[Xmca-l] Re: ZPD

[David Kellogg]

In his introduction to the Crisis at Three (p. 283 in the English Collected
Works), Vygotsky uses "the zone of its (the critical age's) proximal
development" to refer to...the subsequent age level, that is, preschool.
This is quite consistent with all of the other things we know about the
ZPD--it is measured in years (and not months or moments), those years are
developmental years and not "passport" (i.e. calendar) years, and it is a
diagnostic and not a pedagogical device.

Although both are measured in (develomental) years,  a "level" is not the
same thing as a  "zone": the child functioning at the level of two
developmental years is not the same thing as the zone of two
developmental years which separates that child from the neonate. The level
is the age period at which the child can function. The zone is the distance
between two levels, e.g. the distance between the child at (developmental
age) three and the child at (developmental) preschool age. The level is a
milestone, but the zone is the distance between milestones.

The real level or real zone is not the same thing as the potential zone or
potential level, precisely because the internalization of a function
(vraschivaniya) takes years. If we find, for example, that it is literally
true that the function the child can realize with assistance today is a
function that the child can realize without assistance
tomorrow--literally within twenty-four hours of instruction--all we
have demonstrated is that this function is part of the actual level of
development and not the next, or proximal, one.

This is why, in order to make the ZPD into a diagnostic and not a
pedagogical tool, we need to know the pedological age levels whose zones,
measured in years, it was designed to diagnose. We also need some way of
diagnosing them that does not depend either on the calendar (passport
years) or on the hated Binet-Simon tasks which Vygotsky used and criticized
and which were later used to criticize him. These were what the ZPD was
designed to replace.

(It seems to me that these two problems might make good special issues for
MCA! I wonder....)

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article;

 David Kellogg (2019) THE STORYTELLER’S TALE: VYGOTSKY’S ‘VRASHCHIVANIYA’,
THE ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT AND ‘INGROWING’ IN THE WEEKEND STORIES OF
KOREAN CHILDREN, British Journal of Educational Studies, DOI:
10.1080/00071005.2019.1569200
<https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2019.1569200>


Some e-prints available at:

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/GSS2cTAVAz2jaRdPIkvj/full?target=10.1080/00071005.2019.1569200




On Sat, Mar 30, 2019 at 5:22 AM Marc Clarà <marc.clara@gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Wagner and other colleagues,
> I'll try to briefly share my interpretation about this issue. In my
> understanding, the formation of a ZDP implies the intellectual (or
> meaningful) imitation (p.210) by the child of a meaning that has a level of
> generality at which the child cannot form meanings. For example, an adult
> publicly form the "true concept" of "living being", and a child at the
> stage of "complexes" forms an intellectual imitation of that meaning (which
> will be a "functional equivalent" of it). So, the child forms a meaning
> with a level of generality that is beyond her actual level of development.
> This enables a dialectic tension between this meaning, formed through
> intellectual imitation, and the meanings that the child can form
> spontaneously. This dialectic tension between meanings of different levels
> of generality generates a process of self-development (p.229) leading to
> the structural emergence of a new level of generality (p.231), at which the
> child will be now able to form meanings spontaneously.
> So, when a child intellectually imitates a meaning at a level of
> generality at which she cannot form meanings spontaneously, this meaning
> shows the PLD of the child: the next level of generality at which the child
> will be able to spontaneously form meanings. This meaning enters into a
> dialectical tension with meanings that the child is already able to form
> spontaneously (her ALD). This dialectical tension between the PLD and the
> ALD is what pushes development and what turns the PLD of the child into her
> next ALD.
> I have further developed this interpretation in the following paper:
>
> Clarà, M. (2017). How Instruction Influences Conceptual Development:
> Vygotsky’s Theory Revisited. *Educational Psychologist, 52(1), *50-62,
> DOI:10.1080/00461520.2016.1221765
>
> (I can privately sent the manuscript if needed)
>
> Best,
> Marc Clarà
> University of Lleida
>
>
> Missatge de Wagner Luiz Schmit <wagner.schmit@gmail.com> del dia dv., 29
> de març 2019 a les 18:34:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> What is the difference between Zone of proximal development (ZPD) and
>> Potential Level of Development (PLD)?
>>
>> In thinking and speech (in the collected works v1 in English) Vygotsky
>> defines ZPD and in page 209. It seems to me that he writes about the PLD
>> also in page 211.
>>
>> At page 209 PLD seems to be what children can do with the guidance of an
>> adult. And that ZDP is the exact same thing.
>>
>> At page 211 PLD can be understood as something that can enter the ZPD, so
>> not the same as ZPD, so something that children can learn soon, but can not
>> do even with help now (ZPD) and surely not alone. For me this makes more
>> sense, since in this case the PLD would match the Social Situation of
>> Development (SSD - collected works v5 pg 198), and the ZPD would be what is
>> between the PLD and the Actual Level of Development (ALD). In other words
>> the ZPD is the dialectical movement towards the devir, the PLD/SSD.
>>
>> But at the same time in Mind in society (page 86) the same text is edited
>> in a different way, stating that the PLD is what is written in page
>> 209  from above, but, that the ZPD is what is between ALD and this PLD,
>> i.e., what is between what children can do with help and what they can do
>> alone. What exactly is this "between"?
>>
>> Sorry if the answer seem to be obvious, but I am a bit lost here.
>>
>> All the best,
>>
>> Wagner Luiz Schmit
>> UNESP - Brazil
>>
>
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