Zone of Proximal Development ZPD

Vygostsky (1978) defined the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) as the difference between a child's actual developmental level as determined by independent problem-solving and the level of potential development as determinded through problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers.

According to Vygotsky, essential feature of learning is that it creates the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Learning (activity) awakens a variety of internal developmental processes that are able to operate only when the learner is interacting with people in his environment and in cooperation with his peers.

Maturing and developing mental functions of a learner must be fostered and assessed through collaborative, not independent or isolated activities. He claimed that the intellectual skills learners acquire are directly related to how they interact with others in specific problem-solving environments. Learners internalize and transform the help they receive from others and eventually use these same means of guidance to direct their subsequent problem-solving behaviours. Therefore, the nature of social transactions is central to a ZPD analysis. In this way, what learners can perform collaboratively or with assistance today they can perform independently and competently tomorrow.

He argued that standard tests (e.g. IQ test) in our education system give a picture only of completed development. They assess mental functioning that has already matured, fossified. The information from these assessments is of little use in the important task of instruction (teaching and learning). He believed it was the duty of school system to bring out the full potential of each student. The task cannot be accomplished by assuming that completed development fully specifies a trajectory for the future. The standardised assessment strategy leads to a false understanding of the relation between development and instruction, which converts the school system into a vast selection machine.

However, we should think of ZPD as a characteristic not solely of the learning or teaching but of the student engaged in collaborative activity within specific social environments. The focus is on the social system within which we hope students learn, with the understanding that this social system is mutually and actively created by teacher and students.

ZPD reminds us that educational settings are social creations. They are socially constituted, and they can be socially changed. It warns us how easy it is to under-estimate students' and teachers' abilities when we analyze them in isolation. It points to the use of social and cultural resources that represent our primary tools, as human beings, for mediating and promoting change.

Internalization and Externalization

AT describes the mechanisms underlying the mental processes as internalization and externalization.

Mental processes such as remembering, recalling, analyzing, planning, imaginings, simulating, calculating, etc. are derived from external actions through the course of internalization. We "remember and recall" or "analyze" when we need to respond to some people or things. We remember and recall things "selectively" subjected to our interest, needs, and the context and state we are in. We analyze using our prior knowledge and experience, values and beliefs, and come to an "understanding". We then manifest (externalize) these mental processes by peforming some actions, to verify or correct our memory or understanding.

Internalization is the transformation of external activities into internal ones. Hands-on activities and tools are curcial for internalization. Internalization provides a means for people to try potential interactions with reality without performing actual manipulation with real objects. e.g. mental calculations, simulations, imagining, etc. The process of internalization can help to identify an optimal way to perform action before performing the action externally.

Externalization transforms intenal activities into external ones. Externalization is necessary when an internalized activities need to be verified or corrected. It is important when a collaboration between several people requires their activities to be performed externally in order to be coordinated.

AT holds that internal activities cannot be understood if they are analyzed separately, in isolation from external activities, because they are mutual transformations between these two kinds of activites.

It is the constant transformation between external and internal activities that is the very basis of human cognition and practice.

Engeström's Expansive Triangle

(Extracted from Learning by Expanding (1987))
Engeström holds that this model is the smallest and most simple structural form that still preserves the essential unity and integral quality of any human activity. With the help of this model, activity can be analyzed in its inner dynamic relations and historical change. It is a useful tool for identifying the deep seated contradictions that give rise to surface level discoordination and conflict. Activity Theory sees these contradictions as sources of learning and development. Real practices are practically always in the process of working through some of such contradictions even though these are experienced negatively by participants who always wish to see the activity system "running smoothly". But change is the only constant in a system.

• An activity is actually a system whole in the sense that all elements have a relationship to other elements. It is the fundamental context of study.


• The relation between subject and object is mediated by tools (or instruments), that between subject and community is mediated by rules (norms or constraints), and that between object and community is mediated by division of labor.


• Each of the mediating elements is historically formed and opened to further development. Ever since an activity is formed, the corresponding mediating elements are continuously reconstructed. This development is driven by different contradictions, it is not a smooth and linear process but uneven and discontinuous one.


• An acivity has an active subject (an individual or collective), who understands the object (motive) of the activity. However, not all participants (community) invovled in an activity necessarily understand the motive of the activity in which they are participating or even recognize the existence of one.


• As the contradictions (structural tensions) of an activity system are aggravated over a period of time, some individual participants begin to question and deviate from its established norms.

The story of a crying farmer

Let's apply Activity Theory to analyze the "vegetable growing activity" by the old farmer.


The object of the activity could be the grown vegetable. We don't know the farmer's needs and motivation behind this object. It could be motivated by his need to feed himself, or to fulfil a promise to his dead wife, well, only he knows. In order to achieve his object, we can assume that he started a series of actions such as weed the grass, plant the seeds, water daily, etc, in different stages, under different situations and conditions, and mediated by different tools.

The story focuses at the growing stage. The goal was to raise the leaf up. To achieve this goal, he consciously carried out a series of actions, one after another despite the failure. He was determined to "raise the leaf up". He thought hard and experimented with different tools, e.g. He used the traditional pail and water; knife and stick; came up with innovative use of nails and magnet; string and balloon; and by coincidence, he found the most effective one being his tears! Once he found a good way (model) to achieve his goal of raising the leaf up, he immediately started another series of actions to improve the model. The goal now is to generate more tears. He achieved this goal by yet another series of actions, namely 1. Using a machine that used onion, hammer, and needle to generate pain (hence generate more tears); 2. Using his dead wife's skull to generate sadness; and 3. Reading sad story to generate tears. We can imagine that the crying farmer was so good at these actions that they became his daily routine operations. Occassionally, the hammer installed at the machine might break down and the farmer would need to do the hammering manually. Thus, the routine "hammering" operation returns to its conscious action.

We can reason that the sad ending (undersirable outcomes) was because the crying farmer had left out an important pest control stage. He wasn't aware of the presence of the snails, which were part of the community, and they too were motivated by the same object of the activity (the grown vegetables). We can also assume that this negligence (can't possibly happen to an experienced farmer) was due to the fact that he was totally exhausted after working on such a huge field and we all know that crying was a very tiring task. Despite being such a focused and effective worker in achieving his goals, because of a negligence - he forgot the existence of other members (the snails) in the same activtiy system (even if they are unwelcome), the activity that he had so deligently and whole heartedly crafted had cost his life and many other lives.

Even though the crying farmer is fictitious, we see too many crying farmers around us. We "cry" at the undesirable outcomes generated by a failed activity even if its object is a noble one. We "cry" at our carelessness (a wrong or inappropriate step), our negligence of the members in a community, or our ignorance to the changes in environmental conditions that jeopardise the whole activity. Worst of all, we sometimes are so focus at the tasks that we are not consciously aware of the activity we're participating and hence its object. It is not uncommon to hear urban workers crying, "Why are we doing all these (tasks)?", "I'm so busy everyday but I don't know what I'm busy at?"

I find Activity Theory useful in providing us with a vocabulary for talking about human activity in meaningful terms and giving us the necessary attention to what we bring to a situation.

We can never be certain of the consequences of our actions and be fully aware of a situation, which implies that we can't be sure we will achieve the object of the activity that leads to desirable outcomes. However, human beings are good learners. We can learn to become aware of some of our prejudices (or pre-understanding) and our actions, and in that way emancipate ourselves from some of the limits they place on our thinking.

In the next session, I'll discuss a useful tool developed by Engestrom. He extended Activity Theory by adding another main component "community" (those who share the same object of activity) to the subject-tool-object structure. The new structure enables explicit consideration of the systemic relations between an individual and his environment.

Activities, Actions, and Operations (II)

Activity Theory proposes that our "ways of knowing" are shaped by practice, and that people and artifacts mediate our relationship with reality. Consciousness is produced in the enactment of activity with other people and things, rather than something confined inside a human head. The theory is grounded on our everyday practice, not confine to "snap-shot" testing and evaluation of performance.

Leont'ev was the first to use the analytical distinction of three qualitatively different hierarchical levels of human behaviors: Activities, Actions , and Operations.

An activity is composed of actions or chains of actions, which in turns consists of operations.

Action is the goal-oriented process not engendered by the goal alone but by the motive of the activity as a whole, which the given action realizes. One activity may be realized using different actions, depending on the situation and conditions. On the other hand, one and the same action can belong to different activities, in which case the different objects and motives of the activities will cause the action to have a different personal sense for the individual in the context of each activity. We might not be conscious of our activity, but we are conscious of our actions. Before an action is performed, it is typically planned consciously according to a model of the situational circumstances. The better the model, the more successful the action. Different actions may be taken to meet the same goal. When a model for a conscious action is good enough, the action has been practiced long enough, and the situation is sufficiently stable, the action loses its "orienting basis" and becomes "routinized" into an operation. Actions consist of chains of operations.

Operation is the way the action is carried out. It depends on the conditions under which the action is being carried out. If the goal remains the same while the conditions under which it is to be carried out change, then the operational structure of the action will be changed. The routine operation becomes "unfold" and returns to the level of conscious actions.

It is possible that the object/motive remains fixed but goals, actions and operations change as the situation and condition changes. Similarly, the activity/object might change if the condition change and hence the actions/goals change. This activity-action-operation dynamics is the fundamental feature in human development. Learning begins in the form of learning operations and learning actions embedded in activities where its essential feature is mediated by tools.

Activities, Actions, and Operations (I)

Like the Simpsons, we are engaged in all kinds of activities every day. Ever wondered why we seem so occupied everyday but not sure what we are busy with? Why do we sometimes act so rashly, hastily, or irrationally, feeling "I should have said..." or "I shoudn't have done..."? Why do we behave differently in different situations? Do you understand yourself? Do you care?

Gadamer said in Truth and Method (1975) that "Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society and state in which we live. The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror. The self-awareness of the individual is only a flickering in the closed circuits of historical life. That is why the prejudices of the individual, far more than his judgments, constitute the historical reality of his being."

We can't achieve a full explicit understanding of ourselves. It is in this essence that we need to gain more understanding of our assumptions so that we can expand our horizon. Contrast to traditional individual-centered cognition pyschology, Activity theory holds that each instance of human behavior is to be considered in light of its history and socio-cultural context. The integral units of human life, the way we interact with each other and the world, can be conceptualized as activities which serve to fulfil distinctive motives.

The structural units of human behavior, according Activity Theory, are Activities, Actions and Operations. Through the analysis of our activities, actions, and operations, we hope to gain more insights into our behaviors.

The Object of Activity

Every murderer has a motive. Every game has an object. What do you think is the object of a blogger?

There's no such thing as "objectless" activity according to Leont'ev. The object of an activity is that to which the activity always answers. We construct the object that meets our needs, and it orients our attention and actions to fulfil a motive. Thus the object of activity is both a projection of human mind onto the objective world and a projection of the world onto human mind. It motivates and directs the activity.

On the other hand, our experience tells us that in a collaborative joint activity, it is common to find its participants have different goals, nor do they necessarily share same beliefs and values. But clearly, for collaboration to occur, there must be a degree of overlap in goals and a willingness to attempt to understand the perspective of others. In other words, the object of the activity is cooperatively defined by the whole set of motives that the participants strive to attain in their activity, but it could be different from any of the effective motives.


The relations between object and individuals' motives and goals are dynamic one. Activity does not have a direction and start until the object of the activity is defined. But the object itself maybe shifted as the participants respond to change (in conditions or social context) and thus change their goals/actions/motives.

Tools

There're no other species than human beings in the world that has developed such a diverse and sophiscated array of tools, or built such an elaborate cultural life around their use, and the tools we use are not limited to artifacts but also signs and symbols such as language, music, words, works of art, diagrams, maps, etc. We found the tools, fashioned the ways of using them to extend and mediate our actions, and we passed them on, improved upon, from one generation to the next.

Every day and every moment, we use these "cultural and historical" tools to mediate our interactions with each other and with our surroundings for achieving goals to which our activities are directed. In a profound way, we are so wedded to and constituted by the tools we use that we cannot be understood apart from them. As Vygotsky had insightfully pointed out "Tools are not only as aids developed historically to mediate relationships with society or reflections of the external world but as main means of mastering psychological processes that have a decisive influence on the formation of man's psychological activity."