Hi Stephanie and everyone!
This has to be short - since the hour is so late, I may get up to go to
work before I even go to bed! But you have for sure made me think.
The way I see ZPD in very broad strokes is the following:
We always interact socially - from the very beginning. Even when we study
on our own or "perform independently" we still interact. I consider social
interaction a medium of learning and everything else in the psychological
life.
However, I see "interaction" broader than face-to-face active engagement.
Reading is an interaction at least with the author (but more often with
more people than the author alone); Watching TV (or movies or theater);
looking at art or listening to music; doing any of the daily chores and
rituals, etc; - they are all interactive. (I will omit here deeper
explanations and analyses of interaction: this has to be a short reply).
One characteristic of social interaction is crucial for me: it is always
both cognitive and emotional activity and it is always motivated in some
way. (We may think of K. Burke's dramatic model of interaction and more
than interaction).
So what is ZPD in that light? And how is it different form other kinds of
interactions?
The standard explanation is that in ZPD we can perform more with "help"
from others more advanced or developed people than we could do alone. This
was Vygotsky's starting point. And how do play and imagination enter the
picture?
If cognition, emotions and motivation are always interactive, then we have
to study their distribution across individuals. In ZPD there is a
pronounced sharing of an activity, i.e. cognition (and other processes) is
markedly distributed. We have an impression that somebody had "learned"
something or completed the process of learning when they are able to do it
"without help". "alone". If we look at it in the light of distribution of
knowledge (or cognitive/emotional/motivational processes), then we can say
that the interaction is now concentrated within one physical body. And that
is possible only with imagination or play: in a way, the learner still
interacts but it is an imagined or played interaction.
This may sound very simplistic - and it has to be oversimplified for the
sake of brevity. But it casts a slightly different light on the developing
process:
Learning becomes a construction of a meaningful (or meaningless?)
significant (or insignificant?) relationship toward both subject-matter and
other individuals. Learning can be seen as construction of different and
multiple relationships. Sometimes we learn out of love, and sometimes out
of hate and sometimes even out of both of them together (unhealthy
learning?). Sometimes we learn about the relationships we make and
sometimes about the subject-matter. It is a matter of stress, of accent;
not an either-or issue.
As I said before, imagination and play (Vygotsky thought that imagination
is play without action) are important because they free an ongoing
relationship from the here-and-now constraints allowing exploration within
the much wider realm of possibilities. In addition, imagination allows for
a restructuring of a distribution of a relationship - it becomes possible
to have a relationship within (inside) one individual.
I am sorry if this all sounds absurd. I would be glad to continue this
discussion.
And now to bed!
Ana