Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995
From: spinast@HUGSE1.HARVARD.EDU
Subject: CONTEXTS - CHAPTER 7
Well, folks, here's my summary of chapter 7. I look forward to your comments.
A review of "Deconstruction in the Zone of Proximal Development" by Bonnie E. Litowitz. In Ellice A.Forman, Norris Minick, and C. Addison Stone (Eds.) Contexts for Learning: Sociocultural Dynamics in Children's Development (1993). NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 184-196.
by Stephanie Urso Spina Harvard University Graduate School of Education
In chapter 7, Bonnie Litowitz explores "What motivates the child and the adult to perform as Vygotsky, and others following him, have proposed?" The focus of her essay is that performance and interaction in the ZPD need to be expanded to examine concomitant development of one's sense of self.
After presenting the now familiar model of Vygotsky's ZPD, Litowitz describes three characteristics of the process of moving from novice to expert within that zone.
1. cutural knowledge is transferred not from one person (adult) to another (child) but from two persons (the dyad) to one (the child).
2. the transmission is accomplished through semiotic means
3. the nonknower demonstrates equality in the dyad by becoming equally responsible for solving problems and accomplishing tasks.
To Litowitz, the issue of responsibility is paramount, indicating not "a mere transfer of cultural knowledge" but "a shift in one's role vis-a-vis another person with respect to that knowledge." This shift in role relations is key to the author's argument. Her examples of "resistance as identification" and "becoming responsible" are illuminating and true-to-life. They will be readily appreciated by anyone familiar with children's penchant (at least in this culture) to not perform according to the adult's agenda. The child's establishment of autonomy is an important feature of self-development and raises important questions -- and insights -- about the way the ZPD does and doesn't work.
Litowitz introduces psychological concepts of identification and resistance to explain the move from repricocity to responsibility and the motivation for learning in the ZPD. She briefly reviews contributions by Lacan, Freud, Erikson, Bakhtin, Kaye, and others to show how the novice identifies with the expert through various psychological means. Litowitz then turns to Vygotsky's use of the semiotic role of speech in internalization and the implications of this for issues of self -- thereby avoiding the danger of the ZPD approaching a "neobehaviorist shaping of behavior." She stresses the child's progression from the use of her name or "me" for self-reference to the use of "I" as an indication of social relations and self- identification, giving evidence of the child's move from object for the other to subject.
After citing work by Goodnow and others on the adultocentric view of the zone, the author offers arguments from Winnicott to underscore her point. However, comparing Winnicott's "potential space" to VygotskyUs ZPD, the author sees a difference in the two models, claiming that only Winnicott connects fantasy and illusion to the use of symbols and creativity. This reviewer would disagree.
While the use of fantasy, as Litowitz says, may be "inexplicably underappreciated in Vygotsky's theory of learning," it is given expression in "The Psychology of Art" (c.1922/1971), a volume often (and sadly) overlooked by many. It is here that he explicitly addresses daydreaming, imagination, and fantasy. Although it is beyond the scope of this article to delve further into this, it should be said that this book does have important implications for anyone dealing with these aspects of Vygotsky's theories, and bears mentioning. This reviewer would have also liked more attention paid to related issues of the significance of play and peer interaction, which was sacrificed to what may be an overemphasis on the adult- as-expert.
However, this is not meant to detract from the contributions of Litowitz's chapter. She raises some interesting questions and offers intriguing suggestions in response to them. Her explanation of the role of affect in semiotic mediation within the ZPD gives added dimension to our understanding of learning, development and transformation. It bears further attention.
Date: Wed, 15 May 96
From: Jay Lemke (JLLBC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU)
Subject: affect in the zpd
A special thanks to Ellice Forman for calling attention to Bonnie Litowitz' fascinating article in Ellice et al.'s _Contexts for Learning_ (collectively semi-reviewed a while back on xmca).
Litowitz offers us a psychoanalytic repertory of affective aspects of both learner and teacher participations in the ZPD. Her view of subjectivity is both dynamic and complex, multi- voiced, multi-Selved. Notions of identification, resistance, desire, and fantasy are offered to help answer the question WHY both sides participate in the ZPD, to redress the imbalance of an adultocentric view of such learning, and to begin to address questions of the ways affect plays a role in the HOW of learning and teaching as well.
This is certainly an excellent starting point for members of the list interested in the role of affect in a sociocultural and interactionist model of development.
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.