[Xmca-l] Re: zone of next development

[HENRY SHONERD]

David,
In your quote from Vygotsky he uses the term “critical age” and “critical period” as developed by Penfield and Lenneberg here in North America in relation to language development. 

From Wikipedia:
"The critical period hypothesis is the subject of a long-standing debate in linguistics <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics> and language acquisition <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisition> over the extent to which the ability to acquire language <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language> is biologically linked to age. The hypothesis claims that there is an ideal time window to acquire language in a linguistically rich environment, after which further language acquisition becomes much more difficult and effortful.”

What kind of resonance do you find between “critical age” as Vygotsky uses it and the “critical period hypothesis”?  

Henry



 
> On Nov 22, 2016, at 6:29 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
>>