Publication Cover
Changing English
Studies in Culture and Education
Volume 25, 2018 - Issue 2
735
Views
0
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Articles

Classroom Interaction and the Development of EmpowermentFootnote

 

Abstract

What is the practical pedagogic value of the zone of proximal development? How might we draw from the writings of Vygotsky and Leont’ev with regard to understanding the process of children and young people’s development as socialised intellectual beings? This article applies cultural-historical theory to classroom activity in order to reveal the potential for dynamic change in subjectivity, agency, cooperation and collaboration. After a detailed theoretical contextualisation which links primary sources and the cultural-historical tradition to learning and development through classroom activity, an incident in a lesson is discussed and situated in its wider narrative of practical experimentation, diagnosis and implementation.

Notes

A partial version of this article was published as Reed, M. 2015. ‘Classroom interaction and the development of empowerment.’ Nuances: Estudos sobre Educação (Presidente Prudente-SP, Brazil) 26 (1): 6–21.

1. Throughout this article words quoted in italics or underlined have been copied from the original source.

2. There is currently a rapidly growing literature devoted to the Vygotskian concept of perezhivanie (Mahn and John-Steiner Citation2002) in an attempt to rebalance the emotional dimension of lived experience. I doubt, going back to Vygotsky and Leont’ev as I have done here, whether any schism between intellectual and emotional growth was intended in the first place.

3. Elbers et al. (Citation1992) respond to Wertsch and Stone (Citation1985) with respect to the mediated agency of the child rather than that of adult and thereby reinstate the co-construction of learning through activity.

4. National examinations (standardised assessments) are taken at the ages of 7, 11 (before moving to secondary school), 16 and 18. In reality, in secondary school, students are assessed continuously from entry and examined regularly, especially from the age of 14 onwards.

5. In fact there is much ‘invisible’ selection, sometimes referred to as ‘selection by postcode’, because different schools serve areas with very different socio-economic standards of living, so a school in a poor area is often compared through exam results with a school in an affluent area. There is also a large private school sector in the UK and children from middle-class families are often sent to a private school instead of to their local comprehensive state school. In England, Scotland and Wales, there are some single-sex state schools, whereas in Northern Ireland many state schools are single-sex.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.