zpd discussion

[mcole@weber.ucsd.edu (Mike Cole)]

Lots of interesting examples, nate. You put a LOT of work into the blog.

We had some discussion of Seth's paper earlier this, year, around February
I think, and the issues raised are certainly worth continued discussion. I
thought your long list of points about development from Valsiner counterposed
with Seth's discussion helped clarify the issues at stake considerably.

I did not understand the following: While the re-americanization of the ZPD could be seen as a positive "development", I argue that negating the centrality of development that Vygotsky gave to the concept renders it meaningless.

What did you mean by re-americanization?
The examples you give a pretty heterogeneous in origin. For example, Rogoff
in the work you cite explicitly rejects a distinction between learning and
development. I can understand how her use of the term could have a quite
different meaning that (those - judging from Seth's perusal of the complete
works) interpreation(s) in LSV, but meaningless? 

A related topic that has received a lot of attention (Peg Griffin and I
wrote about it in 1984, Stone wrote about it in the *Contexts of LEarning*
book) is the unfortunate equating of zopeds and scaffolding.

It has struck me for some time as odd that in his article on learning aned
development, LSV does not define development, and his example of a zoped
is in the context of McCarthy's scales of infant development used as IQ
tests. 

I have also been pondering for some time (inspired by Seth) that learning
and instruction are the major context for discussions of the zoped, but
LSV invokes it in his writing on play (an issue Seth does not take up).

I thought your invocation of the social situation of development was very
important. The collected works appear to have only one index entry for it,
or I skipped along too quickly, but collecting all the examples where it is
there and placing them alongside the references to zopeds would sure be useful.
mike