Abstract
ABSTRACT This article focuses on relations between a new teacher and a teacher educator. It draws on the zone of proximal development (ZPD) studies, and the data is analyzed through conversation analysis. Ordinarily, the ZPD is used to theorize the learning that occurs in such a relation in asymmetrical terms. Our case study shows, however, that learning occurs for both participants in the relation, and that the very question of who becomes “the more competent peer” arises from the relation that constitutes a ZPD. Therefore, there are dialectical inversions, whereby the actual roles of teacher and learner no longer coincide with the institutionally designated positions of particular individuals. This then requires an approach to the ZPD that allows for the changes in the relation such that who teaches and who learns is itself the result of the social relation.
Highlights
To paraphrase Marx: the psychological nature of man — the totality of societal relations [obščestvennyx otnošenij] shifted to the inside and having become functions of the personality and forms of its structure (Vygotsky, 2005, p. 1023, original emphasis, underline added).Premised on the idea that all higher functions have been material relations first, Vygotsky’s notion of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) has been widely used in educational studies to theorize learning and development that arise from teacher-student relations
Interpretations of ZPD in the context of the larger theory of development within it was conceived suggest the need for reconsidering the concept in more symmetrical terms (Roth; Radford, 2010; Veresov, 2004; Zuckerman, 2007)
Based on our case study of a teacher educator and a new teacher transacting in a school-based teaching education program, the purposes of this paper were to substantiate and to expand the call for a more symmetrical approach of the ZPD concept and for institutional practices in teacher education programs to be more sensitive of such symmetry
Summary
To paraphrase Marx: the psychological nature of man — the totality of societal relations [obščestvennyx otnošenij] shifted to the inside and having become functions of the personality and forms of its structure (Vygotsky, 2005, p. 1023, original emphasis, underline added). Based on our case study of a teacher educator and a new teacher transacting in a school-based teaching education program, the purposes of this paper were to substantiate and to expand the call for a more symmetrical approach of the ZPD concept and for institutional practices in teacher education programs to be more sensitive of such symmetry In this approach, {teaching | learning} (i.e., the equivalent of Vygotsky’s obuchenie) is a modality of the societal relation between two or more individuals rather than a designation of institutional positions. Rather than presupposing that teaching and learning are aligned with institutional positions, the question of who learns and who teaches is itself a situated product of a given societal relation open to empirical study This approach provides the field with new opportunities for Towards a more symmetrical approach to the zone of proximal development in teacher education thinking about learning and development in teacher education and in all societal relations more generally. Traditional notions of symmetry/asymmetry in ZPD and implications for educational design are problematized in our discussion
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