[Xmca-l] Re: zone of next development

[Shirin Vossoughi]

Hi David,
Thank you for this. How do you think about the ways that "acting a head
taller" is a concrete experience of one's emergent capabilities / potential
in the moment? (in the context of play, or through generative forms of
mediation/assistance)

 Does this align in your view with the idea that "the child will not be a
head taller than himself in a week or two" or does it complicate the ways
we view this phenomenon as an experience?

Shirin

On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 7:29 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:

> Peter:
>
> The French translation is "zone prochaine de developpement", i.e. the next
> zone of development. Francoise Seve explains why--it is because the "next
> zone of development" does not refer to any particular skill or knowledge or
> even metalinguistic reflection that the child is going to have in the
> course of development; it refers very precisely to the functions which will
> be the most rapidly developing functions in the next age level, according
> to the schema that Vygotsky was working out in "The Problem of Age" (Vol. 5
> in English, p. 196). This is completely confirmed by a remark that Vygotsky
> makes at the beginning of the lecture on the Crisis at Three (p. 283 in the
> English Collected Works):
>
> ""...(W)e must assume that all changes and all events that happen during
> the period of this crisis are grouped around some neoformation of a
> transitional type. Consequently, when we analyse the symptoms of the
> crisis, we msut answer, albeit conditionally, the question as to what it is
> that is new that appears during the indicated time and what is the fate of
> the neoformation that disappears after it. Then we must consider what
> change is occurring in the central and peripheral lines of development.
> Finally, we must evaluate the critical age from the point of view of the
> zone of its proximal development, that is, the relation to subsequent
> growth".
>
> This is why the ZPD is ALWAYS measured in years, something that very few
> Western people who invoke the concept have ever noted, even though it is
> quite explicit in every place that the ZPD is invoked. Even when the ZPD is
> spoken of somewhat loosely, (e.g. "What the child can do with assistance
> today he will be able to do without assistance tomorrow", or "in play the
> child is a head taller than himself") it is very clear that years are
> meant. Tomorrow does not and cannot mean 24 hours later, and the child will
> not be a head taller than himself in a week or two.
>
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
>
> On Wed, Nov 23, 2016 at 10:22 AM, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu> wrote:
>
> > I'm watching the version of The Butterflies of Zagorsk that Mike
> > generously shared from the UCSD archives. I give it 4 stars. It would be
> 5,
> > but the copy is pretty bad.
> >
> > The narrator consistently refers to the "zone of next development"
> > illustrated by periodic diagnostic sessions that also involved assistance
> > with deaf and blind kids learning how to speak with their hands on
> > another's hands.
> >
> > Zone of Next Development seems such a better term than ZPD. Proximal is
> > too ambiguous, and so allows for just about any learning of anything
> anyhow
> > to be illustrative of the ZPD. "Next" instead really emphasizes the more
> > long-term growth that Vygotsky had in mind, as I understand his writing.
> >
> > But it's proximal in all the translations. Any help in understanding why?
> > Thx,p
> >
>