[Xmca-l] Re: Thank you to Peter

[Peter Smagorinsky]

In case anyone is interested in LSV's use of scaffolding, Rene sent me the following. But it seems clear to me that he's not using it as Bruner did. The scaffolding here is not designed by an adult, but rather involves a child's use of available supports. The words might be more or less the same, but the concept seems very different to me.



See p. 226 of my Understanding Vygotsky (1991, with Valsiner), where I observed that Vygotsky used the scaffolding metaphor in chapter 3 of Vygotsky & Luria (Studies in the history of behaviour: Ape, primitive, man,1930, p. 202).



And this is the text:



Let us recall how the child gradually learns to walk. As soon as his muscles are strong enough, he begins to move about on the ground in the same primitive manner as animals, using a naturally innate mode of locomotion. He crawls on all fours; indeed one of the leading pedologists of our day says that the very young child reminds us of a small quadruped, rather like an “ape-like cat”. [39]That animal continues for some time to move about in the same primitive manner; within a few months, however, it begins to stand up on its legs: the child has started to walk. The transition to walking is usually not clear-cut. At first the child makes use of external objects, by holding on to them: he makes his way along holding onto the edge of the bed, an adult’s hand, a chair, pulling the chair along behind him and leaning on it. In a word, his ability to walk is not yet complete: it is in fact still surrounded, as it were, by the scaffolding of those external tools with which it was created. Within a month or two, however, the child grows out of that scaffolding, discarding it, as no more external help is needed; external tools have now been replaced by newly formed internal neurodynamic processes. Having developed strong legs, sufficient stability and coordination of movement, the child has now moved into the stage of definitive walking.



-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of mike cole
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2018 12:58 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Thank you to Peter



Makes good sense to me, Rob.



I do not have the same problem with proximal that Peter does, but emphasizing the temporal ordering seems certainly right.



With respect to scaffolding: The russian term is строительные леса  - literally, "construction forests" -- think of the "scaffolding" around public buildings that block the sidewalks and are a "forest" of pipes and boards.

Beats a gallows by a verst or two!



BUT, beware that Vygotsky and Luria, among others, used this very term at times. There is interesting work by Arthur Bakkar and Anna Shvarts on this very topic that I am hoping to get represented in MCA. Arthur has written on this topic with empirical work in classrooms and makes a case for a broad use of the term that converges very closely with. If there is interest here, let me know, and i can post one of his papers.



mike

(the guy who believes that the proper English concept is a zoped)  :-)



On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 3:56 AM, robsub@ariadne.org.uk<mailto:robsub@ariadne.org.uk> < robsub@ariadne.org.uk<mailto:robsub@ariadne.org.uk>> wrote:



> I just want to say thank you to Peter for introducing me to

> "Deconflating the ZPD and instructional scaffolding".

> https://www.researchgate.net/p

> ublication/320579162_Deconflating_the_ZPD_and_instructional_

> scaffolding_Retranslating_and_reconceiving_the_zone_of_proxi

> mal_development_as_the_zone_of_next_development

>

> I have felt for a long time that there was something not quite right

> about the way people conceive of both the ZPD (or, as I shall now call

> it, the

> ZND) and instructional scaffolding, but lacked the expertise to

> analyse why. Now Peter comes and, with great authority, tells me that

> I was thinking along the right lines. The irony of now being

> officially A Retired Person is that I have the leisure to study these

> things in the detail I needed when I was working and did not have the time.....

>

> Just a couple of random thoughts around my reading of the article.

>

> I have always felt that "scaffolding" was a misnomer, a bad choice of

> metaphor by those who originally coined it. The point of scaffolding,

> the stuff you put on buildings, is that it is inflexible. It is

> massive, rigid, and designed never to fall over with a worker on it.

> Although I have never quite been in tune with the idea of

> instructional scaffolding, it has always seemed to me that its point

> must be flexibility - taking bits away from it must be at least as

> important as putting them there in the first place. So, whenever I

> think about instructional scaffolding, I first have to get past the jarring metaphor. Perhaps I am too sensitive to words.

>

> I wonder also if the popularity of the "assisted-learning-today,

> independent-performance-tomorrow" model is not just popularity with

> teachers of teaching. Its short term focus and superficial specificity

> make it appear to be very measurable, which makes it popular with

> policy makers, especially in today's audit culture.

>

> The introduction of Moll and the idea of context being crucial was

> also very illuminating. Something else for me to examine, dammit. But

> also something that becomes obvious once it is pointed out because

> CHAT and the activity triangle are all about context.

>

> This quote from p73 gives me pause for thought too. "Assuming that

> instructional scaffolding will work because it is written into a

> lesson plan overlooks the possibility that teacher and learner will

> approach each other in ways that produce conflict over product and

> process, with the student inevitably losing. Scaffolding, then, needs

> to be viewed as an intensely relational process, one requiring mutual

> understanding and negotiation of goals and practices." Teachers know

> that (I would say) but policy makers, at least in this country, don't.

> They love lesson plans and teachers are coerced into achieving the

> aims in the lesson plan regardless of where the lesson is actually

> going. The disjunction between what we know to be good teaching on the

> one hand, and, on the other, the requirements of neoliberal audit culture, becomes ever more stark.

>

> I hope I am making sense.

>