[Xmca-l] Re: The Diagnostic Zoped

[Helen Grimmett]

Hi David,

I've been waiting with interest to see how you would answer Larry's very
interesting questions. These are questions I have been pondering for quite
some time as i was once taken to task by a reviewer who complained that I
obviously misunderstood the notion of ZPD because I talked about the
possibility of 'creating the ZPD' (i.e. creating a social activity
environment in which development could occur) whereas they saw it as only a
diagnostic tool for measuring/determining development as it occurred.

I actually work on the understanding that the ZPD is all these things (and
possibly more) simultaneously. Andy once explained to me that Vygotsky's
Marxist background would lead him to take for granted the simultaneity
(dialectical nature) of process and product and so he did not spell this
out in the way that most Western readers would require. (I'm sure Andy will
pull me up if I've misunderstood him here) Therefore although the reference
to the ZPD you are referring to in the CW is no doubt talking about
diagnosis of development isn't it possible the concept also includes the
process dimension as well as the product?

What are we to make of the mention of the ZPD in Vygotsky, L. S. (1967).
Play and its role in the mental development of the child. Soviet
Psychology, 5(3), 6-18.   "Play is the source of development and creates
the zone of proximal development" (p. 16)?

I suppose what I am asking is can understanding different aspects of the
ZPD be like understanding fever, temperature and thermometer as different
aspects that give us a broader understanding of sickness (i.e. its cause,
its symptoms and the way we diagnose it) or are you saying that the
dialectical nature of the ZPD should be limited to the simultaneity of the
process of diagnosing and the product of diagnosis?

This is something I've never come to grips with as.

Cheers,
Helen


Dr Helen Grimmett
Lecturer
Professional Experience Liaison - Primary
Faculty of Education,
Room 159, Building 902
Monash University, Berwick campus
Phone: 9904 7171

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The Practice of Teachers' Professional Development: A Cultural-Historical
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On 24 April 2015 at 08:45, 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
> > >
> >
>