judy
>In this sense, I see Holzman and Newman's work as taking how Vygotsky saw
>the ZPD operating in play to different levels. They transform rules and/for
>results into tool and /for results with play being the former. Play
>(performance, drama, writing etc.) is not in opposition to "reality" or
>work, but connected to it. As with children who play mommy and daddy it is
>very well connected to reality, but at the same time the child can be what
>she/he is not (a head taller than him/her self). In *Schools for Growth*,
>I see "play" being elaborated at a variety of levels. In using both
>Vygotskian ideas of play and Wiittgensteinian language games the importance
>of performance is invoked. From the social therapy centers, to the All
>Star Talent Show a variety "play" activities are described.
>
>In Vygotsky's article on play and in later work (*Child Psychology*) on
>imagination in late childhood, he makes a pretty direct connection between
>the two. So, play (in the preschool period) being not simply a transition
>from rules "and" to rules "for" results, but also having an important
>relationship to creativity, imagination, or "revolutionary activity" to use
>Newman and Holzman's term. As Vera describes in *Notebooks of the mind*
>the act of creativity is not in opposition to culture but a gift to it.
>
>For me, Vygotsky arguing for the ZPD in both play and education is of
>central importance. The connection is not simply that play has the same
>function for younger children that instruction has for older children, but
>a "unity of opposites". As Vera describes in *notebooks* that creativity
>was not solely embedded within this sole individual against the social, but
>that the social; teachers, parents, friends, books etc. facilitated or
>supported that creativity.
>
>While "little league" or other activities are play in an opposition sense
>(not work) are they in the "developmental" sense. Is what Vygotsky saw as
>characteristic of play in preschool better found in other avenues. I tend
>to see the 5th D as being more consistent with play in a "developmental"
>sense.
>
>
> /\ / /\ | /-----
> / \ / /__\ ---|--- /---
>/ \/ / \ | /----
>
>Nate Schmolze
>http://www.geocities.com/~nschmolze/
>schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu
>
>*******************************************************************
>"Pedogogics is never and was never politically indifferent,
>since, willingly or unwillingly, through its own work on the psyche,
>it has always adopted a particular social pattern, political line,
>in accordance with the dominant social class that has guided its
>interests".
>
> L.S. Vygotsky
>********************************************************************
>
>
Judith Diamondstone (732) 932-7496 Ext. 352
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183