[Xmca-l] Re: zone of next development

[HENRY SHONERD]

David,
For Vygotsky then “critical” entails a crisis and applies only to those ages (one, three, seven…) when the body is undergoing massive physiological changes, but doesn’t include puberty? You will recall that Lenneberg associated the critical period for language development with the lateralization of brain function, though this idea is weakened by evidence for neuro-plasticity in people who suffer insults to the brain and regain such functions. Though neuro-plasticity is much more dramatic and quicker in young children.    

Maybe puberty is “fuzzy" with regard to the distinction between the crises of childhood and the perizhivanie (plural) of adults. Childhood is blips, adulthood waves, both plural? Perhaps a caution; these visuo-spatial metaphors are useful but temporality can play itself out through emotion alone. 

Shirin,
I am thinking that there are two perspective on time that may be relevant here: Point in time vs. duration of time. It seems to me that zone evokes duration. Correspondingly crisis evokes point in time. Experience (in the moment) evokes point, development (“takes” time) evokes duration. I think the following is an example of “performing beyond one’s performance: A one-year-old child (call him Nigel) uses a holophrase based on adult speech that sounds something like “Uh-sat”. Only later does the child “unpack: that holophrase into the grammatically complex “What’s that?” The adult-scaffolded play of naming objects (one might call it a bud) develops (over time) into lexico-grammar. 

I may be wrong, performing beyond my competence. So, help me unpack it It may take some time.

Happy Thanksgiving to All
Henry




> On Nov 24, 2016, at 7:51 AM, Shirin Vossoughi <shirinvossoughi@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Thanks David. I think your example illustrates well the idea that there are
> ZPD's even within play.
> 
> What I'm wrestling with is the line between "being able to" and "not being
> able to" (in  your example -- being able to play with names, or perhaps the
> line between repetitive action games and those with an imagination
> situation). One of the things I appreciate most about the ZPD is that this
> line is blurred in generative ways. In some cases, this might mean acting a
> head taller in play in ways that one isn't quite *yet *able to do outside
> the play situation. This ties to the notion of performance before
> competence, though I am not a big fan of the term performance.
> 
> But there's another layer to this that your example speaks to which is not
> *yet* being able to act a head taller within the play situation (?). But
> I'm wondering what is still opening up for the child by being in the play
> situation with others and how these forms of mediation or experience matter
> for future action. How to characterize this within the ZPD? Put
> differently, I'm wondering if we have a performance bias or perhaps a
> narrow view of participation that might sometimes gloss over the wider
> forms of participation (observation, listening, etc.) that take shape
> within the zone, and that help to blur the line or move beyond "can't" and
> "can" ? I am asking this of myself too.
> 
> Shirin
> 
> On Wed, Nov 23, 2016 at 6:26 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Shirin:
>> 
>> I'm just finishing up a paper on this. Let me share a bit with you, since
>> we've shared so much good stuff of yours on this list.
>> 
>> A Korean mother takes two children for a routine checkup. While the
>> seven-year-old is tending to the doctor, she plays a game with the three
>> year old: she is trying to persuade her to switch names with her older
>> brother for a day.
>> 
>> The little one, who we'll call Number Three, is adamant. Names cannot be
>> switched. Once given, a name cannot be changed. The mother remonstrates,
>> reminds her that in role play she often allows herself to be called
>> "princess" or some other name. The child does not recognize this as an
>> instance of name changing (just as Vygotsky noted that three year olds who
>> play with dolls do not regard the doll as anything other than a doll--they
>> do not imagine that they are parenting the doll). The mother reminds her
>> that at the preschool she goes to, all of the adults have nicknames,
>> including her mother. It emerges that the child does not know her mother's
>> real name (and does not understand when the doctor calls her mother) and
>> thinks that the preschool nickname ("Dorandoran" or "Chatterbox") is her
>> mother's real name. After all, you can't have two names. Can you?
>> 
>> Now the seven-year-old comes out and it's the three-year-old's turn. Here's
>> what happens:
>> 
>> Mom:   **아 너 이름이 뭐야?
>> 
>> “(Seven), what is your name?”
>> 
>> Seven: ***
>> 
>> “(Kim Number Seven.)”
>> 
>> Mom:   진짜? **이 이름, **이한테 **이라고 부르면 돼 안돼? **이한테 **이라고 한 번 불러 볼까?
>> 
>> “Really? Suppose (we) give (Seven's) name to (Three) and call (her Seven),
>> is that okay or not? Let's call (her Seven) for once and see.”
>> 
>> Seven: 응. 그래.
>> 
>> “Unh-hunh. Okay.”
>> 
>> Mom:   너는 **이라고 부르고, **이한테 **이라고 부르면 안돼?
>> 
>> “So you are going to be called (Three) and (Three) is going to be called
>> (Seven), right?”
>> 
>> Seven: 좋아.
>> 
>> “(I) like (it)””
>> 
>> Mom:   좋아? 그래도 돼, 안돼?
>> 
>> “(You) like (it)?  But (is it) right or wrong?”
>> 
>> Seven: 돼.
>> 
>> “Right.”
>> 
>> Mom:   어, 진짜? **아~엄마 이름은 뭐야?
>> 
>> “Oh, really? Hey, (Number Three)! What is Mommy's name?”
>> 
>> Seven: 아빠.
>> 
>> “Daddy.”
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> What Vygotsky says is that there are different kinds of play. He rejects
>> Groos' idea that repetitive action games are exploratory play--what Piaget
>> calls play (e.g. opening and closing a box, rolling a ball, etc.) is not
>> play because it doesn't involve any imaginary situation. Maybe, from a
>> Hegelian point of view, it's "play in itself" but not play for others or
>> play for myself. Number Three has something Vygotsky calls "quasi
>> play"--that is, play for others, but not for myself, like when a child
>> tends to a doll, puts it on the potty, even nurses it but reacts with
>> indignation when you suggest that the child is the doll's mother and the
>> doll is a daughter. Tending, nursing, pottying--that's just what you do
>> with a doll, like opening a door or rolling a ball. Number Three doesn't
>> recognize the imaginary situation at all. Only Seven is really playing.
>> 
>> 
>> So--even within play, there are zones of development. I don't think it will
>> be tomorrow, or next week, or even next year that Three will be able to
>> play around with names the way that Seven does.
>> 
>> 
>> David Kellogg
>> 
>> Macquarie University
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Thu, Nov 24, 2016 at 2:41 AM, Shirin Vossoughi <
>> shirinvossoughi@gmail.com
>>> wrote:
>> 
>>> 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
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>