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Re: [xmca] ZPD in a new light
Hi Ana
I wanted to thank you for sharing your thoughts on the Zo-ped and its possible elaboration in the Ferholt and Lecusay article. I also sense that the zo-ped as a metaphor of a "zone" or "space" can be elaborated to capture the transformations in interpersonal and epistemological issues built jointly in practices. The article elaborates the zone as a "location" in which all the participants "cross borders" and ALL participants are transformed from the joint activity. The article also speaks to communicative activity as having the potential to be SYMMETRICAL or ASYMMETRICAL and that the quality of communication is different depending on the symmetrical or asymmetrical quality of "recognition" (power). And finally the article elaborates the centrality of emotion (e-MOTION) within the Zo-ped. These 3 variables do point to the need to deepen the analysis of this "zone" as functioning at an ontological level of theory elaboration.
It is for this reason I want to bring in other Discourses which are looking at the notion of "shared space" as foundational to our exploration of our being human.
Peter Fonagy and Carla Sharp In the Journal "Social Development, (17, 3, 2008) are also discussing the centrality of shared space in their developmental model. Sharp and Fonagy in this article are reviewing various notions of the construct of the "meeting of minds" Following is a review of their perspective.
They review Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, and Moll's position on the meeting of minds as SHARED or WE intentionality. Tomasello et al suggest that only humans are biologically adapted for participating in collaborative activities and shared goals (joint intentions) However, in addition to the capacity to UNDERSTAND goals, intentions, and perceptions (the theory of mind construct) a "meeting of minds" adds the MOTIVATION to SHARE these ToM understandings in INTERACTION WITH OTHERS. Tomasello emphasizes that at the foundation of this meeting of minds is the MOTIVATION to SHARE EMOTIONS with others. It is the motivation to share EMOTIONAL STATES with others that distinguishes us from apes, who are unable to share these PSYCHOLOGICAL states with one another. Tomasello et al conclude that as humans we are hardwired to want to be part of a WE. As a species this enables collaboration, which is necessary for survival.
Sharp and Fonagy in their attempt to operationalize the mechanisms which facilitate a meeting of minds are exploring its ontology in the species-specific social interactions in the early parent-infant relationship.
Sharp and Fonagy add to Tomasello's insights (the capacity to UNDERSTAND intentions and the MOTIVATION to SHARE PSYCHOLOGICAL states) by reviewing Gergely and Csibra's perspective on the meeting of minds. Gergely suggests an ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE relevant information is a third prerequisite for negotiating and co-ordinating all levels of JOINT COLLABORATIVE ACTIVITIES by communicating relevant information. This LEARNING mechanism ensures the transmission of knowledge by making the latter MANIFEST or MARKED to the observer. The emergence of this communicative capacity for human pedagogy leads to shared intentionality and the meeting of minds. Sharp and Fonagy summarize there thoughts on the meeting of minds by stating
"Therefore, while Tomasello and colleagues view the meeting of minds as a mere by-product of a species-specific MOTIVATION to co-operate and share mental states with each other Gergely and colleagues explain it by appealing to a species-unique capacity for cultural learning through the communication of relevant knowledge" (p.749)
This summary of various perspectives of the construct of "the meeting of minds" is relevant to our discussion of the Zo-ped as it speaks to the centrality of understanding intentionality, the motivation (e-motion) to share psychological states, and the human impulse for pedagogy in the forming of ZONES or SPACES of WE PARTICIPATION. Ferholt and Lecusay's article invited multiple perspectives on the construct of the Zo-ped and I believe the notion of "meeting of minds" speaks to the same phenomena as the constructs of "interillumination" in the Ferholt and Lecusay article, the construct of "intersubjectivity" as elaborated by D. Stern and Bahktin's construct of"dialogical voices" try to elaborate. They all speak to the notion of a WE intentionality and shared consciousness from which emerges a sense of agency vitality, and pleasure (as Ferholt and Lecusay capture at the end of the article as the chilren DANCE down the field.
I could have posted this response to the overstimulation thread or the parent-infant thread but chose this thread as the dialogue which is exploring zones and spaces of development and learning. The notion of development and learning WITHIN zones is pregnant with potential.
Larry
----- Original Message -----
From: Ana Marjanovic-Shane <ana@zmajcenter.org>
Date: Tuesday, February 9, 2010 12:41 pm
Subject: [xmca] ZPD in a new light
To: Xmca <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Dear all,
>
> I would like to share some of my thoughts regarding Ferholt and
> Lecusay's paper: "Adult and Child Development in the Zone of
> Proximal Development: Socratic Dialogue in a Playworld".
>
> Ferholt’s and Lecusay’s paper introduces a new way of looking
> at Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZO-
> PED), possibly transforming that concept into something rather
> new and different from the original one. It does it in three
> ways: It introduces a possibility that developmental
> transformations in social interactions between adults and
> children can happen not only to children, but to adults, too.
> Second, they focus not only on the cognitive changes, i.e.
> changes in understanding of certain concepts, logical arguments
> and/or situations, rather they introduce the analysis of the
> quality of the relationships in terms of caring and power
> distribution between the participants: from authoritative and
> asymmetrical to democratic and symmetrical power relations
> between adults and children. And finally they look at the
> extremely powerful transformations in the emotional ZPD that can
> lead to aesthetic and cathartic transformations of all the
> participants in the relationships to each other and to the event
> in which they all grappled with very hard interpersonal, logical
> and epistemological issues and were able to jointly build a
> novel, unexpected and gratifying solution.
>
> Their paper truly poses new questions about the very concept of
> ZPD and the nature of development that takes place in the
> interaction between children and adults and between children and
> the wider culture. It also, through the vividness of the event
> they describe, breathes life back into our, sometimes too
> abstract and too decontextualized manipulations of units of
> analysis with which we build our conceptual systems.
>
> Let me start with their idea that development happens to all
> the participants in the ZPD, including children and adults. It
> is very interesting to note the way Vygotsky described ZPD in in
> two very different ways in his two articles: “Interaction
> between Learning and Development” and “The Role of Play in
> Development” — both published next to each other in the Mind and
> Society” In the “Leaning and Development” he develops the idea
> that ZPD is the “distance between the actual developmental level
> as determined by independent problem solving [Ana: past learning
> and finished development] and the level of potential development
> as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in
> collaboration with more capable peers” [Ana: current learning
> and the “potential”, i.e. future development] (Vygotsky, Mind in
> Society, 1978, page 86). And on page 88, he states: “human
> learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by
> which children grow into the intellectual life of those around
> them.”
> In “The Role of Play in Development” Vygotsky defines ZPD as
> follows. I will give a little wider quote to situate it in his
> full context:
> “Looking at the matter from the opposite perspective [to the
> theories that consider play as the pure search for pleasure,
> that Vyg. critiques], could one suppose that a child’s behavior
> is always guided by meaning, that a preschooler’s behavior is so
> arid that he never behaves spontaneously simply because he
> thinks he should behave otherwise? This strict subordination to
> rules is quite impossible in life, but in play it does become
> possible: thus play creates a zone of proximal development of
> the child. In play a child always behaves beyond his average
> age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as though he were a
> head taller than himself. As in the focus of a magnifying glass,
> play contains all developmental tendencies in a condensed form
> and is itself a major source of development.
> Though the play-development relationship can be compared to the
> instruction-development relationship, play provides a much wider
> background for changes in needs and consciousness. Action in the
> imaginative sphere, in an imaginary situation, the creation of
> voluntary intentions, and the formation of real-life plans and
> volitional motives — all appear in play in the highest level of
> preschool development. The child moves forward essentially
> through play activity” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 102-103).
>
> In both instances, Vygotsky’s perspective focuses on an
> individual child’s relationship to abstract concepts
> (instructional settings) and to abstract rules of behavior in
> different imaginary (or future life) situations (play settings).
> What the child learns is given by the “adults” or “more capable
> peers”, and it pre-exists in the form of rules, values, and
> roles in the culture into which the child is growing.
>
> However, although in both activities (instruction and play),
> the child is interacting with others, Vygotsky does not focus on
> the nature of that interaction and the quality of the
> relationships in that interaction. The ZPD described like that,
> stays on the level of a drawing board, a plan for future
> research, and poses a big question rather than it answering it.
>
> What Ferholt and Lecusay are doing in their study is to start
> to conceptualize some answers to the questions that Vygotsky
> posed in his descriptions of the ZPD. They took the notion from
> the realm of the abstract and admittedly rather sketchy concept
> and situated it in the real life moment to start looking at and
> understanding the very dynamic of the live interpersonal social
> relationships that happen both in guidance (instruction) and in
> play, and that are the setting of the learning and development.
> The main aspect of this relationship that they discuss is the
> relationship of power that contains both the ontological and the
> epistemological components: a) how the teacher-children
> relationship grows from a dominant (Magisterial dialogue) to a
> democratic one (Socratic Dialogue); and b) how this change in
> the interpersonal relationship, the willingness, so to speak, of
> the teacher to LISTEN to to voices of the children and give them
> equal power — leads to the creation of a new vision - both for
> the children and for the teacher!
> The ontological aspect of this situation shows that the
> transformations happening in the ZPD are transformations in the
> quality of the teacher-children relationship! And that means
> that ZPD has a potential to change the adults as well as the
> children. Therefore, on one hand, the children seem to be
> experiencing development at least as a progressive growth in
> their conceptualizations, language they use, ability to take
> into account multiple points of view and multiple feelings
> arising between themselves. On the other hand, the teacher was
> experiencing the development not only of his teaching and
> guiding strategies, but also of his understanding and accepting
> of the children as FULL human beings and not just "humans-in-
> preparation”. This lead to his pedagogical orientations to be
> transformed from authoritative, teacher run philosophy to a more
> collaborative understanding of education, i.e. to the community
> of learners orientation.
> In that sense, Ferholt and Lecusay’s work is a step away from
> Vygotsky’s progressivist philosophy in which development is seen
> as having only one trajectory — a progress from less mature to
> more mature forms of behavior and thinking. (See Bakhurst,
> “Vygotsky’s demons”, 2007 in The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky).
>
> Their study also poses many new questions. For instance, what
> is the quality of the ZPD, and can it exist at all, if there is
> no transformation of the interpersonal relationships and no
> transformations of the teachers? What is learned and in what
> ways can it lead to transformational development in more
> traditional settings in which the only authority belongs to the
> teacher?
>
> The quality of the relationships in terms of the emotional
> transformations of all the participants and the sense of
> aesthetic catharsis are not less important issues, but I want to
> leave them for another posting.
>
> Ana
>
>
> __________________________
> Dr. Ana Marjanovic-Shane
> Assistant Professor of Education
> Chestnut Hill College
> e-mails: Marjanovic-ShaneA@chc.edu
> ana@zmajcenter.org
> Phone: 267-334-2905
> Chestnut Hill College…celebrating 85 years of tradition and risk
>
>
>
>
>
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