[Xmca-l] Re: Nate's new webpage on Vygotsky

[rjsp2]

Hi everyone

I have disliked the term scaffolding for some time, not so much because
of the philosophy behind it as because of its connotations as a word.
The people I teach using it don't go into it in such depth, but I think
the connotations influence what they think they should be doing. At one
level scaffolding works perfectly well as a concept: you put something
in place in order to aid a particular activity, then you take it away
when the activity is complete.

But my impression is that that is not what people see. What they see is
something with massive physical presence, heavy, immovable (the whole
point of scaffolding on a building, of course, is that it is intended to
be rigid), which looms over, enfolds the activity, and which is very
difficult to dismantle. So they tend to think of it as something they
build, but not something they dismantle. I find teaching the concept
works much better if I start by saying that the key to the idea is the
withdrawal of support. Then they get the message.

(Scaffolding is one of a small collection I am building up of
unhelpfully named concepts. It started with reflecting on Argyris's very
useful but hopelessly named concept of single and double loop learning.
Whatever good double loop learning does is not achieved by going round
in a circle twice, as most of my students think before I enlighten them.)

Rob

On 10/09/2014 06:01, Henry G. Shonerd III wrote:
> Hi David,
> Thank you! I have been using the term "scaffolding" for years with student teachers. I like the idea of it being temporary, with a "turn-over and then upping the ante. All of this is Bruner, I guess, which is also why I liked the term. . Scaffolding does have the sense of being physical, but aren't all metaphors "embodied"? "Shaping" as metaphor, on the other hand, isn't so much supporting learning as it is directing it. What I like about the ZPD is that its goal is learner autonomy, so the temporary nature of scaffolding seems appropriate. "Shaping" isn't about autonomy at all. Those poor pigeons!
> Henry
>
> On Sep 9, 2014, at 10:29 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Henry:
>>
>> Scaffolding is mechanical. Scaffolding is external. Scaffolding is
>> essentially the shaping of behavior. If the scaffold is made of
>> language, what is the building itself made of?
>>
>> All of these criticisms are developed in our own field to be found in:
>>
>> Kinginger, C. (2002). Defining the zone of proximal development in US
>> foreign language education. Applied Linguistics, 23 (2) pp. 240-261.
>>
>> Mike, though, was critiquing the "scaffolding" metaphor almost as soon
>> as it came out:
>>
>> Griffin, P. and Cole, M. (1984). Current activity for the future: The
>> Zo-ped. In Rogoff and Wertsch, (Eds). Children's Learning in the Zone
>> of Proximal Development, San Francisco: Jossey Bass, pp. 45-65.
>>
>> I think, however, the most damning critique of scaffolding is to be
>> found in B. F. Skinner's description of how to teach pigeons to play
>> ping-pong. Here's how my old professor Keith Johnson describes it:
>>
>> "How to teach a pigeon to play table tennis, in five easy lessons.
>>
>> "Lesson 1. First stand your pigeon behind a ping-pon ball. Whenever it
>> approaches the ball (by chance at first), give it some food. Soon your
>> pigeon will have been conditioned to approach the ball.
>>
>> "Lesson 2. Now only give the pigeon food when it actually touches the ball.
>>
>> "Lesson 3. When the pigeon has learned to touch the ball, start to
>> reward it only when it pushes the ball forward.
>>
>> "Lesson 4. Continue training int eh same way until the pigeon can
>> knock the ball over  a net.
>>
>> "Lesson 5. Your pigeon is now ready to confront an opponent (another
>> pigeon). You now only reward them when they push the ball past their
>> opponent. The championship can commence!"
>>
>> Johnson, K. (1994). An Introduction to Foreign Language Learning and
>> Teaching. Harlow: Pearson Longman, p. 48.
>>
>> If you need one, here's a much better metaphor--although it is still
>> mechanical and external. It's from Otto Neurath, who when he was
>> minister of museums in revolutionary Vienna tried--and failed--to
>> replace the signs with "Isotype", a set of non-linguistic icons.
>> Escaping over the English channel in an overloaded lifeboat, he
>> reflected on the fact that we have to use language to "figure out"
>> language itself:
>>
>> "We are like sailors who must rebuild their ship on the open sea,
>> never able to dismantle it in dry dock and to reconstruct it there out
>> of the best materials."
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>>
>> On 10 September 2014 13:00, Henry G. Shonerd III <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> What's wrong with the scaffolding metaphor?
>>> Henry
>>>
>>> On Sep 8, 2014, at 5:18 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The comparison of the different forms of dialogicality IS interesting, Ed,
>>>> at least to me. At present I fear that the leading Bakhtinians among us
>>>> have moved on to other forums, so not sure who will be reading or is
>>>> interested.
>>>>
>>>> I regretted their acceptance of the scaffolding metaphor. I really believe
>>>> it is misleading in important ways, as easily as it comes to mind
>>>> (including my own). But its one of those topics that while it has been
>>>> around for a long time (early 1980's at least, not long after Wood, Bruner,
>>>> et al started using the term), gets no traction.
>>>> mike
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 12:25 PM, Ed Wall <ewall@umich.edu> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Thanks for this, Mike. The piece about Vygotsky and Bhaktin in regard to
>>>>> the ZPD is quite interesting. I'd be interested to hear comments  from the
>>>>> list.
>>>>>
>>>>> Ed
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sep 8, 2014, at  1:16 PM, mike cole wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Check it out!
>>>>>> mike
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://webpages.charter.net/schmolze1/vygotsky/vygotsky.html
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Development and Evolution are both ... "processes of construction and re-
>>>>>> construction in which heterogeneous resources are contingently but more
>>>>> or
>>>>>> less reliably reassembled for each life cycle." [Oyama, Griffiths, and
>>>>>> Gray, 2001]
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>> Development and Evolution are both ... "processes of construction and re-
>>>> construction in which heterogeneous resources are contingently but more or
>>>> less reliably reassembled for each life cycle." [Oyama, Griffiths, and
>>>> Gray, 2001]
>

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