[Xmca-l] Re: Zoped etc

Wed Mar 11 21:33:43 PDT 2020

Thanks all for the links to the historical documents, and the start-up of a discussion about a topic that is central to the work of my colleague Helen Harper in primary level schools. The ZPD is perceived in Australian schools as being ‘just beyond’ what the child can do, and scaffolding is often misunderstood as what Lundgren called ‘piloting’: nudging the ship into harbor with no need for shared understanding of goals or processes. 

Even worse than next-day learning, scaffolding in the ZPD has been reduced to whatever can happen in one lesson: ‘I do – we do – you do’. There is a perception that every child has their own ZPD, and an individual and finite point of next learning. This leads to crazy teaching and learning practices where the teacher tries to differentiate for each child ( or more realistically groups of children) by planning different tasks at each point of need for each child. This is impossible. Consequently, the teacher can spend the whole lesson running around trying to manage the groups, keep them on task, replacing the far more important role of mediator of learning. The result is a lot of what we can call ‘shoosh and colour’. 

An added complexity in our context of working with Indigenous students is the political nature of new cultural learning which is not always an easy fit with the world views of other cultural groups. The mandate to teach western science and mathematics is still questioned in some contexts. Nevertheless, we continue to investigate how to effectively apprentice students into scientific thinking which is so necessary for active citizenship in the 21st century.

So how do we scaffold the longer term development of students in science? We work with the whole class to develop intersubjectivity around the topic and share the goal. We continue to orient students to the activity system of science using language like ‘let’s observe that closely like a scientist does’ and ‘can we explain that like a scientist’. We explicitly teach the language required, talking about ‘powering up’ and ‘powering down’ from every-day language to the abstract and back again. We map scientific language, both vocabulary and grammar onto hands-on activity, and gradually shift the activity, from concrete to three-dimensional representations to language plus diagrams. 

One of the most important pedagogic strategies is joint construction of texts. For many of our students, the language required to sound scientifically authoritative is way beyond their independent capacity, so we jointly construct oral and written texts; definitions, information reports and explanations together, with the students offering what they can, and the teacher filling in the other bits. Through ‘shared pen’, and then grammatical analysis, we provide students with the resources to eventually take control themselves, although that may take months. 

In case anyone is interested, here’s our last research report 2017. Scaffolding academic language with educationally marginalised students. <https://www.alpaa.com.au/sites/default/files/downloads/scaffolding_academic_language_report_2017.pdf>  

Regards Bronwyn Parkin

From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> On Behalf Of mike cole
Sent: Thursday, 12 March 2020 11:45 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Zoped etc

Nothing arcane, Andy.

Take a ubiquitous example:   in about third grade or earlier, kids in the us start to learn times tables. 

The long term goal is to get them ready to deal with division and particularly long division. We observed this

orientation to the future curriculum linked to subskills developed in a science-themed curriculum and pretty much

any curriculum organized into a hierarchical sequences of levels of conception inclusion, I speculate. At least for experienced teachers.

Organizing to bring the future into the present in a way relevant to the students in a standard classroom is a challenge.

Ask anyone.  :-))

That's why there are teacher education teachers-- to do battle with that challenge.

mike

On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 5:57 PM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org <mailto:andyb@marxists.org> > wrote:

Mike, thanks for that priceless historical article http://lchc.ucsd.edu/Histarch/jl82v4n3.PDF#page=1  . 

Could you please clarify this sentence for me: "teachers ...were intensely concerned with the challenges that students would face in the coming academic year... but the short term focus was ...the here and now and tomorrow test." So their "intense concern" was contradicted by their "short term focus"?  

Andy

  _____  

Andy Blunden
Hegel for Social Movements <https://brill.com/view/title/54574> 
Home Page <https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm>  

On 12/03/2020 10:37 am, mike cole wrote:

To me the important point in Peter's talk and paper is that the term blizaishi adopted by teachers, owing to the 

regimes of instruction that they are required to implement (constant testing, etc.) produces a form of "next step,"

short-term, strategy that denudes the social situation of relevance/interest to the child.  LSV, he says, projected the developmental process into the longer-term process of development, say, the first 20 years or so. 

Evidence that Denis Newman, Peg Griffin, and I collected about 30 years ago indicates that the teacher's with whom

we worked were intensely concerned with the challenges that students would face in the coming academic year... We found them selectively focusing on skills in 4th grade that had no special relevance in 4th grade, but became the center of attention in the 5th when  particular skills became parts of more complex systems. But the short term focus was, as Peter suggests on

the here and now and tomorrow test.  

An application of these ideas about seeking the short term as a part of the longer term can be found in what Peg Griffen and I called "Field College"  at   <http://lchc.ucsd.edu/Histarch/jl82v4n3.PDF#page=1> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/Histarch/jl82v4n3.PDF#page=1 . The organization of instruction in the model system we called "Question Asking Reading" at Field College can be in cole-cultural psychology 1996), chapter 9. (I do not have a copy of the chapter. If someone does, please post).

Mescheryakov and his mentors converted traditional approaches to the education of the blind-deaf into a long term, immersive life world that made it possible to study development over the long term using principles of cultural-historical psychology. The entire, artificial, world was designed to be a zone of blizhayshi development.  The best and most accessible account of this work that I know of can be found here: 

 <http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2010_04.dir/pdfaj3KKzidoJ.pdf> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2010_04.dir/pdfaj3KKzidoJ.pdf  

 mike

On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 8:18 AM Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com <mailto:greg.a.thompson@gmail.com> > wrote:

Loved Peter's 2 min presentation on this! (thanks for doing those Anthony!)

Also, has anyone written about ZoND (ZoNeD?) in terms of college students? I struggle with this daily as a teacher - trying to understand what the next stage of development is for college students and wondering to myself: What do my students actually NEED? (beyond the credential). Of course it isn't going to just be one thing. And it will surely be contested since, as Peter notes, the ZoND is responsive to the social and institutional contexts that come next. Nonetheless, it seems that there should be some broad strokes that we could sketch out in terms of Zone of Next Development for college students. Any pointers? 

-greg

On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 8:34 AM Anthony Barra <anthonymbarra@gmail.com <mailto:anthonymbarra@gmail.com> > wrote:

Forgive me if this is redundant.  Peter Smagorinsky has written interestingly about Butterflies, with an emphasis on ZND vs ZPD, in this short paper here: 

"Deconflating the ZPD and instructional scaffolding: Retranslating and reconceiving the zone of proximal development as the zone of next development"  http://www.petersmagorinsky.net/About/PDF/LCSI/LCSI_2018.pdf

And if anyone is interested, here is a brief, 2-minute clip of Peter talking about the film and the ZND: "What is the Zone of Next Development?" http://tiny.cc/1qi5kz 

Thanks ~

Anthony

On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 6:15 AM JULIE WADDINGTON <julie.waddington@udg.edu <mailto:julie.waddington@udg.edu> > wrote:

Yes, thank you very much for this Professor Cole. We'll be sure not to tell ANYONE :)

  _____  

De:  <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [ <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] en nom de Wagner Luiz Schmit [ <mailto:wagner.schmit@gmail.com> wagner.schmit@gmail.com]
Enviat el: dimecres, 11 / març / 2020 11:05
Per a: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Tema: [Xmca-l] Re: Butterfly found

Thanks a lot Professor Cole!!!

Wagner

On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 9:19 PM mike cole < <mailto:mcole@ucsd.edu> mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:

Dear Colleagues -

      Deep in the the unruly and unstable bowels of the lchc website, too deep for google search to have penetrated it appears, is a copy of Butterflies in English. There is a rumor from the archivist,

the ever-reliable Bruce Jones that is a copy of a 3/4" version from long ago, but that cannot be confirmed.

     Below is the secret route. Be sure not to tell anyone. 

mike

 <http://lchc.ucsd.edu/Movies/Butterflies_of_Zagorsk.mp4> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/Movies/Butterflies_of_Zagorsk.mp4
The copy is not great, but it's there.  bj

-- 

Critique is essential to all democracy. Not only does democracy

require the freedom to criticize and need critical impulses. Democracy is

nothing less than defined by critique. T.Adorno

---------------------------------------------------

For archival resources relevant to the research of myself and other members of LCHC, visit

 <http://lchc.ucsd.edu> lchc.ucsd.edu.  For a narrative history of the research of LCHC, visit  <http://lchcautobio.ucsd.edu> lchcautobio.ucsd.edu.

-- 

Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Department of Anthropology

880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower

Brigham Young University

Provo, UT 84602

WEBSITE: https://anthropology.byu.edu/greg-thompson 
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson

-- 

Critique is essential to all democracy. Not only does democracy

require the freedom to criticize and need critical impulses. Democracy is

nothing less than defined by critique. T.Adorno

---------------------------------------------------

For archival resources relevant to the research of myself and other members of LCHC, visit

 <http://lchc.ucsd.edu> lchc.ucsd.edu.  For archival materials and a narrative history of the research of LCHC, visit  <http://lchcautobio.ucsd.edu> lchcautobio.ucsd.edu.

-- 

Critique is essential to all democracy. Not only does democracy

require the freedom to criticize and need critical impulses. Democracy is

nothing less than defined by critique. T.Adorno

---------------------------------------------------

For archival resources relevant to the research of myself and other members of LCHC, visit

 <http://lchc.ucsd.edu> lchc.ucsd.edu.  For archival materials and a narrative history of the research of LCHC, visit  <http://lchcautobio.ucsd.edu> lchcautobio.ucsd.edu.

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