[Xmca-l] Re: Thank you to Peter

[Martin Packer]

I was thinking something similar, Henry. This seems to me one of those rare occasions where Vygotsky doesn’t have it quite right. I spend quite a bit of time watching kids walking with adults, because it’s a phenomenon I find quite fascinating. A child using a table for support while starting to walk is quite different from the ways that adults will actively help a child to walk, performing functions, such as balance, that the child is not yet capable of alone. Then, when the child *is* capable of walking alone, the adults have to be even more active: everyone knows that a toddler will head off in any direction that attracts their interest: now adults need to be what I think Bowlby called an ‘external ego.’

Martin

> On Apr 26, 2018, at 5:56 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Peter, et. al.
> In the text from Vygotsky, the “external objects” the child is making use of might be an “affordance” as per J.J. Gibson?  Something else comes to my mind in a child learning to walk is the risk of serious injury. Most adults would probably not knowingly let the child risk such injury. That would be endangerment in a court of law. 
> Henry
> 
> 
>> On Apr 26, 2018, at 2:02 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> Thanks Peter!
>> Mike
>> 
>> On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 12:59 PM Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>> 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.
>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
> 
>