Reporting back from the Networked Learning Seminar at Cardiff 6th May 2015

On Wednesday 6th May 2015, two friends from Bristol University traveled to Cardiff to head up our networked learning seminar: Dr Sue Timmis and Dr Jane Williams. At just after 1pm, around 30 of us were welcomed by Patricia Price (Pro Vice Chancellor Pro Vice-Chancellor, Student Experience & Academic Standards) who was on hand to open the seminar, kindly sponsored by the recently formed College of Biomedical & Life Sciences. I was personally very thankful to Emma Humphries from the College. Her fulsome help with the administration of the seminar was superb - it was so reassuring all through the surprisingly long run-up to the seminar.

Sue Timmis expertly traced out the tensions in Higher Education that keep the learning and teaching theory-practice gap wide open. For example, that theories of learning are far more contested than those within many disciplines. However, Sue challenged us to seek and engage students in participatory learning activities.  PowerPoint MP3




Jane Williams discussed her work with medical students who elect to develop e-learning materials for their optional module. Unlike the more programmatic materials developed by the department, the students target courseware that directly addresses content areas which they found challenging, thus increasing its value for ensuing cohorts. This was a perfect example of ‘participatory’ collaborative and cooperative learning that Sue had offered as a means of enriching and deepening learning. MP3


After a brief comfort-break, it was the turn of the Cardiff three... 
Karl Luke outlined a small-scale study in which he explored Nina Dohn's critique of the assumptions made in education when Web 2.0 tools (especially wikis) are deployed in hopes that they will succeed unproblematically. He went on to offer practical solutions to Dohn’s points. PowerPoint MP3

  Joe Nicholls used his slot to present long-standing work around 'learning literacies'. He argued that only a fully integrated approach to deploying these literacies could be effective and that, even then, context was key for securing worthwhile outcomes. PowerPoint MP3

Sadly, a few things, not just my relaxed approach to time-keeping, made us run out of time, leaving me with just a few minutes before the close. But even in a very short presentation there were practical and theoretical lessons gleaned from a mini-project carried out last year into aspects of informal learning by staff using an innovative application of blogs for shared academic supervision record-keeping. PowerPoint MP3

I was personally very pleased with the way that the seminar gave a real flavor of the conference. Networked learning does not do 'snake oil' and that can be confusing in learning technology circles... much the same as when my landline rings these days, I expect a sales pitch in broken English. The source of networked learning's 'non-splashy' power is in the humanistic values, transparent evidence and scholarly insight, and that should be good enough for anyone. Concluding comments MP3

The ZPD is different to scaffolding, different enough to matter

This post will (may) grow over time but for now I just need to dump some quotes and resources in a place where I can find them again and point 'someone who wants to know more' at with relative ease.

I have found that LS Vygotsky's concept, the Zone of Proximal Development is confused with the concept of scaffolding. Some are prepared to openly assert and strenuously defend the position that scaffolding is Vygotsky's concept. In my reading, it is not. Does this really matter? In my sense of things, yes it does and here's an idea of why... Thankfully, both questions are answered lucidly by Seth Chaklin: here are some extended quotes from a chapter of his from 2003:

I also want to highlight and recommend the paper by Verenikina (2003)... in which she points out, citing Stone (1998), that metaphors, such as 'scaffolding', have the capacity to augment understanding but also to constrain it. That, is a problem. Here we go with Seth anyway:

"Popularity has its price, however. Wertsch (1984) suggested that if this theoretical construct was not elaborated further, then there is a risk that "it will be used loosely and indiscriminately, thereby becoming so amorphous that it loses all explanatory power" (p.7). Mercer and Fisher (1992) believe that "there is a danger that the term is used as little more than a fashionable alternative to Piagetian terminology or the concept of IQ for describing individual differences in attainment or potential" (p. 342). Palinscar (1998) suggests that in the context of research about the negotiated nature of teaching and learning it is "probably one of the most used and least understood constructs to appear in contemporary educational literature" (p.370).

Critique of the common conception:

"If Vygotsky's intention was to use the concept for all kinds of learning, then why not name it the zone of proximal learning?" p40
"Vygotsky..., concluding that there is a unity but not an identity between learning and inner developmental processes. Vygotsky (1987) disctinguishes instruction aimed "toward [the child's] full development from instruction in specialized, technical skills such as typing or riding a bicycle" (p.212). In short, zone of proximal development is not concerned with the development of skill of any particular task, but must be related to development." p40

Assistance assumption

"In other words, it is not the competence per se of the more knowledgeable person that is important; rather, it is to understand the meaning of that assistance in relation to a child's learning and development." p43
p57: "In relation to the school age, the theoretical function of Vygotsky's zone of Proximal development research can be understood as a search for identifying a principled way for conceptualising schooling in relation to the whole child and not just the child's performance on a single task" (as with IQ)
p57 " The zone of proximal development is not simply a way to refer to development through assistance by a more competent other. This assistance is meaningful only in relation to maturing functions needed for transition to the next age period".
p59 most work that refers to zone of proximal development does not have such a developmental theory, even implicitly.

Why not imitation, assisted instruction, or collaboration? Is it because neither of these terms hold the same scientistic mystique necessary to attain the desired level of rhetorical capital needed so as to bolster their argument?

Chaklin, S. (2003). The Zone of Proximal Development in Vygotsky’s Analysis of Learning and Instruction. In A. Kozulin (Ed.), Vygotsky’s Educational Theory in Cultural Context. Cambridge University Press.
Stone, C. (1998). The metaphor of scaffolding: its utility for the field of learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 31(4), 344–364.
Verenikina, I. (2003). Understanding scaffolding and the ZPD in educational research. PDF file. Retrieved September 24, 2013, from http://ro.uow.edu.au/edupapers/381/