Looking further at Vygotsky’s ideas
I wrote about Vygotsky and the Zone of Proximal Development quite a long time ago now, but recently I’ve re-read some of the feedback I received, particularly that from Stephen Downs.
In particular I think its important to look at the role of the ‘teacher’ within Vygotsky’s theory as it was one of the major flaws that a ‘teacher’ was necessary for the process to take place and it seemed to disregard ‘individual’ learning which is also an important process.
Now where my argument with this arises is what is meant by a teacher? Does a teacher necessarily need to be a physical person or can a book or internet sources be also counted as a form of ‘teacher’, particularly with the rise of things like internet courses. I mean when you look at things technically, when one is learning ‘individually’ from books or internet, yes the person is carrying out the learning themselves but they still have assistance from another person in the person who has recorded or discovered these things. In essence they are still learning from others and then further it into their own ideas and opinions from there, as in Vygotsky’s theory of Zone of Proximal Development. In that sense the Zone of Proximal Development changes in that it does not need to be led by one teacher but in fact students have the ability to channel their own ZPD in the direction they so choose by drawing upon resources. This is particularly important now that social networking and internet are so easy to use, students are able to reach the top of their ZPD using such resources.
An example of this is maybe the way computers or new technology progresses, the first computer looked incredibly different to laptops today and change is made through studying current systems and building on ideas and then introducing new ones. The further thoughts and ideas progress the further the room for us to learn and reflect to build upon that learning.
