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Re: [xmca] Given Tablets But No Teachers, Ethiopian Kids Teach Themselves



Maybe. But development only happens when seemingly insurmountable obstacles are overcome. So if it troubles me, that it no reason to stop. /Au contraire/. The difficulty is exacerbated by the fact that I find nothing to actually disagree with in what you say, Mike, and yet, from your side, disagreement seems intractable. To me that points to differences in how we understand concepts. But I can't get to it. It would help a lot, I think, if you could contextualise your problem, give us a direct quote from someone who is criticising your work, which you take to be challenging your conceptions around learning/development/instruction/zpd, which is the real root of this question. That way, I might get a better handle on the problem. Or am I mistaken about there being such a context?

Andy

mike cole wrote:
Sorry the question troubles you. Seems like we at an impasse, Andy.
No point of the two of us flailing around on xmca. We can chat about it
when we get a chance.
mike


On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 5:39 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:

    I am troubled by the question, Mike, because so much is swinging
    on interpretation of words which apparently signal disputes over
    entire concrete concepts (theories of learning) which lie out of
    sight behind the question.

    Insofar as we confine ourselves to "the temporal scale of events
    that involve teaching/learning" we put out of sight the
    developmental life course of a person, so an answer I might give
    is subject to misinterpretation, because I would hold that one of
    the features of what we call development is that it is meaningful
    only within the temporal context of a person's development into a
    citizen. That does not negate the irreducible fact, however, that,
    like every other process, it takes place "minute by minute,"
    "event by event" or "situation by situation."

    So with those qualifications, if we have just been through an
    episode with a young child, in the course of struggling with a
    particularly stubborn learning difficulty, and we say: "I think we
    made a development there," what we mean is that the child did
    something under our stimulus which he could not have done without
    it, but we have reason to believe that henceforth he will be able
    to do it without our assistance, that is, outside the classroom
    context which made it possible. I guess there are moments, aren't
    there, when you know that, without waiting to see what the child
    is like the next day. Sometimes I look back onmy own life and can
    see that I made a development on a certain day, but I don't think
    I knew it then.

    Andy

    mike cole wrote:

        Andy-- I am concerned, among other things, with the question
        of whether and under what conditions it is useful to make a
        distinction between learning and development and in particular
        whether, at the temporal scale
        of events that involve teaching/learning a form of change
        those adopting a Vygotskian view would designate as
        development is possible.

        If not, then I suggest that the notion of zone of proximal
        development is a non-starter. Criticizing those who mistake a
        zone of proximal development from a zone of proximal learning
        seems somehow irrelevant unless development can be said to
        occur in teaching/learning interactions.

        mike



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--
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*Andy Blunden*
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
http://ucsd.academia.edu/AndyBlunden

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