Dear All--
Perhaps the refractory period following AERA has ended, perhaps the crush of
end of year work has
just begun. I will be going away at the end of next week for a couple of
weeks and have a few mins
to suggest possible topics of discussion based on prior arrangements.
First, for whatever reasons, the prior issue of MCA has not been made
available free in electronic form.
I suggest that we not make it an object of joint discussion but go on to the
next topic in line-- varying
ideas about the use of the term "zone of proximal develoment" which I refer
to as zoped otheres as zpd.
There are four papers at http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/index.html under a button
called something like discussion of
zoped: one on tolstoy and writing as analyzed by Vygotsky (sent, I believe,
by Natalila), one by Seth Chaiklin taking
us all to task for failing to interpret correctly Vygotsky's notion of
zoped, one by Marianne Hedegaard on the application
of her understanding of zoped in education, and one by Vivian Paley
describing the manifestation of a zoped in pretend
play.
As it turns out, Kris Gutierrez's class at UCLA will be discussing these
topics with LCHC on monday so we, locally,
are primed to consider the topic. The individual examples posted all can
contribute to an effort to explore the varying
meanings attribued to the term to see what areas of agreement and
disagreement emerge. Is there a shared semantic
field here? Does Humpty-Dumpty have it right?
What do think, as Eugene is wont to ask in such contexs if he is attending
to them.
Second, Kevin has made a quick time movie of the classroom interaction that
caught people's attention in a previous post
and we are working to get it up on the xmca server along with his paper. I
suggest that we turn to that after considering
the zoped concept since so far as I know the postings are still a work in
progress, while we have four interesting examples
in the zoped box to read, and probably the discussion will generate some
other suggestions for papers.
Of course, discussion means reading and posting. Lets see what happens.
For openers, I put to you the proposition that Vivian Paley's brief example
of Franklin playing the block corner and her
subsequent intervention illustrates with special clarity the notion of
pretend play creating a zone of proximal development--
the kind of clear example that might stand as a criterion for evaluating
other examples. Its short, interesting, and easy
to read. So it should be easy for folks to explain the error of my foolish
assertion.
mike
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