From: Bill Barowy [mailto:wbarowy@attbi.com]
Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 8:57 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Do Gredler and Shields read [between] Glassman's words?
Thanks Steve for your thoughtful analysis of the Gredler and Shields
publication.
I've just re-read the abstract to Glassman's article.
http://www.aera.net/pubs/er/pdf/vol30_04/AERA300402.pdf
My gut tells me there is something more that is unacceptable than just the
title of their paper.
The abstract of Glassman's article doesn't seem to make the claims that
Gredler and Shields says the article does. I'll re-read the entire artlcle
to check for myself later. But I have the impression at this point that
Gredler and Shields might be guilty of the same kind of bad claims
[concerning Glassman] that they claim Glassman makes [of Vygotsky]. Hmmm.
Am I wrong here?
I'm interested in the substance of what Gredler and Shields has to say
about
Vygotsky [and Glassman]. For example, they state that 'Vygotsky did not
include the assistance of another in his definition of ZPD' (p. 22). They
later write that 'Useful instruction, according to Vygotsky, "impels or
awakens a whole series of functions that are in a stage of maturation lying
in the zone of proximal development" '(p. 22) So is it wrong if it seems
that Gredler and Shields write that Vygotsky makes ZPD to be a
characteristic
of an *individual*, regardless of context? Does this mean that one has to
reject Vygotsky if one wants to pursue developmental research under
different
[i.e. social] tenets?
[Carol Macdonald] Vygotsky's classic definition is defined on a dyad-i.e.
with the help of the more competent other (who brings forth the "flowers"),
and my students get very hot under the collar about this, since they teach
classes of 40+, and then we have to read Hedegaard's ideas of how to work
with this concept with a class. The social surely-but my research shows how
radically different this dyadic concept works in different social and
cultural contexts.
Carol
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