The zone of proximal development is defined as an overarching concept that integrates the main tenets of Vygotsky’s theory of human development. The conceptualization of the ZPD begins with its social, cultural, and historical context and traces its development as a spatial and temporal metaphor that reflects the sociogenetic root of all human mental functioning. Beyond the explication of sociogenesis, the ZPD is reconceptualized to include the notions of voice and dialogicality. The insights gained from (...) the fields of semiotics and discourse studies allow a broader understanding of the ZPD by bringing to light participant structures and institutional and historical forces that may not have been included in the dominant interpretations of the ZPD. (shrink)

Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development has brought wide attention to the role of adults in children’s learning and development. The author proposes that beyond understanding its mechanism, its use is influenced by various factors which the adult needs to be sensitive to. Through integrating related literature on the zpd and on adult-child interactions, this paper aims to shed light on the nature of adult sensitivity in actualizing the zpd. The concept is first analyzed (...) theoretically. Two types of sensitivity will then be discussed: adults’ self-awareness and their awareness of children as active players in the interaction process. Sigel’s concept of distancing is suggested as a means of enhancing one’s sensitivity. (shrink)

‘Scaffolded learning’ describes a cluster of instructional techniques designed to move students from a novice position toward greater understanding, such that they become independent learners. Our Socratic Model of Scaffolded Learning includes two phases not normally included in discussions of scaffolded learning, the preparatory and problematizing phases. Our article will illuminate this blind spot by arguing that these crucial preliminary elements ought to be considered an integral part of a scaffolding model. If instructors are cognizant of the starting position of (...) students, then students are more likely to develop a proper sense of autonomy. We turn, then, to examples from Socrates, the archetypal teacher, that cast light on the importance of preparation and problematizing for the student. Finally, we address the concern that integrating these preliminary elements into scaffolded learning would unnecessarily complicate a useful and effective pedagogical method. Ultimately, if it is effective and autonomous learners we wish to cultivate in the classroom, then something like SMSL must include preliminary elements that calibrate the instructor’s approach to the members of the class. After all, the unexamined student is not worth teaching. (shrink)

Being the parent of a disabled child is not easy, it is experienced as a situation marked by stress, crises and grief. As Vygotsky described eighty years ago, the development of children with disabilities and the culture do not fit as they do for non-disabled children. The development of a child with disabilities is not determined by the child’s physical defect alone, but constituted by the incongruence between the physical defect and the culture. In this study, the lives (...) of four families with deafblind children were followed for two years. Interviews and observations were conducted in different settings. This study finds that because of the incongruence between the physical defect and the culture, it is difficult to reach and maintain the zone of proximal development for a child with disabilities. This study illustrates how the network of professionals and parents around the child can make a local congruence that creates a platform for the child’s development. (shrink)

The article focuses on talk and cognition in terms of action. It outlines methodological alternatives for approaches addressing meaning construction and the accounts people give of their actions. There are studies, rooted especially in phenomenology and ethnomethodology, that manifest the idea of intersubjective reality seen as achievements of situated actions. In this framework, conversation and communication are seen per se as significant forms of social action. Instead of intersubjective reality, often brought about with an inductive research method, the article argues (...) for instrumental reality as the context for understanding talk and cognition in terms of action. The aim is a method that studies multivoicedness of activity in terms of situated actions. The method integrates situational features in dialogue with the cultural-historical processes of meaning construction. It is based on the theoretical notion of activity as a system that emerges and changes in time and place through internal contradictions. In the context of instrumentality, dialogical processes are also considered historically emerging and internally conflicting processes of rationality. I discuss this method with data on conversations between a patient and a doctor at a primary health care consultation. The study considers medical knowledge less as a substance than as a historically produced perspective through which the rationality of problem solving is accomplished by doctor and patient. The study aims to break away from the epistemological dualism of conflicting domains of meaning: the one of medicine that is objective and the one of experience that is subjective. The context of instrumentality includes a working hypothesis of a zone of proximal development of the doctor-patient relationship. (shrink)

This study explores the development of the interactional competence of an 8-year-old, Japanese learner of English over three cooking sessions with native speakers of English at her home during her period of residence in Australia. The study draws upon Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development in order to elucidate the L2 child’s process of acquiring interactional competence in this unfamiliar social practice. The analysis reveals marked changes in the child’s participation pattern over time, moving from making relevant (...) minimal responses to more initiated, and autonomous participation. The child recycled some of the interlocutors’ utterances from the previous sessions, showing that the earlier cooking sessions provided her with a linguistic challenge and became a resource of language learning for her. She also made use of a textual resource as a scaffold to move toward more autonomous participation. In addition, the role of the recipe became less central as her participation became increasingly more independent. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the dialogical and creative character of pedagogic work by analyzing the affinities between Martin Buber's I-Thou relation and Lev Semenovich Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development. Backed up by empirical studies on the teacher-student relation, we understand that education can only result in students' development if meaningful processes are undertaken. The paper asserts that education shall primarily aim at promoting relational possibilities.

Collaboration for nursing is a core competence and therefore educational interventions are essentials for collaborative skills. To identify such interventions, we carried out a study to understand nursing students' collaborative process. A narrative inquiry method was used to explore the collaborative process of first‐year undergraduate nursing students. The analysis was conducted on field notes from 70 h of observation of 87 nursing students' collaboration during skills lab activities. It also included transcriptions of four focus group discussions with 11 students. The (...) results are presented as a sequential process of (1) navigating in unfamiliar territory, (2) navigating together to cope, and (3) navigating together towards independency and the future nursing profession. We identified a transition from teacher‐led assistance and guidance to student interdependency and reciprocal learning, ending with student‐led assistance supporting independency. In line with Vygotsky's theory of zone of proximal development, different scaffolding interventions are needed depending on where the students are in the collaborative process. (shrink)

In the quest for a new social turn in philosophy of science, exploring the prospects of a Vygotskian perspective could be of significant interest, especially due to his emphasis on the role of culture and socialisation in the development of cognitive functions. However, a philosophical reassessment of Vygotsky's ideas in general has yet to be done. As a step towards this direction, I attempt to elaborate an approach on scientific representations by drawing inspirations from Vygotsky. Specifically, I work upon (...) Vygotsky’s understanding on the nature and function of concepts, mediation and zone of proximal development. -/- I maintain that scientific representations mediate scientific cognition in a tool-like fashion (like Vygotsky’s signs). Scientific representations are consciously acquired through deliberate inquiry in a specific context, where it turns to be part of a whole system, reflecting the social practices related to scientific inquiry, just scientific concepts do in Vygotsky’s understanding. They surrogate the real processes or effects under study, by conveying some of the features of the represented systems. Vygotsky’s solution to the problem of the ontological status of concepts points to an analogous understanding for abstract models, which should be regarded neither as fictions nor as abstract objects. -/- I elucidate these views by using the examples of the double-helix model of DNA structure and the development of our understanding of the photoelectric effect. (shrink)

: If a child’s development is made possible by interaction with his environment, involving an integration of affective and intellectual processes, dyslexia implies multiple cognitive deficits that cause learning difficulties and over time can affect a child’s sense of self. Inattentive behavior due to incomprehension of classroom tasks can cause compounding of gaps in learning that will lead to a lack of foundational skills. Vygotskij underlines how the zone of proximal development determines the difference between the (...) child’s actual level of development and the level of performance that he achieves under the guidance of a teacher, through imitation; the teacher must focus his efforts on identifying what the child is only able to do in collaboration today but will be able to do independently tomorrow. The main means of interaction between the teacher and the dyslexic child is the language that, materialized and objectified in external speech, then distilled into thought as internal speech can arm dyslexic children with foundational skills. Keywords: L.S. Vygotskij; Dyslexia; Language; Learning; Zone of Proximal Development Un approccio alla dislessia evolutiva da una prospettiva Vygotskijana Riassunto: Se lo sviluppo del bambino è reso possibile dall’interazione con il suo ambiente, attraverso l’integrazione di processi affettivi e intellettuali, la dislessia implica molteplici deficit cognitivi con conseguenti difficoltà di apprendimento, che col tempo possono condizionare la percezione che il bambino ha di sé. Il comportamento disattento in classe, dovuto all’incomprensione dei compiti assegnati, può generare un accumulo tale di lacune nell’apprendimento da condurre al mancato sviluppo di abilità fondamentali. Vygotskij sottolinea come la zona di sviluppo prossimale denoti la differenza tra il livello di sviluppo effettivamente raggiunto dal bambino e le prestazioni ottenute sotto la guida di un insegnante, per mezzo dell’imitazione del maestro. Compito dell’insegnante è concentrare gli sforzi al fine di individuare quanto il bambino è in grado di realizzare oggi in collaborazione, che domani sarà in grado di effettuare autonomamente. Il principale mezzo di interazione tra l’insegnante e il bambino dislessico è il linguaggio che, materializzato e oggettivato nel linguaggio esterno, successivamente condensato nel pensiero come linguaggio interno, può consentire ai bambini dislessici lo sviluppo di abilità fondamentali. Parole chiave: L.S. Vygotskij; Dislessia; Linguaggio; Apprendimento; Zona di sviluppo prossimale. (shrink)

"Now in its third edition, this classic text remains the seminal resource for in-depth information about major concepts and principles of the cultural-historical theory developed by Lev Vygotsky, his students, and colleagues, as well as three generations of neo-Vygotskian scholars in Russia and the West. Featuring two new chapters on brain development and scaffolding in the zone of proximal development, as well as additional content on technology, dual language learners, and students with disabilities, this new edition (...) provides the latest research evidence supporting the basics of the cultural-historical approach alongside Vygotskian-based practical implications. With concrete explanations and strategies on how to scaffold young children's learning and development, this book is essential reading for students of early childhood theory and development"--. (shrink)

There is clearly some area of thematic overlap between the subject matter of Edmund Husserl's genetic phenomenology and studies of cognitive development. I aim in this paper to clarify the extent of this overlap. This will, I hope, serve as an indicator about whether genetic phenomenology might be able to shed some light on actual cognitive-development phenomena. To begin with, I differentiate two strands within Husserl's genetic phenomenology, an idealized and a concrete approach. After providing a schematic outline (...) of the former I argue that its application to actual, empirical cases of cognitive development faces serious challenges. I then set out the concrete approach, in two stages. First, I explain the importance of bodily experience on the concrete approach and note some affinities it has with the work of Piaget and embodied approaches to cognitive development. Second, I introduce the notion of affect as the engine of the developmental process on the concrete approach, an idea that, moreover, helps clarify how the concrete approach overcomes the problems facing the idealized approach. Finally, I propose that Vygotsky's notion of the 'zone of proximal development' can serve as a bridge between Husserl's concrete approach and contemporary scaffolded and extended accounts of cognitive development. (shrink)

This book offers an original contribution towards a new theory of intersubjectivity which places ethics of breath, hospitality and non-violence in the forefront. Emphasizing Indian philosophy and religion and related cross-cultural interpretations, it provides new intercultural interpretations of key Western concepts which traditionally were developed and followed in the vein of re-conceptualizations of Greek thought, as in Nietzsche and Heidegger, for example. The significance of the book lies in its establishment of a new platform for thinking philosophically about intersubjectivity, so (...) as to nudge contemporary philosophy towards a more sensitive approach, which is needed in our times. Intended for philosophers, feminists and others concerned with intercultural philosophy, the book will appeal to readers interested in contemporary ethical and political theories. A Breath of Proximity will benefit all who seek a more sensitive approach in philosophy and often-neglected practical layers of our everyday intersubjective relations. Life as breath: such is the grand theme of Lenart Škof's wonderful new book. Ranging from Indian Vedic writings to Heidegger and Irigaray, Breath of Proximity cuts across the tired analytic/continental distinction in philosophy and proposes an ethical cosmology based on our human dwelling. A breath of fresh air! Kevin Hart is Professor of Christian Studies at the University of Virginia Lenart Škof wrote a very interesting book on breath and breathing which expresses and analyzes the essence of human existence. The breath or wind is the core point of humans. As you know, you will read in John 3.8 that the humans are born from the wind. The breath and wind have something to do with the ethics of being human, because humans live with breath and breathing. Ethics is essentially a way of life through breathing. Tadashi Ogawa is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Kyoto University Breath and breathing are central themes of Asian philosophies since ancient times. This was also the case in ancient Europe. But we forgot about this dimension in our academic discourse. The book of Lenart Škof brings into sight that well known Western philosophers of the 20th century picked this topic up again. The book is the most notable and far-reaching attempt to rediscover the fundamental dimension of breath and breathing for the contemporary discourse of philosophy. Rolf Elberfeld is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hildesheim. (shrink)

The current prominent influence of the theories of L. S. Vygotsky on studies of education, particularly of pedagogic practice, requires a re-examination. The dominance of deficient editions of his writings has had regrettable consequences such as a misplaced reading of the 'zone of proximal development'. The publication of his recent, albeit incomplete, "Collected Works" in English affords an opportunity to reassess Vygotsky's work. Potential areas for such rethinking include: a comparison between his work and influence with that (...) of Piaget; Vygotsky's own epistemology and methodology; and the relevance of his approach to contemporary concerns. (shrink)

El objetivo del trabajo consistió en destacar la significación del enfoque histórico-cultural de Vigotsky como sustento para el tratamiento de las relaciones interdisciplinarias en la educación médica superior. Se toma como referente psicológico sus aportes en cuanto a la enseñanza y el desarrollo; el concepto de zona de desarrollo próximo, su concepción sobre el aprendizaje y la categoría situación social del desarrollo. Se concluye que el enfoque histórico-cultural brinda conceptos claves que se deben tener presente para el tratamiento de las (...) relaciones interdisciplinarias. The objective of the paper was highlighting Vigostky historical-cultural approach to the interdisciplinary relationships treatment in the higher medical education. His contributions in teaching and development, the concept of the zone of proximal development, his conception on learning and the category of social situation of development are taken as psychological referent. As a conclusion, the paper refers that his historical-cultural approach offers key concepts that should be taken into account in the treatment of the interdisciplinary relationships. (shrink)

In 2009, Tennie et al. proposed the theory of the Zone of Latent Solutions, defined as the range of behaviors an individual of a species can invent independently, i.e., which it can acquire without any form of social learning. By definition, species limited to their ZLS are unable to innovate and/or transmit behavioral traits outside their ZLS, i.e., they lack traits which go beyond the level of the individual—traits resulting from a gradual cultural evolution over successive transmission events [“cumulative (...) culture”, Boyd and Richerson ]. However, this does not exclude an influence of social learning on the population frequency of these behaviors: social learning can facilitate the acquisition of latent solutions and thus speed up and consolidate their spread within a population. Cultures—defined as behaviors at least influenced by social learning—are therefore still possible. Here, we elaborate on the ZLS account and relate it to the theories of Vygotsky who studied the role of social learning in human culture. We argue that the ZLS is a missing phylogenetic “baseline” of Vygotsky’s Zone of Actual Development. Vygotsky’s neglect of a need for a human “baseline ZAD” may have been due to his interpretation of Köhler’s work on great ape behaviors: Köhler used his observations on individual chimpanzees to draw conclusions about the chimpanzee species as a whole, stating that chimpanzees can only copy what they could have invented themselves, thus coming close to the ZLS concept. Vygotsky—studying the range of behaviors individuals could achieve independently—seemingly did not see that Köhler was suggesting a species “baseline”, upon which Vygotsky’s idea of an individual’s ZAD could develop. As a result, Vygotsky also did not see the need for a ZLS for his own study subjects: humans. Yet, there is no reason to assume that humans lack a ZLS, and in fact we present evidence for a human ZLS for tool-use behaviors. (shrink)

There is a debate about the measure of IQ in children with ADHD. Some studies report that, compared to static assessment procedures, dynamic assessment of intelligence can better measure cognitive modifiability and plasticity. The present study was designed to examine children belonging to different ADHD subtypes in terms of both static and dynamic measures. Thirty-four children were compared to a sample of 27 typically developing children. Results indicate that only the inattentive and the combined subtypes, compared with the normative sample, (...) show lower IQ scores. The ADHD-I group presents generally low WISC scores and ADHD-H presents generally high WISC scores. Moreover, the ADHD-C group shows a low static score and a high dynamic score, indicating a wide breadth of Vygotskian children’s zone of proximal development. Static and dynamic measurements together can indeed be considered a comprehensive examination of intelligence levels in ADHD children and may be essential in predicting learning capacities. (shrink)

Conversational implicatures (CIMs) are implied by the speaker in context rather than being linguistically encoded, and learners’ inability to infer the intended meaning, if not remedied through instruction (or mediation), leads to communication breakdowns. Given this premise, the current study aimed to examine effects of classroom praxis-based instruction adjusted to EFL learners’ Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) on their comprehension of CIMs. Participants were 36 Iranian high school students in 2 classrooms, assigned to experimental and comparison groups. (...) A 20-item CIM test was administered at pretest and posttest times to collect the data. Microgenetic trajectories were also traced through audio-recorded role-plays and social interactions within the ZPD setting. ZPD-adjusted mediational instruction on CIMs was given based on a multi-level regulatory scale and a view of microgenetic development along an other-to self-regulated functioning continuum. In the non-ZPD setting, mainstream teacher-fronted instruction was employed. ANCOVA results revealed differential instructional effects in favor of the praxis-based mediational setting. Microgenetic learning episodes also portrayed how collectively-mediated, ZPD-activated learning led to L2 learners’ progressively improved comprehension of CIMs. The findings suggest that comprehension (and perhaps production) of L2 CIMs can be improved through praxis-oriented co-construction of pragmatic knowledge through collaborative engagement with communicative activity. (shrink)

This paper provides ways of responding to critical students when teaching business ethics and corporate social responsibility. A common premise of teaching pedagogy is to approach students from their “zone of proximal development”. To get an understanding of students’ critical prior conceptions, the ideal type of the “liberal communist” is invoked as suggestive of how students might think about business ethics and CSR. Two pedagogical approaches are suggested to address students’ a priori scepticism of business ethics and (...) CSR. First, a framework of political views on CSR is presented. Second, approaching CSR by means of “problem based learning” is discussed. Finally, the paper reflects on the role of the business ethics teacher in light of tendencies towards commodification of education in the global economy. (shrink)

This paper reports on a micro-ethnography of social interaction in an urban plaza in Colombia, focusing on the plaza’s role as an arena for the acquisition of interaction skills. We investigate how children of different ages initiate and sustain interactions with same-age and older peers and the efforts they make to be recognized and ‘visible’. We interpret our data in light of three theories of socialization: Corsaro’s conception of childhood as “interpretive reproduction”, Vygotsky’s model of the “zone of (...) class='Hi'>proximal development”, and the “structural approach” to social cognition and development. While a social form like the plaza, which is collectively enacted by members of all age groups of the local community, provides children with an extraordinarily rich array of opportunities to develop social communication skills by interacting with older and younger peers, our analysis also demonstrates that children, as they are building zones of proximal development for themselves, play a central role in assembling, integrating, and sustaining the neighborhood as a face-to-face society. In this fashion, the paper illustrates how the micro-analysis of social interaction can contribute to the analysis of social ‘macro’ forms. (shrink)

The current emphasis on rising educational standards in Australian society (eg A Commonwealth Government Quality Teacher Initiative, 2000) has stimulated a growing interest in Vygotsky's socio-cultural theory widely renowned for its profound understanding of teaching and learning. The metaphor of scaffolding commonly viewed as underpinned by socio-cultural theory and the zone of proximal development in particular, has become increasingly popular among educators in Australia (Hammond, 2002). Teachers find the metaphor appealing as it "offers what is lacking in (...) much literature on education - an effective conceptual metaphor for the quality of teacher intervention in learning" (Hammond, 2002, p.2). However, there is no consensus of opinion among educators on the specific characteristics that constitute successful scaffolding. On the contrary, the current interpretation of scaffolding seems to have been drifting away from the Vygotskian view of teaching and learning and appears to have become an umbrella term for any kind of teacher support (Jacobs, 2001) and therefore, cannot serve the purpose of justifying the quality of teacher intervention. Furthermore, when taken out of its theoretical context, scaffolding tends to be interpreted as a form of direct instruction (Donovan & Smolkin, 2002), which invalidates the Vygotskian idea of teaching as co-construction of knowledge within student-centred activities. Such an interpretation of the metaphor of scaffolding is an unfortunate step back to a traditional, pre-Piagetian way of teaching which is adult-driven in nature and often results in "the imposition of a structure on the student" (Searle, 1984, in Stone, 1998, p. 349). In spite of a number of limitations of the metaphor, that have been discussed by socio-cultural theorists (e. g., Stone, 2001), it remains highly popular among educators. To fulfil teachers' expectations of scaffolding as being an effective teaching tool, it needs to be understood within the framework of its underlying theory. This project aims to analyse understanding of the concept of scaffolding by educational researchers and practitioners in its connection to the Vygotskian view of the role of instruction in nurturing children as active learners. (shrink)

Educational Theory, Volume 71, Issue 3, Page 331-352, June 2021.

The article explores work organization in advanced electronics manufacturing in Philippine export processing zones. Previous approaches have painted both advanced manufacturing and “peripheral” production as generic, treating locations as substitutable. Case study analysis of three multinational electronics firms located in both public and privatized export zones demonstrates that the complex demands of high tech production have led to diverse forms of work organization and an extension of labor control outside the factory, making local conditions more, not less, important. The article (...) develops a broader, place-sensitive notion of production politics, focusing on the state’s reorganization of export processing zones, and firms’ localization strategies that leverage labor market inequalities to elicit worker consent. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, the crucial meta-virtue of _phronesis_ (practical wisdom) is cultivated through teaching and experience. But he remains mostly silent on the details of this developmental picture and its educational ramifications. This article focuses on the ‘taught’ element of _phronesis_ development in the context of police ethics education. I begin by piecing together the developmental trajectory that Aristotle suggests towards full virtue, up to and including _phronesis_ development. I also briefly list ten potential weaknesses of this picture. (...) I then present a reconstructed Aristotelian model of _phronesis_ and explain how the teaching element of _phronesis_ education could be executed, with an illustration from an ongoing _phronesis_ intervention for UK police-science students. However, I go on to dampen the enthusiasm about this ‘taught’ component, by explaining how relatively small the ‘zone of proximal development’ is that can be targeted by scaffolded teaching. Finally, I elicit some implications of the conclusion that most of _phronesis_ development will need to be ‘caught’ from gradually unfolding personal and professional experiences. (shrink)

Lev Vygotsky has acquired the status of one of the grand masters in psychology. Following the English translation and publication of his Collected Works there has been a new wave of interest in Vygotsky, accompanied by a burgeoning of secondary literature. Ronald Miller argues that Vygotsky is increasingly being 'read' and understood through secondary sources and that scholars have claimed Vygotsky as the foundational figure for their own theories, eliminating his most distinctive contributions and distorting his theories. Miller peels away (...) the accumulated layers of commentary to provide a clearer understanding of how Vygotsky built and developed his arguments. In an in-depth analysis of the last three chapters of Vygotsky's book Thinking and Speech, Miller provides a critical interpretation of the core theoretical concepts that constitute Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory, including the development of concepts, mediation, the zone of proximal development, conscious awareness, inner speech, word meaning and consciousness. (shrink)

Phenomenological analyses of ageing and old age have examined themes such as alterity, finitude, and time, not seldom from the perspective of “healthy” aging. Phenomenologists have also offered detailed analyses of lived experiences of illness including lived experiences of dementia. This article offers a phenomenological account of what we label as entering the grey zone of aging between “healthy” aging and aging with a disease. This account is developed through a qualitative phenomenological philosophy analysis of elderly persons’ lived experiences (...) of being tested for dementia through primary care in Sweden, i.e., within a cultural context where dementia commonly is understood as a frightening a loss of self even though this understanding also is questioned. To enter this grey zone of aging, we argue, does not dissolve dynamic self-becoming but can involve an experience of oneself as being old. Further, in the grey zone, the self experiences itself as neither fully healthy nor as having a disease, and as needing to negotiate and live this ambiguity. To enter this grey zone is to enter an affectively charged, sociocultural and medicalized zone, and while the self can still act in different ways within it, staying in the grey zone can result in a re-orientation in the self’s mode of being, in ways that are thoroughly beyond its control. To stay in the grey zone can have detrimental effects on the self, even though the self does not have a disease: the self can become “stuck” in a reflective mode of attending to embodiment, aging, health, and disease. (shrink)

The critical examination of current hypotheses is one of the key ways in which scientific fields develop and grow. Therefore, any critique, including Haidle and Schlaudt’s article, “Where Does Cumulative Culture Begin? A Plea for a Sociologically Informed Perspective,” represents a welcome addition to the literature. However, critiques must also be evaluated. In their article, Haidle and Schlaudt review some approaches to culture and cumulative culture in both human and nonhuman primates. H&S discuss the “zone of latent solutions” hypothesis (...) as applied to nonhuman primates and stone-toolmaking premodern hominins. Here, we will evaluate whether H&S’s critique addresses its target. (shrink)

This paper describes the semiotic process by which parents, as attachment figures, enable infants to learn to make meaning. It also applies these ideas to psychotherapy, with the therapist functioning as transitional attachment figures to patients where therapy attempts to change semiotic processes that have led to maladaptive behavior. Three types of semiotic processes are described in attachment terminology and these are offered as possible precursors of a neuro-behavioral nosology tying mental illness to adaptation. Non-conscious biosemiotic processes in infant-parent attachment (...) are the basis for early adaptation as well as adaptation or maladaptation in adulthood. Mother-infant interaction can be described as a series of signs, each interpreted so as to dispose the behavior of the other interactant towards the goal of protecting the infant from danger and distress. Regulating arousal, scaffolding infants’ behavior in the infants’ zone of proximal development, and repairing ruptures in the interaction are crucial to infants’ development and adaptation. In semiotic terms, each person activates multiple interpretants to make meaning of sensory stimulation. Non-verbal semiotic synchrony establishes the relationship whereas shared repair of ruptures promotes change. Attachment strategies, as learned adaptations to threat, are neuro-psychological strategies for making meaning of sensory information so as to dispose protective behavior. Type A privileges cognitive-temporal information, Type C affective information, Type B has no bias. Type A and C limit semiotic freedom by using ‘short-cuts’ in processing that produce quick protective behavior in the short-term. Type B includes more representations, and thus more semiotic freedom, resulting in slower responses and long-term flexibility. Attachment strategies function as meta-interpretants for applying one semiotic process to most incoming information about danger. A, B, and C case examples are analyzed in semiotic terms. Psychotherapy can be considered a helping process embedded in a transitional attachment relationship. For psychotherapy to be successful, both somatic stabilization and a therapeutic relationship are needed. Treatment that uses scaffolded semiotic processes in each patient’s ZPD to repair moment-to-moment ruptures holds the potential to reorganize attachment strategies and transfer that potential to reflective language and relationships outside the therapy. The outcome should be greater semiotic freedom such that the individual can trust their own mental processes and use them to establish safe relationships. Language can speed the process, but premature reliance on verbal transformations of non-conscious information can carry misattributions into a second layer of misconstrued meaning and maladaptive behavior. Even when dangerous family relationships and external danger cannot be changed, patients can come to know their own minds and use information to regulate their behavior. The goal of psychotherapy is to free patients from their past by enabling them to be secure about the functioning of their own minds, so that they can both avoid eliciting harm and also establish supportive relationships. (shrink)

This Teacher Education Project is an intervention research aimed at creating new school roles for educating students as readers and writers as well as citizens. The methodological framework was based on Vygotsky’s discussions of method as praxis, as well as on both the Marxist practical–materialistic–revolutionary activity and Engeström’s extensions of Cultural Historical Activity Theory. The work at school was motivated by students’ limited awareness of reading and writing. The goal was to involve the school as a community in understanding and (...) transforming the ways in which reading and writing were addressed in classrooms. The methodology used for organizing and carrying out the project was devised so as to allow for three activity systems that partially interact with their objects – that is, reading and writing as tools for teaching-learning in different areas in order to constitute students as citizens. However, for this paper, we will focus solely on the Teacher Education Activity System, which we termed Teacher Support Team. Three episodes are discussed in this paper: Two video sessions with the Teacher Support Team, the first of which took place in 2010, and the second in 2011; and a classroom reading class session that was videotaped in 2011 as part of the Teacher Support Team work. The theoretical and practical work developed was targeted at creating a mutual Zone of Proximal Development that supported teachers, coordinators, and the principal, through the appropriation of reading and writing as processes. The results show that the organization of the project as interrelated activity systems enhanced the entire school’s prospects of appropriating the reading and writing teaching-learning processes, by focusing on the same object, in the diverse systems that framed the project. (shrink)

This paper makes use of a new development in social psychology, Positioning Theory, the study of the way rights and duties are ascribed, attributed and justified to and by individuals in local social groups. It links this theory with a generally Vygotsky inspired approach to understanding the means by which people are brought into terrorist networks. Focusing on the use of the Internet as a device to bring mentor and novice together, the unique role of chat rooms and personal (...) conversations made possible by the Internet in this psychological process is revealed. Examining Vygotsky's ideas about the influence of a collective identity on the development of individual identities by psychological symbiosis in the Zone of Proximal Development sheds new light on the positioning of terrorist recruits. Incorporating Wittgenstein's concept of hinges into understanding the groundings of individual positions explains how the jihadist form of life turns on the unexamined grounding of beliefs about the non-believers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Revisiting Vygotsky and Gardner:Realizing Human PotentialNinah Beliavsky (bio)The two individuals who have had a tremendous influence on my own theories and my own philosophy of education are the Russian psychologist, intellectual, and social activist Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (1896-1934), and the leading American developmental psychologist Howard Gardner (b. 1944). The philosophies of Vygotsky and Gardner have much in common, even though their lives have been separated by different continents, different (...) political regimes, different languages, different cultures, and almost a century of innovative research in the fields of psychology and education.I argue that Vygotsky's ideas should be viewed through the prism of Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences. The combination of these concepts can shed new light on education—on teaching and learning. By doing so, we would enable the students to reach a higher level of cognitive development.This article intends to suggest that Vygotsky's dream of maximizing the Zone of Proximal Development can be realized by utilizing Gardner's approach of nurturing the students' combination of intelligences. This idea of teaching and learning will allow educators to teach ahead of development, to teach for understanding, to motivate and promote the students' creativity and imagination, and to encourage their personal, social, and academic growth.Lev VygotskySeventy-two years have passed since Vygotsky died on June 11, 1934. He was only thirty-seven years old. "Vygotsky was a product of his time: an intellectual, [End Page 1] a Jew, [one] who took as much pleasure in thinking through the intricacies of speech impediments and language acquisition as he did in contemplating Shakespeare's Hamlet or the psychology of Art."1 Fundamental to Vygotsky's theory was the idea that higher mental functions, such as thinking, logical memory, and human consciousness, have their origins in human social life.Vygotsky believed that culture should be passed down to future generations in a Socratic, rather than a dogmatic, way. He believed that everyone should be given the tools to live up to their highest potential. For Vygotsky, psychological development could not be separated from human history and human culture. The notion of development as growing out of the interactions of human beings with one another, especially the interaction of adults and children, offers a collectivist vision of human psychological growth that is especially different from American ideas of individualism and predetermined stages of psychological growth.2 Vygotsky believed that the child has to be exposed to the array of intellectual and cognitive "tools" developed over the centuries by human beings—tools such as language, mathematics, music, and art.He stressed that systematic instruction in the formal disciplines—Latin, Greek, mathematics, and composition—is beneficial to the development of students' mental facilities in general. Studying the formal disciplines would lead to higher-order thinking and thus enhance "scientific" concepts. In other words, the systematic learning of scientific concepts in one field translates into developmental changes, abstract thinking, and greater logical thinking and logical flexibility. Recently, this notion is being welcomed by American psychologists. For example, in one study in the United States a group of American psychologists demonstrated that specialized training in medicine, law, and psychology seems to have an effect on real-life problem solving requiring statistical and logical reasoning.3In American educational psychology, Vygotsky is famous for his concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Behind this is the notion that a child's cognitive development occurs within a social milieu. The teaching-learning process (instruction) does not occur in isolation. The role of instruction for enhancing cognitive development is a joint activity—a collaborative effort between the child and a more knowledgeable partner, such as an older sibling, a parent, a teacher, etc. Therefore, the analysis of cognitive functioning requires studying how a child's social interaction with more competent peers of their culture is mastered and internalized. In other words, to understand a child's cognitive development, we need to examine specific patterns of social interaction in which the child participates.4The most detailed description of the concept of ZPD can be found in a lecture entitled "Dinamika umstvennogo razvitia sckol'nika v svjazi s obucheniem," delivered by Vygotsky at the... (shrink)

This special issue of Science, Technology, & Human Values critically explores a new stage in which the life sciences and biomedical practices have entered. This new stage is marked by postgenomic developments and an increased interest of life sciences in the everyday lives of people outside laboratories and clinical settings. Furthermore, particular attention is given to many chronic and degenerative disorders such as cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, or developmental disorders. These developments coincide—or have become entangled—with a new set of interests (...) that an anthropologically inclined science and technology studies is bringing to the analyses of biomedical practices. An increased interest is observed in the anthropologically inclined STS in studying phenomena on different scales and in exploring fields that are not readily dominated by technoscientific rationality in practice. The introduction to the special issue examines briefly these developments and situates them in a broader genealogy of different movements that have taken place in the anthropologically inclined subfield of STS since the late 1970s and early 1980s. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article I examine whether and how America can be understood as an assemblage of placeways encompassing very different forms of temperament, patterns of action and feeling, and systems of viewing the world. I argue that the contemporary American landscape can no longer be seen as a composition of well-defined individual spaces but, rather, as zones of influence that are labile, with no sharp edges, subject to symbolic contestation and a wide range of expectations with material and symbolic (...) consequences. These zones and places are matrices of energies, locating different forms of experience in people and giving rise to different existential preferences. Of particular importance are the contrasts between proximity and distance and between the space of nature and urban space as well as the development of a new sense of time as social organizing principle. It is proposed that we see America as a meshwork of intersecting lifelines rather than an assemblage of external accretions. (shrink)

Este artículo aborda la aplicación de la técnica del andamiaje en un proceso de evaluación a nivel de máster universitario. En el ámbito de la comunicación digital, se propuso al alumnado la realización de una campaña para un cliente real, una asociación protectora de animales. A través de la técnica de la observación participante y de una encuesta al alumnado, se llevó a cabo este proyecto cuyos resultados muestran que el andamiaje es efectivo en el nivel de máster y que (...) su combinación con la tecnología y la motivación del profesorado contribuye a obtener mejores resultados. (shrink)

This article adopts a Systemic Functional Linguistics framework of appraisal theory to interpret the behavioural and attitudinal resources in written narratives and proposes the idea of proximity as an alternative representation to explain the meaning-making process of Chinese students’ possible selves in a less examined context of UK-based transnational university in China, by focusing on the lexical and semantic explanation of how these Chinese students use and are mediated by contextual resources in discourse. Six written narratives were collected from six (...) Chinese students from the School of International Communications at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. The overall findings revealed that all six Chinese students from different years shaped proximal past, current and future possible disciplinary selves through repeated engagement and positive alignment with the contextual values, although they had differentiated developmental processes of using and being mediated by the contextual recourses. This article concludes by arguing for a need to investigate the Chinese learners in the current changing world by looking at their repertoire experience of disciplinary learning and reservoir context. (shrink)

Written by Li Li, Language Teacher Cognition: A Sociocultural Perspective, as the title indicates, explores the topic of teacher cognition from the perspective of sociocultural theory, aiming to theorize and analyze what teachers think, believe, know and do in their professional contexts through the lens of social interaction and Vygotsky’s theory of mental development. This book was published in October 2019 as an extension and expansion of the author’s previous book Social Interaction and Teacher Cognition (2017), answering Johnson’s (2009) (...) call for a social turn for teacher cognition stressing the importance of teacher learning in communities, and how their experiences can help them develop professional thinking and understanding (Li, 2020). This book consists of nine chapters. The first chapter provides readers with a brief review of language teacher cognition research, lays out the theoretical underpinning for this book, i.e. the combination of sociocultural theory (SCT), discursive psychology (DP) and conversation analysis (CA), and illustrates the significance of this book and its intended readers. The second chapter discusses the significance of language teacher cognition research and its many different theoretical understandings and research methods, offering a profound and new understanding of the key concepts of SCT, i.e. mediation, ZPD (zone of proximal development) and internalization. The third chapter elaborates on the link between teacher cognition and soci... (shrink)

Vygotsky has become an authority, but the authority has more to do with justifying a sociocultural relativism than it has with his Marxist objectivist approach to psychology and pedagogy. This paper is an attempt to understand Vygotsky's perspective in relation to Marxist epistemology, and will critically examine the sociocultural interpretation of Vygotsky but within the light of his own perspective. It will be shown that the relativism of the sociocultural school not only takes Vygotsky's zone of proximal (...) class='Hi'>development out of its social and historical context, but as a consequence downplays the zone of proximal development as a dynamic research methodology. As an extension of the discussion of the zone of proximal development, this paper will also examine the sociocultural interpretation of Vygotsky's relation between scientific and everyday concepts, and the pedagogical consequences of such an interpretation. (shrink)

This paper takes a phenomenological hermeneutic orientation to explicate and explore the notion of the grey zone of health and illness and seeks to develop the concept through an examination of the case of alcohol consumption. The grey zone is an interpretive area referring to the irremediable zone of ambiguity that haunts even the most apparently resolute discourse. This idea points to an ontological indeterminacy, in the face of which decisions have to be made with regard to (...) the health of a person (e.g., an alcoholic), a system (e.g., the health system), or a society. The fundamental character of this notion will be developed in relation to the discourse on health and the limitations of different disciplinary practices. The case of alcohol consumption will be used to tease out the grey zone embedded in the different kinds of knowledge made available through the disciplinary traditions of medical science, with its emphasis on somatic well-being, and anthropology, with its focus on communal well-being. This tension or grey zone embedded in different knowledge outcomes will be shown to have a discursive parallel with the dialogue between the Athenian, the Spartan, and the Cretan in Plato’s Laws. Making use of the dialogical approach as described by Gadamer, the Athenian’s particular resolution of the tension will be explored as a case study to demonstrate the necessarily particular analysis involved in a grey zone resolution. (shrink)

For many children with complex medical conditions, decisions regarding their goals of care lie in the zone of parental discretion. That is, clinicians appropriately recognize that in many cases whether to prioritize quantity of life or quality of life is a deeply personal, values-laden decision best made by those who are most deeply invested in the outcome. Once a family has committed to a goal, however, there may be new or ongoing conflict between parents and clinicians regarding the specific (...) interventions provided or not provided in support of that goal. To what extent is it ethically permissible for a seriously ill child’s surrogate decision makers to reject individual interventions that support their desired goal of care? This question might be best described thus: is pediatric healthcare “prix fixe,” in which clinicians help parents decide the best of one or more set combinations (“menus”) of interventions, or is it “à la carte,” in which parents are free to accept or reject each individual intervention? We argue that the concept of a “prix fixe” approach should be discussed with families early in the development of the clinical relationship, as an essential facet of shared decision making. (shrink)

Prior research has not found a meaningful relationship between digital piracy and moral development, possibly because students do not recognize digital piracy as a moral issue. Rather than measure moral development as an individual characteristic, this study tests which components of moral development are seen as relevant to digital piracy. If some of the stages of moral development are applicable to music piracy behavior, people are more likely to pirate than to engage in other more morally (...) intense behaviors. Some of the stages of moral development are found to be associated with moral development. Proximity to the victim reduces the acceptability of music piracy. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present a case study of the creation of a Knowledge Zone in Curaçao to provide an insight into how a Knowledge Zone is established. After devising a vision, strategic alliances were formed. This created synergy and momentum, giving the project and process a life of their own.Design/methodology/approachThe project of creating a K‐Zone is based on a theoretical framework which draws upon the notion of a creative class, and how it can (...) be attracted to a specific location. It also deploys change management methodology, which describes how change is implemented. The theory states that creativity will drive the economy in the future and that societies that are able to attract the creative class will excel. It is not clear what attracts the creative class but it is believed that a certain life style, concentrations of peers and virtual and physical connectivity are essential. To create these conditions some changes must be implemented and these changes are often resisted in the beginning.FindingsKnowledge Zones can be created if there is a clear shared vision, leadership and alliances that forge synergies. The project was started in 2010 by the UNA under the presidency of Dr Miguel Goede, the Rector Magnificus of the University of the Netherlands Antilles. With the support of the Board of Supervisors, the UNA entered/sought alliances with the nearby Carmabi Research Institute and the neighbouring school for nurses, which opened a new school building within the designated zone. The UNA also provided the impetus to start a campaign to construct a new hospital that was planned for the area neighbouring the university and to start a school of medicine. But the breakthrough came when the local telecom provider, United Telecommunication Services, decided to provide the university with dedicated internet connections that were capable of the highest speed available on the island.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to a framework for understanding the creative economy of Small Islands Developing States in the Caribbean and how change can be implemented in these settings. (shrink)

Mayr’s distinction between proximate and ultimate explanation is justly famous, marking out a division of explanatory labor in biology. But while it is a useful heuristic in many cases, there are others in which proximate factors play an important role in shaping evolutionary trajectories, and in such cases, each project is sensitive to, and relevant to, the other. This general methodological claim is developed in the context of a discussion of human cooperation, and in particular, in a discussion on the (...) puzzling stability of the social contract over the Pleistocene–Holocene transition. For I argue that while we have a plausible account of the stability of Pleistocene cooperation, the stabilizing factors of the Pleistocene disappear in the Holocene, but cooperation does not. Holocene humans solved many collective action problems; cooperation did not collapse despite the apparent growth of free-riding elites. So the article combines a methodological claim about the interaction of proximate and evolutionary biology with a substantive one about the ecology of human cooperation. (shrink)

Retroviral lineage tracing experiments suggest that the cortical ventricular zone is composed of a mixture of precursor cell types. The majority generate a single cell type (neurones, astrocytes or oligodendrocytes) and the remainder generate neurones and a single type of glial cell. Pluripotential precursor cells, that have the ability to generate all three cell types, are not observed. A recent paper, however, reports that when single ventricular zone cells are cultured in isolation, a small percentage of these cells (...) are pluripotential(1). This review will discuss what this knowledge tells us about cortical development. (shrink)

Introduction. The article highlights the role and trends of urban development in a single regional space. The authors consider the industrial region, where the economic centers are the cities of monospecialization (metallurgy, mechanical engineering), which form the settlement framework of the regional economic system. At the same time, the connectivity of the regional space was determined by the contacts of cities in infrastructure areas and the possibilities of agglomeration formations. The authors analyze the urban environment of cities in the (...) region, which revealed common problems for them in organizing urban space. It was shown that the competition of cities for a person can be won by offering the population more comfortable working and living conditions, a variety of social services, and the possibility of using agglomeration effects. Scientific novelty of the research. The peculiarity of the author’s research was a new approach to urbanization as an urban way of life, extended to a set of cities of different status and population in the region. At the same time, the zones of attraction and concentration of business and social activity were connected with large cities and centers of agglomerations of the region, which ensure the joint use of resources, transport, and social infrastructure. The purpose of the article is to Identify constraints and opportunities for developing cities in a single regional space, taking into account their connectivity and interaction. Methods. The authors use the information base: statistical data, scientific literature, and expert assessments to clarify the conceptual tools of the research and to analyze the demographic situation in the cities-centers of agglomeration associations of the region. The authors present the assessment of the state of the urban environment, and reveal the disproportions in its organization. The research approaches are tested on the example of the cities of the Chelyabinsk region. (shrink)