activity zoped, and a diagnostic zoped?
> > I have just read Andy's article on the "nature" of concepts  as always
> > expressing disparity  This disparity is in their nature as concepts. Or
> in
> > a metaphor you offered describing Vygotsky as like a crow using "words
> [as
> > eggs] that are pilfered and filled with new "sense".
> > Does this disparity in the various meanings of zoped "deepen" our
> > understanding of the concept "zoped?  or are the scaffolding and leading
> > activity versions of zoped "mis-taken" or "mis-guided" or inauthentic
> > versions?
> >
> > Larry
> >
> > On Sun, Apr 19, 2015 at 4:16 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > I've been comparing the 2001 Korotaeva manuscript of Vygotsky's final
> > > pedological lectures with the version published in Volume Four of the
> > > Russian Collected Works (Volume Five of the English). This kind of
> > > textological comparison is fairly grueling work, and yields few
> dramatic
> > > moments. But the section which is called "The Problem of Age and the
> > > Dynamics of Development" (pp. 199-205) is an exception.
> > >
> > > First of all, the TITLE'S different! The CW has "dynamics", which makes
> > no
> > > sense, because the previous section was about dynamics. The Korotaeva
> > > manuscript makes it clear that this is about diagnostics. Secondly,
> there
> > > are two paras in the CW that don't appear in Korotaeva, and thirteen
> > > paragraphs (!!) in Korotaeva that do not appear in the CW. Thirdly, the
> > > word "pedology", which occurs 32 times in Korotaeva, does not appear
> once
> > > in the CW.
> > >
> > > I've always thought of the Soviet and the Western distortions of the
> > Zoped
> > > as being symmetrical: the Soviets pretended that it was all development
> > and
> > > no learning, dissolving it into the notion of leading activity, while
> the
> > > Americans pretended that it was all learning and no development,
> > dissolving
> > > it into the notion of scaffolding.
> > >
> > > But the Korotaeva manuscript really makes it clear that the Soviets and
> > the
> > > Americans really misconceived the Zoped in exactly the same way: both
> > > ignored the pedological nature of the Zoped--that it wasn't a
> description
> > > of dynamics at all but rather a diagnostic tool to be linked to very
> > > precise ideas about how and above all when neoformations arise, through
> > > lines of development, from the social situation. The Zoped wasn't a
> > fever,
> > > or even a temperature; it was a thermometer.
> > >
> > > David Kellogg
> > >
> >
>