Rediscovering Vygotsky’s Concept of the ZPD: Stanley Mitchell’s New Translation of ‘The Problem of Teaching [Obuchenie] and Mental Development at School Age’

Abstract

This article introduces the new translation by Stanley Mitchell of a very well-known Vygotskyan text, which has become the locus classicus for Vygotsky’s concept of the ‘zone of proximal development’ (ZPD). It outlines the history of Vygotsky’s text and compares Mitchell’s new translation with the version found in Chapter 6 of Mind in Society (a collection of Vygotsky’s articles edited by Cole, John-Steiner, Scribner, and Souberman in 1978). It indicates the main points of difference between the two translations and considers their significance for our reading of this key text. Chief among these points of difference is the emphasis given to pedagogy in Mitchell’s translation; it is clear from this version that the role of pedagogy in the mental development of children is a major focus for Vygotsky throughout the paper. Mitchell’s translation is nearly 2000 words longer than the 1978 translation and includes several passages which were cut from the original text; in particular, a section relating to ‘pedology’, an interdisciplinary movement sometimes called ‘child science’. This article discusses some of these cuts and finally considers Vygotsky’s vision of the potential of the ZPD concept for the study of teaching and learning, and its value in the sciences of pedagogy and pedology.

Keywords:

• Vygotsky
• translation
• zone of proximal development
• zone of proximate development
• obuchenie
• teaching
• learning
• pedagogy
• imitation
• pedology

Acknowledgements

I should like to express my gratitude for the work of the translator Stanley Mitchell, who did not live to see his translation published. It is very gratifying that this essential text found such a fine translator. I also acknowledge the help of Carla Mitchell, Stanley’s daughter and one of his literary executors; and of Ruth Pavey, Tony Burgess, Gordon Pradl, Valentina Polukhina, and of my editor John Yandell. Nikolai Veresov, who sent me the original Russian text, has been my collaborator and teacher throughout my work on Vygotsky.

Notes

1. The full meaning of obuchenie is not easily conveyed in English. Mitchell’s use of ‘teaching’ is a better translation of obuchenie in this article (this issue, pp. 359–371) than its translation as ‘learning’ in Cole et al. (1978), particularly as this article is so focused on pedagogy. But it still does not convey the two-sided nature of obuchenie. Nikolai Veresov comments: ‘Obuchenie is more than teaching, it is a cooperative activity of a teacher and a student’ (personal communication, June 2017). The word ‘teaching’, we might perhaps argue, means far more than ‘instruction’ and in its fullest interpretation implies a two-sided process. Though we have kept Mitchell’s translation of obuchenie throughout the translation, the reader needs to be aware of this fuller meaning of ‘teaching’, and the greater reciprocity that is conveyed by the original Russian word.

2. Another chapter from the 1935 collection of Vygotsky’s papers, Chapter 3, ‘The Dynamics of the Schoolchild’s Mental Development in Relation to Teaching and Learning’, was published in a new translation by Alex Kozulin in 2011 (Vygotsky 2011). That chapter, it can now be seen, provided the material for at least one of the ‘insertions’ into the text of Chapter 6 of Mind in Society.

3. Throughout his translation of this paper Stanley Mitchell used the word ‘proximate’ rather than ‘proximal’, the term we have become familiar with through its use in the 1978 translation. He considered that ‘proximate’ was a direct translation of the Russian original. Other Russian translators whom I have consulted and who, like him, were not familiar with the 1978 translation, have agreed with him.