[Xmca-l] Re: Objective and Subjective ZPDs

[Andy Blunden]

Of course we must distinguish, David, between between the 
environment and the neoformations (which are the opposites 
here) and the social situation of development to boot. 
Distinctions are necessary wherever there is a word. But the 
point is whether you have a concept of the unity, and if so 
whether you can make a beginning from that unity and proceed 
by means of differentiation. This is I believe, Vygotsky's 
method, which is in contrast to the approach which takes two 
concepts, each of them understood and defined independently 
of one another, and then *glues* them together. Vygotsky is 
very good at giving us concepts which are subject-objects; 
when we grasp these concepts, then we can grasp subjective 
and objective aspects of the whole. The whole is the social 
situation of development; the child's environment is just 
one aspect of the SSD cannot be meaningfully and completely 
described if it is taken as a starting point. The same goes 
for the psychological neoformation. An action is a unity of 
consciousness and behaviour, for example, and that is a 
starting point for us.

Ad. units of analysis. There is no implication that every 
unit is the same. Every molecule of H2O is identical but 
that is a peculiarity of the quantum world. A house is built 
of many different kinds of component, many of them bricks, 
and an organism is made up of many different kinds of cell, 
even though all these cells appeared by differentiation from 
originally a very simple organism.

Andy

------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
On 7/09/2015 3:37 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
> Mike,Andy--
>
> ...
>
> Surely, Andy, Vygotsky wishes us to distinguish between 
> the social situation of development and the 
> neoformations--as he points out, the creation of the 
> neoformation is what liquidates the social situation of 
> development (you yourself made the crucial point that the 
> 'social situation' includes both the child and the 
> environment, and for precisely this reason it involves a 
> tension between individual and social, between external 
> and internal, and--dare I say it--between objective and 
> subjective. Just as surely, he would like to provide some 
> link between the two, and it's for that reason he has 
> lines of development. To tell you the truth, that's what I 
> got out of your critique of Engestrom--without 
> MISconceptions, concepts simply cannot develop, and with 
> only non-fuzzy categories, we can have a perfectly good 
> systems analysis, but no analysis into units.
>
> The one part of your Engestrom paper I really disagreed 
> with was where you say that the object of analysis can be 
> rendered as nothing but millions of units of analysis. 
> Buildings are not just billions of bricks; humans are not 
> just trillions of cells, and language is not made up of 
> hextillions of words. In between the brick and the 
> building, there are human shaped units like rooms and 
> there are environment shaped units like floors and 
> ceilings, in between the cell and the human there are 
> organs and systems, whose respiration and excretion is not 
> like a cell but not exactly like a whole human being 
> either, and in between the word and the clause there are 
> lots of intermediate units like groups, phrases, and so 
> on. So I think there must be units that are more clause 
> like and units that are more text lke too. There always 
> has to be some qualitative difference as well as 
> quantitative differences between the Ur-phenomenon (the 
> unit of analysis, word meaning, perizhivanie, etc.) and 
> the macro phenomenon. So for analysis into units to work 
> at all, we need fuzzy thinking.
>
> David Kellogg
>
> On Mon, Sep 7, 2015 at 1:19 PM, Andy Blunden 
> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
>     Great article by Seth, David. So thoroughly researched
>     and clearly explained.
>     I think the problem with the notion of subjective and
>     objective ZPDs is that like many others before him
>     Seth has mixed up the subjective/objective distinction
>     with the categories of universal, individual and
>     particular, which is also why we get the "more or
>     less" entering into what is supposed to be objective.
>     A N Leontyev does the same thing with meanings which
>     are "more or less objective".
>     The culturally and historically normative is
>     universal; that is what "universal" means. Like
>     "normative" it does not mean "objective", as if every
>     individual had the same one. They don't.
>     What Seth calls the "subjective" ZPD should be called
>     "individual." It is no more subjective than the
>     so-called "objective ZPD.
>     What is missing is that the universal it only
>     manifested in the "particular" conditions of each
>     family, school, etc., and it is this particular which
>     is actual (=acting) for the given child, and not "more
>     or less" active.
>     ZPD is best retained, I think, as the concept which is
>     both subjective and objective and inseparably so.
>     Talking about subjective *and* objective ZPDs may have
>     heuristic and pedagogical value, but I think it can,
>     in the end, also contribute to confusion.
>
>     Andy
>     ------------------------------------------------------------
>     On 6/09/2015 6:26 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
>
>
>                 Martin, Andy, Mike...and Others:
>
>                 I've been trying to make sense out of Seth
>                 Chaiklin's distinction between
>                 the "objective" ZPD and the subjective
>         one. He's
>                 obviously got in mind
>                 exactly the material we are now translating:
>                 Vygotsky's attempt to render
>                 the ZPD as a "next zone of development",
>         where the
>                 next zone of development
>                 is either
>
>                 a) given by the social situation of
>         development
>                 (and therefore more or less
>                 the same for a whole age group of children).
>
>                 b) given by the "ripening functions" in
>         the lines
>                 of development (and
>                 therefore different for every individual
>         child).
>
>                 So here's what I've got in chart form. As
>         you'll
>                 see, it's very different
>                 from the chart that Andy had in his 2009
>         article,
>                 and also somewhat
>                 different from the very elegant
>         formulations that
>                 Martin had (which to my
>                 chagrin I can't remember very well).
>
>                 I've added a column of linguistic
>         indicators taken
>                 from Halliday's 2002
>                 volume on early childhood language,
>         because I have
>                 to be able to apply all
>                 this to data some day very soon.....
>
>                 This is a very sketchy schematicky sort of
>                 preliminary draft, and
>                 criticisms, objections, imprecations, and even
>                 just gutteral mutterings
>                 would be most welcome.
>
>                 David Kellogg
>
>
>
>
>