The zone of proximal teacher development

Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 252e258

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The zone of proximal teacher development Mark K. Warford* Buffalo State College, 1300 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo, NY 14222, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 19 August 2009 Received in revised form 27 July 2010 Accepted 31 August 2010

Toward the end of his short life, Lev Vygotsky found himself teaching teachers in a remote part of the USSR. Though his influence as a developmental psychologist is well-established, little is known about his approach to teacher development. This article applies the researcher’s core concept, the zone of proximal development to teacher education. The resulting model for educating teaching candidates within zones of proximal teacher development (ZPTD) integrates Vygotskyan theory into Western models of teacher education. Recommendations are offered with regard the four stages of the ZPTD and implications for the content and sequence of the teacher preparation curriculum. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: ZPD Vygotsky Teacher development Pre-service

1. Introduction Toward the end of Lev Vygotsky’s short life, Alex Kozulin (1990) describes the renowned developmental psychologist’s final work assignment as a teacher educator in a remote eastern university in the Soviet Union and how he would dazzle teaching candidates with his photographic memory and ability to write on the board continuously using both hands. This quirky anecdote raises more questions than answers with regard to what a Vygotskyan approach to the education of teachers might look like. Unfortunately, he was taken from us before a definitive approach could be developed and studied. Undaunted and fueled by disenchantment with the dominant technicist views of teacher education (Edwards, 1995; Samaras, 2000; Smith, 2001), researchers in sociocultural theory (SCT) have extrapolated Vygotsky’s genetic model to teacher development. In contrast to the accountability movement’s preference for commodified, direct ways of approaching teaching (i.e. Bartholomew & Sandholtz, 2009) and teacher education (CochranSmith, 2001; Reid & Michael O’Donoghue, 2004), Vygotsky (1986) stated, “direct teaching of concepts is impossible and fruitless. A teacher who tries to do this usually accomplishes nothing but empty verbalism, a parrotlike repetition of words by the child, simulating a knowledge of the corresponding concepts but actually covering up a vacuum” (p. 150). Mediated concept formation comprises the core of the Vygotskyan view of developmental processes. Facts are not simply transferred to teaching candidates;

* Tel.: þ1 716 878 4814; fax: þ1 716 878 6730. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0742-051X/$ e see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2010.08.008

rather, the candidates take the facts and appropriate their own meanings by means of cultural tools (Golombek & Johnson, 2004). This process, according to Lempert-Shepell (1995), grows in systematicity and complexity as teacher knowledge is continually re-shaped to accommodate the dynamic nature of schools and classrooms; consequently, a Vygotskyan approach to teacher development sees the education of teachers as situated learning. A socially situated view of teacher cognition traces the movement of pedagogical knowledge from the inter- to the intramental plane. Vygotsky used the zone of proximal development (ZPD), to describe this mediational process in greater detail. The ZPD measures the distance between what a learner is able to do and a proximal level that they might attain through the guidance of an expert-other. Using SCT as a base, this article advances a Vygotskyan approach to educating teachers within zones of proximal teacher development (ZPTD). Perhaps the most salient feature of a Vygtoskyan way of seeing teaching and learning is a holistic, authentic approach that is consistent with whole language rather than the dominant IRE (teacher initiates, student responds, teacher evaluates) recitation scripts that pervade traditional classrooms (Edwards, 1995, citing Tharp & Gallimore, 1988) and often replicated by teacher education programs. The sense of learning as a fundamentally dialogic, emergent process also resonates with the notion of discovery learning and other constructivist approaches that have often failed to gain acceptance in mainstream educational practice. Teaching teachers the Vygotskyan way envisions a three-way conversation that places teachers’ prior experiences as learners and often tacit beliefs about pedagogy into conversation with pedagogical content of the teacher education program and observations of

M.K. Warford / Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 252e258

teaching and learning in field placements. According to Edwards (1995), this blending of field-based and academy-centered ways of thinking and talking about teaching are typically not well-connected in teacher preparation programs. The latter has often been contextfree, exercised primarily by teacher educators and researchers, whereas the former is characterized by classroom teachers who may know how to teach very well, but lack the capacity to put those lessons systematically into words. Edwards contends that this is not so much a theory vs. practice divide as it is a language difference that has the potential to create cognitive dissonance as “teachers unfamiliar with the more powerful discourse of the academy are likely to feel alienated by it and unwilling to test and develop the theories carried by it in their own practices” (p. 601). Such tensions reflect Vygotsky’s (1986) distinction between scientific and experiential or ‘spontaneous’ concepts. Spontaneous concepts, which arise from one’s day-to-day experiences are often difficult for learners to employ “freely and voluntarily” (p. 148). In contrast, scientific concepts, which originate in formal schooling, benefit from a “systematicity of instruction and cooperation” (p. 148); however, they are fundamentally idiosyncratic, limited by “their excessive abstractness and detachment from reality” (pp. 148e9). There must be a blending, a dialogue created between spontaneous and scientific concepts in order for substantive development to occur. Consequently, situated learning within a Vygotskyan framework blends the scientific discourse of the college classroom with the experiential discourse of local classrooms. Unfortunately, according to Samaras (2000), such is not the norm in field experiences (citing Zeichner, 1990); we are left with this untenable and awkward rift between the academy and the field. According to Lempert-Shepell (1995), Vygotskyan teacher education minimally requires external dimensions, including a philosophy and curricular approach and internal dimensions that address the psychological processes that will help teachers mediate program values and content. This blending of the academy (scientific) and field (spontaneous) is essential; these external and internal dimensions must both respond to and prefigure the actual language classroom settings into which candidates have been passively socialized and toward which they must develop a critical style of engagement. Perhaps for this reason, Edwards (1995) advocates the front-loading real problems and cultural artifacts from actual language classrooms in curricular content. 2. Initial stages of the ZPTD: self- and teacher-assistance (Stages I & II) Conceived around discrete interventions between researchers and child-subjects that centered on block pattern recognition tasks, the stages of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) traditionally proceed from expert- to self-assistance (Stages I & II) and later from internalization, as concepts are automatized, to recurrence through earlier stages (Stages III & IV) as the learners de-automatize what they have learned (Gallimore & Tharp, 1990). The goal, as stated earlier is always to stay within the ‘zone’ between a learner’s actual capacities and a proximal set of knowledge and skills that they can reach through expert-other mediation. In a similar fashion, what I describe a zone of proximal teacher development (ZPTD) denotes the distance between what teaching candidates can do on their own without assistance and a proximal level they might attain through strategically mediated assistance from more capable others (i.e. methods instructor or supervisor). This intervention-centered or microgenetic aspect of development through the ZPD is part of a larger, deeper framework, which encompasses: 1) phylogenesis, the human biological endowment that makes development possible, 2) sociocultural history, which concerns the growth of cultural differentiation, and 3) ontogenesis, represented by interaction between biological and cultural forces across the developmental lifespan.

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If, as it is often alleged, we have failed to engender commitment to the program’s philosophy and curriculum among our candidates, it is because we have not fully respected the sociocultural and ontogenetic dimensions of teachers’ and teaching candidates’ cognitions. As Lantolf and Poehner (2007) state: “Our everyday practices are highly influenced at various stages of life by the particular types of activity that our culture makes available to us” (p. 14). Schooling is no doubt a significant part of our development, not only with regard to instructional content but also in terms of instructional practices. As Lortie (1975) established, candidates bring deeply embedded apprenticeships of observation to teacher education programs, having experienced teaching from the learning side for well over a decade. The dominance of more conservative and custodial teaching approaches in the sociocultural history of mainstream schools predicts that more constructivist (i.e. discovery-based, holistic instruction) teaching practices will likely be less ‘known’ within candidates’ ontogenetic framework, in contrast to the dominant deductive and direct teaching styles that characterize mainstream instructional practices. In order to coax tacit assumptions into critical consciousness and subject them to new approaches, we need to take greater care to establish pre- and in-service teachers’ actual developmental profile and connect them to the larger story of how researchers have approached teaching and learning (sociocultural history), helping them to weave expert and experiential knowledge into to personal narratives (ontogenesis). Failure to achieve this level of engagement only serves to perpetuate the dominant transmission approach of cramming curricular content around clusters of microgenetic interventions. Like skipping pebbles on the surface of a pond, pouring on the prescriptions, the potpourri of ‘practical tips’ seem to generate momentum, then ultimately sink into the abyss. Due to the weight of prior learning experiences that candidates bring to their teacher education programs, the zone of proximal teacher development (ZPTD, Fig. 1) requires a reversal of the first two stages (teacher-assistance, then self-assistance) in such a way that starts with candidates’ reflection (self-assistance) on prior experiences and assumptions. I should clarify that the distinction between self- and teacher-assistance, from a teacher development perspective, is not an ‘either.or’ phenomenon but rather a point of emphasis. Obviously, there is some mediation provided by the teacher educator, even at this self-assistance stage, but the emphasis is on setting the field by promoting reflection on one’s experiences and tacit beliefs with regard to teaching and learning; modeling or direct teaching should not prevail here. The prompts used to promote such reflection should anticipate the analytical foci, formal concepts and constructs that candidates will be exposed to in the curriculum. This focus on candidates’ actual level of development represents a departure from the ZPD, as it was originally conceived. To be sure, Vygotsky was enamored with the idea of learning as a future-in-the making; this focus on pushing learner capacities contrasted sharply with the Piagetian preference for limiting interventions to mediation within prescribed stages of cognitive maturation (Lantolf & Poehner, 2007; Vygotsky, 1986). Had Vygotsky benefited from the opportunity to investigate the ZPDs of teaching candidates, he would have collided with the ossified labyrinth of adult cognitions. In contrast to the malleable, maturing minds of child-test subjects, adult learners’ neural networks lose some of their plasticity. Whatever they have gained in developing an ego and an array of formal operations, such assets transform into liabilities when confronted with the phenomenological complexities of teaching and learning. Most teacher educators can readily identify with the irritation many teacherlearners experience when asked to critique and analyze classroom practices that they have come to accept as known and preferable. In promoting self-assistance, Schön (1990) has advanced the notion of shared meanings in the education of professionals,

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ZPTD

Sample Interventionist DA

I. Self-assistance [Stage II in ZPD (Gallimore & Tharp, 1990)] II. Expert other assistance [Stage I in ZPD) (Gallimore & Tharp, 1990)]

Preparing learning autobiographies, Responding to prompts about prior experiences Analysis of teaching practices (demos., videos, field observation) Role-taking/playing Forced choice quizzes (written) WebQuests Cubing exercises Journaling Micro-teaching Candidate statement of teaching philosophy Journaling Clinical reflective reports: collecting information and making warranted claims for change On-line forum Role taking/playing

III. Internalization (automatization) IV. Recursion (De-automatization)

Sample Interactionist DA Discussion, sharing autobiographies, follow-up questions Leading questions and follow-up discussion. Processing role plays Oral quizzes

Discussion, dialogic partners

Discussion, sharing autobiographies, follow-up questions, post-observation conferencing. Processing role-plays.

Fig. 1. The zone of proximal teacher development (ZPTD).

collapsing the traditional hierarchy between master and apprentice. With regard to the methods that best mediate teacher development, Lempert-Shepell (1995) underscores the importance of choice; “the teacher must be given an opportunity to construct his or her own frame of reference and professional action in a situation of cultural self-determination” (p. 439). A Vygotskyan framework for teacher reflection, according to Lempert-Shepell, promotes candidate choice in determining the course of their own growth. The tools should aid them in analyzing, planning, designing, and reflecting. The preparation of a learning autobiography sets the stage for a lifetime of professional growth, offering a diagnostic of directions toward which the candidate’s affective-volitional disposition might be most profitably directed and where they might benefit from sensitive, intensive mediation from the teacher educator. According to Vygotsky (1986): Thought itself is engendered by motivation, i.e. by our desires and needs, our interests and our emotions. Behind every thought there is an affective-volitional tendency, which holds the last answer to why in the analysis of thinking. A true and full understanding of another’s thought is only possible when we understand its affective-volitional basis. (p. 252) The importance of this initial, tuning-in phase cannot be overstated; the teacher educator cannot hope to promote teacher learning without carefully calibrating the candidate’s pedagogical dispositions. Learning autobiographies create a space for candidates to get in touch with the experiences that led to their choice of teaching as a vocational path. If a candidate seems to attach a lot of generative energy to a particular teaching practice that contrasts sharply with the program standards (i.e. a passion for ‘free homework passes’ or candy rewards for getting the right answer), the teacher educator should carefully consider crafting extra interventions to help the candidate bridge the gap between the real and the ideal. However, even loathed practices have a way of worming into the deep structure of emerging teacher cognitions. I have had more than one teaching candidate muse about the Gestapo-like verb conjugation chants and canned dialogue memorizations associated with more traditional forms of language teaching only to replicate them in their own initial teaching experiences. Like the moth to the flame or the horse galloping back to the burning barn,

they often surrender to the iconic power of those odious but known coercive teaching practices. A core wisdom of a Vygotskyan approach is the idea that learning leads development. One way to help learners weave personal and programmatic narratives is a technique called prolepsis, which involves teaching in a way that “assumes (or pretends) that the learners know more than they actually do” (van Lier, 2004, p. 153). Prolepsis, according to van Lier (2004), “create[s] invitational structures and spaces for learners to step into and grow into” (p. 162). Proleptic instruction serves the ZPD by exploring optimal distance between actual and potential development. In fact, as it was originally conceived, the ZPD viewed the learner as “an active organism in an ecosystem, in a social-cultural-historical life space” (p. 155, citing Lewin, 1943), a quality of participation that emerges from the periphery to the center (citing Lave & Wenger, 1991) much in the same way that prolepsis anticipates the internalization of yet to be attained concepts. In applying prolepsis to teacher development, teacher educators should acknowledge and validate candidates’ prior experiences of teaching and learning, while employing the future tense in discussing new lenses through which they will consider the same phenomena. For example, if a candidate professes their appreciation of teachers who motivated students through candy rewards, the methods instructor might respond by stating: “It’s so important to motivate students, isn’t it? An important question you will be able to address is: ‘Is motivation mainly a question of quantity or is the quality of motivation also important?’ Hopefully, by the end of the semester, the candidate will have developed an appreciation for more self-determined qualities of learner engagement”. Such leading discussions represent a bridge into the second stage of the ZPTD. At the second, teacher-assisted stage of the ZPTD, there are more intensive interventions at the microgenetic level as candidates confront the plethora of scientific language of academic discourse, which should be grounded in the experiential concepts that emerge from their own learning autobiographies and exploration of contemporary classroom realities. At this stage, teaching candidates need to experience live and videotaped, as well as field-based demonstrations of how innovative teaching practices are carried out in actual classrooms; this has the added advantage of reducing the sense of division between the academy and field. Analysis of


teaching episodes can also be used to help candidates recognize illustrations of a variety of pedagogical constructs. Particularly at this stage and throughout the rest of the process, dynamic assessment (DA) (Lantolf & Poehner, 2007) provides a compass for navigating emergent ZPTDs. Unlike traditional assessment, DA blends teaching and testing in a way that tunes in with great precision to developmental potential. There are essentially two varieties: interventionist and interactionist DA. Interventionist DA has already been introduced vis-à-vis the learning autobiography, an ‘intervention’ that gathers essential information about the kind of mediation that will be required to promote concept maturation among the candidates with regard to core program values and content. While interventionist DA involves more formal tools like pre-/post-testing, cubing and graphic organizers, interactionist DA more closely connects instruction and developmental processes through strategic teacherestudent dialogue. In both cases, candidates may struggle with the jargon of classroom discourse, so it may be necessary to start with forcedchoice tasks. For example, an interventionist DA activity might involve checklists that ask students to categorize teacher behaviors according to a pre-selected list of pedagogical foci. Role-taking, journaling (Reiman, 1999), and autobiographical narratives (Golombek & Johnson, 2004) are tools espoused by Vygotskyan teacher educationists that reflect interventionist DA. An interactionist DA variation would integrate into the aforementioned activities leading questions and discussions, as well as simulations of situations candidates might encounter in field experiences and practice teaching (i.e. gently persuading a cooperating teacher to accept the potential of inquiry-based approaches). Fig. 1 offers additional examples of DA tools and tasks to complement each stage of the ZPTD. Writing is well-established in SCT as an important tool for developing higher-order concepts (Vygotsky, 1986). According to Reiman (1999), writing “centers attention, clarifies thinking, provides a means of symbolizing thought” (p. 599) and stimulates inner speech (citing Luria & Yudovich, 1959). Writing as a tool for teacher development has recently enjoyed prominence in teacher development. In selecting themes and topics for journaling, Reiman (1999) suggests that prompts should be directed just ahead of the actual level of development. 3. Advanced stages of the ZPTD: internalization and recurrence (Stages III & IV) To return to the example of the teaching candidate I referred to in the previous section, there is an important lesson to be learned in noting failures at more mature stages of teacher development. It is well-established globally that teaching candidates often quick to discard the academy for what they perceive as the ‘real world’ of P-12 teaching (Al-Musawi, 2001; Anderson, 2007; Borko & Mayfield, 1995), which can be charted somewhere in the iconic realm between the apprenticeship of observation and the teaching practicum. As eager as he was to discard these discredited old ways, the aforementioned candidate nonetheless struggled in his attempts to accommodate a more emancipatory, discovery-based pedagogy, a turn of events that reflected intervention failures at the third ‘internalization’ and fourth ‘recurrence’ phases of the ZPTD. In looking back, I always wonder how things might have turned out had we the opportunity to continue the conversation initiated by his reflections. The ZPTD progresses toward internalization and repeated application of the pedagogical concepts they have learned (Stages III and IV). As internalization grows, candidates demonstrate their capacity to use the pedagogical knowledge and skills espoused by their particular program. Videotaped microteaching demonstrations are common assignments employed at this stage. In order to

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promote internalization and deeper integration of their learning experiences into the larger ontogenetic framework of professional growth, writing increases in importance as a tool for weaving together personal, professional and theoretical narratives. Rather than relying on the instructor’s evaluations of their execution of the teaching episode, rubrics should instead focus on the distance between the candidate’s capacity to reflect on the strengths and needs reflected therein. While journaling can be a powerful tool for promoting a more critical perspective on one’s beliefs and practices throughout the ZPTD, candidates should have the opportunity to construct a more formal statement of their beliefs, preferably before practice teaching. In crafting a statement of their teaching beliefs; they should be able to ‘talk the talk’, so to speak, in a way that suggests the growth of an administrative function, a sort of emergent teacher voice. In evaluating such statements, instructors need to be careful to gauge the extent to which candidates have created coherence from the interplay of their prior beliefs and assumptions, critiques of contemporary teaching practices, and the scientific language of the relevant research literature. Often, candidates throw out ‘buzz words’ that they know have capital with instructors; a closer look will reveal that the foundation is superficial and clustered rather than systemic and conceptual. In a study of novice TESOL teacher thinking, Warford and Reeves (2003, citing Freeman, 1996) found the Saussurian concepts of syntagmatic vs. paradigmatic analysis is useful in distinguishing discourse that cops a particular community of practice which one identifies or that which connotes a deeper, conceptual level of processing. In other words, does the writing stand for affiliation with a particular group, or does it stand for an understanding? Most candidate statements will reveal some intermingling of these two dimensions, and it is important to study these writings from whole to part, as well as part to whole. For example, on the surface, one might be pleased to find a lot of course constructs, and they may even be correctly identified or defined. A closer look at the flow of the writing, however, may reveal that there is no systematic analytical control; in other words, the discourse lacks a sense of voice. Drafts of candidate statements, completed near the beginning of the last methods course prior to student teaching will often meander significantly. This lack of coherence does not just reflect writing ability; it sketches a portrait of the scientific and experiential concepts that the candidate is still trying to sort out and systematize. Writing, for Vygotsky (1986), provided the best possible evidence for the higher forms of development as it offers a window into the extent to which the learner is able to control and systematize concepts. Syntagmatically, it is easy to note in the flow of discourse, token references to whatever the candidate thinks has capital with his or her program (Warford & Reeves, 2003). In applied linguistics, this kind of discourse is referred to as an affiliation move. In evaluating candidate’s written statements about teaching, teacher educators need to be careful not to be seduced by these overtures and to focus intently on the systemic quality of the writing. Early drafts tend to also feature iconic reveries on past learning experiences, which may or may not reflect the program’s pedagogical values and undermine analytic control. A close look at early candidate statements tends to illustrate Vygotsky’s (1986) distinction between concepts and clusters. Whereas the former conveys a sense of systemic coherence, the latter represents an accretion of terms. At first glance, clusters may convey a sense of categorization, but the content of the teacher education curriculum has not been properly interrelated and internalized. The “Recurrence” stage (Stage IV) of the ZPTD may aptly be described as the ‘theory into practice’ stage, as candidates prepare to confront the dichotomy of theory and practice in all its intensity. With regard to innovative tools and techniques learned in the

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program, this means letting go of more traditional variants that are much more known and natural by comparison. Rather than avoiding or dismissing discrepancies between pedagogical values in the academy and the field, a Vygotskyan approach embraces conflict as a catalyst for developmental change. According to Reiman (1999), reflection at this stage promotes equilibration (Piaget, 1972), the process of accommodating new information into a conceptual understanding, which necessarily entails discomfort, stress, conflict, sadness and loss: “In fact, giving up an old friend of one’s current preferred method of problem solving” (p. 601). If there was a traditional teacher that was particularly influential in their choice of education as a vocational path, candidates may feel as if teaching in alignment to current research and standards amounts to the betrayal of a hero or heroine. If there are marked differences between program coursework and the practicum situation, such realities exacerbate cognitive dissonance. A promising solution to nagging rifts between the academy and field centers on recent applications of Activity Theory to teacher education. Tsui and Law (2007) argue that the university program and area schools comprise distinct activity systems that drive the actions and goals associated with field practica, which, borrowing from Engeström (2001) and Wenger (1998), they categorize as a sort of boundary crossing. Though their depiction of the construct assumes a candidate’s movement from university to school-based activity systems in Hong Kong, it is perhaps just as often the case that candidates are evenly split between the two worlds or that they have never really left a primary identification with local school-based ways of thinking about teaching and learning. A related construct that is also useful to this discussion is the notion of the boundary object, a mediational tool that can act as a source of confluence between the often incongruent orientations of research and standards-driven university supervisors and practice-centered mentor teachers. In their study, lesson study, a process that involves collective planning, individual execution and group conferencing in relation to lessons, actually caused more discord than convergence, but one can glean from the experience a sense of utility in creating a common community of practice within the triad (university supervisor, mentor teacher and candidate). The rhythm of the dance of ‘matching and mismatching’ calls for a balance between action and reflection, and it is a marathon of a dance. Teacher reflection, according to Reiman (1999), must be sustained over time to stimulate substantive growth: “Substantial learning occurs in periods of conflict, confusion, surprise, and over long periods of time” (p. 610, citing Sprinthall & Thies Sprinthall, 1983). Likewise, Lempert-Shepell (1995) argues that there is value in “cognitive conflict” (p. 438) as a tool to promote candidate reflection. Given the feelings of isolation that many candidates experience in their initial teaching experiences, collaboration with peers can also be a powerful tool for teacher development at this stage. According to Lempert-Shepell (1995) both co- and self-organization of contents and activities are essential to successful teacher development. Samaras (2000) structured collaborative planning among teaching candidates and cooperating teachers. The rapport and empathy facilitated by this process promoted development. Multiple data points, including self-evaluations, planning materials, field reports and one-on-one interviews showed that a collaborative approach facilitated growth in candidates’ sensitivity to learners’ diverse needs, as well as their rigor of self-evaluation and sense of moral responsibility. In the advent of on-line course platforms, Hsu (2004) demonstrated how community building between pre- and inservice teachers can be facilitated through on-line case study forums. In both cases, the matching of experienced and novice teachers creates opportunities to calibrate and explore the ZPTD in ways that are more responsive and tuned in to the affective-volitional

dimensions of teacher learning than more traditional supervisionand-seminar approach to the practicum, particularly since they are driven by pre-service teachers’ concerns. As candidates move through their initial teaching experiences, the capacity to reflect gains in prominence as a developmental factor, particularly since mentor teachers tend to be uncritical and or enabling in their approach to supervision (Bullough & Draper, 2004; Veal & Rikard, 1998). Reflection, in itself, as Golombek and Johnson (2004) pointed out, creates an imaginary dialogic partner with oneself to make meaning of practical experiences. LempertShepell (1995) defines reflection as “the ability to make one’s own behavior an object of study; to manage it via the ability to regard oneself as the ideal other” (p. 434). With regard to the connection between action and reflection, “reflection changes the character of the action. An acting person stops dealing with the situational action but regards the sphere of possible actions. The structure of an action can change” (p. 435). In teacher development settings, Lempert-Shepell (1995) argues that reflection and action in teaching should ideally be governed by a conceptual framework. This process of systematizing practical experiences is captured in Reiman’s (1999) definition of reflective practice: “a process of problem solving, reconstruction of meaning, and subsequent reflective judgments while persons are engaged in significant new activity” (p. 598). Returning to the central point of the Vygotskyan approach to teacher education, we cannot afford to dismiss teacher education as a simple question of fact-cramming, but rather the promotion of a fundamental shift in the candidate’s cultural identity. According to Lempert-Shepell (1995) “the teacher is not only expected to be a cultural mediator but also a teacher-researcher; consequently, the teaching candidate should experience investigative learning during their professional preparation” (p. 438). Ideally, this disposition toward investigative learning should be supported through the first years of teaching, perhaps through a Master’s level extension program, one that continues to support beginning teachers’ recursion through the concepts learned in their coursework in a way that responds to classroom-centered questions. For Vygotsky, recursion, the process of retracing the prior steps of the ZPD, represented an essential, final stage of concept development. Post-programmatic support of candidates’ recursion need not be formal. In fact, teacher educators wishing to promote transformative change in candidates’ approaches to teaching need to see themselves as agents of cultural change. Bakhtin’s (1981) notion of carnival is useful for this purpose. In his study of Renaissance carnival culture, he found value in its atmosphere of abandon and cultural crossings, a sense of deeper and more diverse ways of participating in a given system. Hosting gatherings of alumni and their colleagues for free workshops or symposia, gathering focus groups among mentor teachers, or consulting with local schools are ways teacher educators can demonstrate relevance and responsiveness to the local professional culture. The long-term benefits of blending academy- and field-based cultures pay dividends for deep teacher learning. The barriers to this engaged sense of being a teacher educator are well-established. Day and Leitch (2001), in their assessment of British teacher educators suggest that they tend to be “private and introspective if not isolated” (p. 413) in how they approach their profession. Scholl (1990) offers up the pejorative image of the circuit rider, the archetypal Appalachian evangelist spreading the gospel on his white steed, to decry the extent to which US teacher educators appeared to be alienating themselves from area schools. In a dissertation study of foreign language teacher educators in the Southeast US, Warford (2000) found that respondents tended to reserve for themselves and their teaching candidates the highest marks for ‘innovativeness’ and ‘openness’ to change in contrast to


lukewarm to low ratings of the local community, its teachers and administrators. The collective portrait that emerges in the literature appears to suggest one of teacher educator alienation from the P-12 community, though the rise of the PDS model in elementary education has arguably corrected this ivory tower image. That the trend toward more engagement of teacher education faculty in area schools must continue cannot be understated. It is said that all politics is local. With regard to the potential divide between the academy and the field, one might argue that all pedagogy is local. Studies that have applied activity theory in educational research have established that teaching and learning is ultimately shaped by a multiplicity of roles, goals and motives (Chávez, 2007: US; Storch, 2004: Australia). The carnival of educational change calls teacher educators to don top hats and become barkers and ringleaders, to prepare to pack up and pitch our tents at the places where resistance to reform is greatest. Vygotsky truly believed that in the individual-society continuum, even one individual is capable of sending ripples that create waves of cultural change. Teacher educators, poised on the precipice between the world of the scientific and experiential, scholarship and K-12 schools, might likewise create sea changes in teaching and teacher development. 4. Adjustments to mainstream teacher education programs around a ZPTD model While the adaptation of a Marxian construct (ZPD) into mainstream Western teacher education might have been deemed unthinkable prior to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the ZPTD finds favor in the rise of constructivism, schooleuniversity partnerships and reflective pedagogy. These innovations at least indirectly corroborate Vygotsky’s genetic model and make integrating the ZPTD into teacher education programs a reasonable proposition. In addition to the previously mentioned notion of expanding linkages with area schools, there are four core principles that are essential in revising teacher education programs around the ZPTD. First, as previously mentioned, academic and field-based coursework must be guided by the conviction that teacher knowledge is inherently situated and mediated (not transmitted) within an emergent and dynamic interaction between a multiplicity of roles, goals and motives; consequently, the curriculum should center on establishing and promoting ongoing inner dialogues between prior experiences of teaching, the theoretical canon, and local practices. The narrative of teacher socialization, from a Vygotskyan perspective, is a tale in which the text is heavily nuanced by pretext (apprenticeship of observation) and context (area schools); consequently, the authoritative teacher educator strives to attune to this dynamic process. A corollary to the first point is that it is pointless to separate theory (scientific concepts) from practice (experiential concepts) in course offerings. In deference to the apprenticeship of observation and Vygotsky’s emphasis on learning-as-appropriation, each course, regardless of its stage in the curriculum, should start with Stage I tasks such as diagnostic surveys and learning autobiographies, then, as candidates move through successive stages of the ZPTD, these prior experiences provide a framework for the exploration of the latest research and standards and local practices, which means that field observation and participation are essential in all coursework, particularly since the ultimate goal is to close the distance between academic and field-based cultures. Candidate’s rate and ultimate level of attainment with regard to the ZPTD will vary according to the scope and sequence of a given course. More advanced courses may quickly move up through the ZPTD because they are engaged in recurrence. This may seem redundant to the reader, but as one who has had the opportunity to follow

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candidates from their content coursework all the way through methods and the teaching program, even the most salient and seemingly simple points of the curriculum have to be retaught because the candidate has difficulty applying them to novel situations or because the gravitational pull of the apprenticeship of observation and field experiences inhibit conceptual maturation. Finally, the practicum, which should invariably center on the fourth (recurrence) stage of the ZPTD, represents a critical and vulnerable point in teacher development. So much of what the candidate has achieved can be gradually or suddenly pulverized between past experiences and present empirical realities of the field placement. As Vygotsky put it, “psychological development as a dynamic process full of upheavals, sudden changes, and reversals” (1986, xxix). A situated, Vygotskyan view of teacher development is comfortable looking past assumptions of a linear progression to embrace reflexivity and spiralization in candidates’ experiences of the curriculum. A mediational rather than checklist orientation to supervision is critical. A lot has been published on the topic of progressive supervision models, and a full discussion of these innovations is beyond the scope of the present article. Ironically, fidelity to the original conception of clinical supervision, as advanced by Goldhammer, Anderson, and Krajewski (1993), is quite sufficient in addressing mediation within the ZPTD. At each stage, from pre- to post-conference, the method was designed to be dialogic, democratic and closely attuned to intervention strategies that meet the ZPD’s emphasis on providing ‘just enough’ assistance. A final point relates to technological innovations in teacher education curriculum and assessment. As alluded to earlier, technology holds the potential of making curricular content more concrete through the provision of teaching video segments and other multi-media artifacts that serve to reduce the distance between theory and practice. With regard to dynamic assessment, on-line platforms offer the opportunity for both interactionist (Skype and E-luminate conferencing, chat rooms) and interventionist (pre-/posttesting, feedback boxes, on-line portfolios, standards-based evaluation platforms such as TaskStream) varieties of DA.

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