[Xmca-l] Re: Over or excess involvement of parent - ZPD

[David Kellogg]

Dear Ulvi:

Well, the literature I've read is contradictory. On the one hand, there is
that famous Brazilian study on building model farms. One group was
"scaffolded" by their parents and the other by skilled elementary school
teachers. The parents tended to elbow the children aside and make the
models themselves (so as not to waste the precious clay), but the teachers
tended to stand back and let the kids have a go. The result was that the
teacher scaffolded group attained much higher levels of self-regulation.

In contrast, Askew et al notes that teachers who are quite skillful at
scaffolding their own children at home do not actually use scaffolding
strategies in the classroom (because of time pressure and the presence of
too many different learners with different needs). The assumption is that
delicate scaffolding is an effective strategy. Something similar appears
when we look at "scaffolding" research in foreign language learning--the
more delicate the scaffolding, the more effective it is, whatever that
means.

Vygotsky, however, is not contradictory at all. Even in the famous passage
on p. 86, he is very offhand and casual about the different strategies
which can be used in teaching (leading questions, starting solutions, doing
demonstrations) and treats the degrees of freedom in collaboration as an
empirical problem, to be worked out on a case by case basis. He even points
out that a child at home who remembers the way that a teacher solved a math
problem on the board and uses it to solve a problem is "in collaboration".
See also his use of different kinds of "introvolution" at the end of
Chapter Five of HDHMF.

But--here's MY question. Vygotsky often contrasts particular physical
skills (bike riding, playing golf, type-writing) to psychological
development, and he makes it very clear that the former play no part in the
zone of proximal development, at least for the school age child, because
they are not developmental. On the other hand, he also compares learning to
play the piano with learning to write, where finger skills do not play a
part in the zone of proximal development, but the psychological functions
involved in musical and literary awareness do.

Instead of considering that what happens when the child works alone is a
change in the source and the quality of motivation, couldn't we say that
what happens is that the child is able to get beyond a fixation on
fingering and understand music as a complex psychological function?

David Kellogg

On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 6:08 AM, Ulvi İçil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com> wrote:

> Sorry, at the very end, it should have been, lack of onset of the
> functioning...
>
> On 22 September 2015 at 00:04, Ulvi İçil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >
> > Life and new trials and experiences may have the potential for
> > illimunating certain facts otherwise staying unresolved.
> >
> > Suppose that a parent supports his child for piano lessons at home. The
> > child, unlike other,needed a lot of parent support until then to succeed
> in
> > conservatory and the parent always though that without him/her, the child
> > is not able to remember teacher's latest lesson's directives, to apply
> them
> > etc.
> >
> > But this means that the child finds every time the parent besides him
> > during lessons at home (even the parent takes not during the lesson with
> > teacher) and the child is used to be reminded by the parent for the most
> > critical things to be newly learned.
> >
> > The lesson before the last one is not so successful. Until that lesson
> the
> > child and the parent worked again together. So many mistakes on the part
> of
> > the child.
> >
> > But then, at return at home, they decide the child works on his own for
> > three days. Then the new lesson with teacher takes place. Zero parent
> > involvement.
> >
> > Then, this same passage is very well done and appreciated by the teacher
> > and the teacher says, is this the same child, do you have another
> identical
> > one at home.
> >
> > *
> >
> > So, my hypothesis is that, with such an excessinve parent involvement,
> who
> > does not possess confidence in the child to study appropriately, the
> child
> > may be chained and the process of  developing his potential with adult
> may
> > turn to a lack of opportunity to develop his potential on his own, which
> > may be quite harmful for the child.
> >
> > May this hypothesis verified: when working with the parent, the child
> > hands over his attention ability to the adult, he shares this ability
> with
> > him, he delivers himself to the adult and is unable to take any
> initiative,
> > is not the manager of the learning process.
> >
> > But, as soon as the parent goes out, he knows that he is the sole
> > responsible for his own learning process and pays much more attention to
> > what he does, makes maximum effort to learn during the lesson with the
> > teacher, and to remember at home what the teacher taught during the
> lesson.
> >
> > In this case, I think the mistake on the part of the parent is the onset
> > of the functioning of self regulation during learning process.
> >
> > Does this over or excess involvement make any sense, or a place in the
> > literature?
> >
> > Ulvi
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>