[Xmca-l] Re: zone of next development

[HENRY SHONERD]

David,
I don’t mean it’s a one way street: physiological triggers mental, but physiological includes the brain, certainly fundamental to mental processes. In fact, is any part of the body NOT implicated in mental processing? Couldn’t there be triggering, but it’s a two way street:
physiological<—>mental? Resonance, which, for me, “zone” evokes. I am dimly aware I am in over my head…I don’t want to drown here. In any case, I have enjoyed this subject line, more as a listener than talker. Thanks to all for that.
Henry


> On Nov 24, 2016, at 2:01 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Shirin--yes, your suspicion of "performance" makes perfect sense to me,
> particularly since it inevitably entails something called "competence"
> which can never be directly measured. I think what I liked best about the
> piece you wrote with Paula Hooper and Meg Escude was your scepticism about
> invisible pedagogy. Something there is about child-centred teaching that
> seems to disproportionately favour kids with helpful middle class parents
> back home.
> The reason Halliday, Vygotsky and even I focus on speech (and not
> "language") is precisely because it has a tangible outcome; when kids
> switch names, when they can clearly differentiate between a name and a
> nickname, when they know that everybody has a name, and that even if
> everything does not necessarily have a name, ever thing is in principle
> nameable, we don't have to speculate about how much they understand.
> 
> Let's say we want to differentiate three zones of development WITHIN play,
> corresponding to Vygotsky's distinction between non-play, quasi-play and
> true-play (that is, rote, role, and rule). We can see that non-play is not
> play because meaning is entirely derivative of action: the child performs
> an action, for a brief moment may (or may not) form a mental image of the
> action, and then does it again. We can see that quasi-play is play for
> others but not for Three--in fact, she didn't call herself "Princess"--it
> was other children who decided she would play that role and she had to go
> along with it, which explains some of her distaste for the name in my data.
> (My wife had the same problem growing up--the other children would play war
> games and since nobody wanted to play the Americans because it meant an
> early death, she found herself relegated to that role, poor thing.)
> 
> Within the zone of true play, Vygotsky also distinguishes two phases or
> stages: play where abstract rules derive from roles rather than the other
> way around (e.g. "Mommy cooks; Daddy eats"), and play where roles are
> simply the reification of rules (e.g. "the last player loses; the first
> player wins"). It goes without saying that these two phases/stages are more
> linked than distinct. I think it is not so much the case that one is
> transformed into the other; they are both differentiated from some
> undifferentiated collective play, and our illusion that roles are
> transformed into rules is a product of the fact that roles have a tendency
> to be differentiated first. Another good reason to be sceptical of
> "performance" based measures!
> 
> Henry: I don't think Vygotsky ever says that crises are triggered by
> physiological changes. On the contrary, he really rakes Blonsky (a dear
> colleague who he actually loves) over the coals for doing precisely that.
> He says that Blonsky's idea that puberty can be explained by teething is
> about as good as Freud's idea that early childhood angst can be explained
> by using performance standards from puberty.
> 
> I think that language isn't pure performance, but it also isn't pure
> understanding: it's understanding-in-action, and as Shirin points out, that
> includes interaction. That's why it's useful to distinguish "communication"
> from "co-generalization"--one is between you and me, but the other is
> between me and I. Sometimes, however, it's even more useful to link them.
> 
> 
> 
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
> 
> PS: Helen and others on the other thread. I'm not sure it's a hoax. Have a
> good look at this:
> 
> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/education/2016/11/professor_watchlist_is_a_grotesque_catalog_of_left_leaning_academics.html
> 
> Rebecca Schuman is usually pretty good, although she suffers from the usual
> problems with on-line writing (a kind of messy snarkiness that seems to
> pass for clear thought these days).
> 
> dk
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Nov 25, 2016 at 1:51 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
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>