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Theory, practice, and the “zone of proximal development” in Soviet psychoeducational research
CONTEMPORARY
EDUCATIONAL
Theory,
PSYCHOLOGY
5,
175-183 (1980)
Practice, and the “Zone of Proximal Development” in Soviet Psychoeducational Research R. H.
Psychology
Department,
WOZNIAK Teachers College,
Columbia
University
One of the most striking characteristics of Soviet psychoeducational research and practice is a relative interdependence among philosophical, psychological, and educational considerations. Philosophical principles have explicitly influenced the direction taken by psychological theory; and psychological theory has, in turn, helped to determine educational practice. One area in which this interdependence has been especially close is that of psychological assessment, particularly as it applies to differential program placement of learning disabled’ and mentally retarded children. Although assessment is a broad topic which can hardly be addressed in all of its subtleties here (cf., Wozniak, 1975a, 1979 for more detailed discussion), there is one aspect of Soviet assessment policy which is of particular interest as illustrative of the theory-practice interaction. This is the use of a three-stage assessment procedure to measure individual differences in what Vygotsky (Luria, 1961) termed the child’s “zone of proximal development.” This notion is embedded in Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of cognitive development; and the theory is, in turn, founded on principles of dialectical materialism. My objective in this presentation will be to illustrate the philosophy-theory -practice interdependence exemplified in Soviet use of the concept “zone of proximal development.” PHILOSOPHICAL
PERSPECTIVE
From the dialectical philosophical perspective which underlies Soviet research (Wozniak, 1975b), consciousness and practical human activity are mutually interdependent. Consciousness guides and directs the activity by which human beings alter their surroundings. Activity in the surround corrects and develops human consciousness. Through this interaction, man is capable of self-development, introducing consciously controlled change into external reality which, in turn, reflects back upon and ’ The Soviet classification is “zaderzhka psikhicheskogo razvitiia,” literally translated as a delay in psychological development. Paper presented at the symposium entitled “Soviet Pedagogical Psychology: Theory and Practice,” Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, New York, Sep tember 1979. 175 0361-476X/80/020175-09$02.00/0 Copyright0 1980 by Academic Press, Inc. AU rights of reproduction in any form rcsened.
176
R. H. WOZNIAK
develops consciousness. By altering the world to which our action must be accommodated, in other words, we are able to regulate that action and control our own psychological functioning. PSYCHOLOGICAL
THEORY
It was from this perspective that Vygotsky (Leont’ev and Luria, 1968) developed his socio-cultural theory of psychological development. Specifically, Vygotsky emphasized the importance of “cultural mediators”-socially developed instruments (of which language is the most important) by which the child comes to regulate his own higher mental functions. The two essential features of cultural mediators, in Vygotsky’s view, were that they are socially transmitted and that they are “signs” which reflect some aspect of reality. In the employment of such signs, individuals develop the capacity to detach practical activity from the specific social and physical context in which it was formed, abstracting, generalizing, and internalizing the structure of that activity as the basis of higher mental processes such as complex perception, voluntary memory, and logical thought. Human psychological development, in short, is characterized by a progressive, socially mediated transfer of control from the environment to the individual. In discussing the ontogenesis of this regulatory process, Vygotsky (1962) argued that all specifically mediated human mental processes arise through cooperative social intercourse. Thus, the child’s cognitive development begins in the earliest interactions with parents and older siblings and continues through cooperative relations with teachers and other adults in society. At all stages, children find themselves confronted with situations which require skills which they do not yet possess. When difficulties are encountered, adults and older siblings may intervene to provide information and strategies prerequisite to adaptive action. It is a central tenet of Soviet developmental theory that what children are initially able to do only with social assistance, they come eventually to do on their own by incorporating into the structure of their own action and eventually internalizing the organizational principles inherent in the assistance which they receive from others. PSYCHO-EDUCATIONAL
ASSESSMENT
Luria (1961), in discussing this principle of the social origin of cognitive development, has applied it to the question of psycho-educational assessment, asking: “When we know that the higher psychological processes, including intellectual activity, have this complex developmental history and are formed in the course of the child’s speech-based social relationships, can we continue to adhere to the former static principles in assessing a child’s abilities and intellect? Can we continue to make confi-
ZONE
OF PROXIMAL
DEVELOPMENT
177
dent judgments of a child’s intellectual development merely on whether he performs a given task on his own with greater or lesser success (40-41).” In answer to his own question, Luria suggests that, given the principles of social development, a more appropriate method of psychoeducational evaluation might involve a comparison of children’s initial independent performance with that of which they are capable using direct adult assistance and then, particularly, with that of which they are capable after adult intervention, in subsequent independent performance. This suggestion is similar to one made originally by Vygotsky which he termed “investigation of the child’s zone of proximal development” (Luria, 1961). This “zone” is the range of potential development characteristic of a particular child and manifest in ability to profit from adult-provided organizational cues. LEARNING
DISABILITY, MENTAL RETARDATION, AND WIDTH OF THE ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT
The concept of “zone of proximal development” has received broad currency within the Soviet Union and particularly so with respect to the investigation of individual differences in cognitive and perceptual abilities among normally achieving, learning disabled, and often mentally retarded children. The application of this notion to psycho-educational assessment necessitates the three-stage procedure alluded to above. Typically, children are presented with a task which demands that they supply a measure of organization not completely inherent in the task materials. Initially, children are asked to perform the task by themselves. Then they are invited to engage in the same or in similar tasks while the experimenter provides a graded, individually tailored series of organizational assists. Finally, children are once again asked to perform in independence. From research employing this technique, one finding consistently emerges. Appropriately aged, normally achieving children are typically able to provide a degree of organization to task materials by themselves. Learning disabled and mentally retarded children are not. When, on the other hand, the same task is presented with increasing levels of adult organizational intervention, learning disabled subjects are capable of improving performance to a level achieved by normal subjects acting independently. Mentally retarded children, by contrast, are generally found to be unable to take much advantage of adult-provided prompts to increase their performance. Thus, although their independent performance may appear to be similar, the learning disabled are distinguished from the mentally retarded by the width of the zone of proximal development. For this reason, Soviet special educators see evaluation of the zone of proximal development as a central tool for proper diagnostic classification.
178
R. H.
RESEARCH
WOZNIAK
EMPLOYING THE ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT
In order to illustrate the way in which the “zone of proximal development” concept is applied in Soviet research and, also, to elaborate a bit more on the above finding, I would like to describe two experiments which have appeared in the Soviet psycho-educational journal Defektologiia. The first experiment, by Egorova (1969), was undertaken to explore two hypotheses. The first was that, relative to normals, learning disabled and mentally retarded children would possess only a poorly developed ability to analyze the features of a visual display. The second was that learning disabled subjects would manifest a wider zone of potential development than the mentally retarded. Twenty normal, 30 learning disabled, and 20 mentally retarded 2nd and 4th graders were shown a color drawing of a cherry tree branch and instructed to look the picture over as carefully as possible and describe it in detail, telling the experimenter what had been drawn, how many objects there were, what were the details of shape, color, arrangement, and so forth. The number of features (defined in terms of parts and properties of the main drawing) described by the child was employed as a measure of visual analytic ability. As is evident in Table 1, normally achieving subjects described 12.5 features on the average in comparison to learning disabled and mentally retarded children who named only 6.5 and 4.5, respectively. Differences among all groups were statistically significant. The range and distribution of performance of the children in the three groups is also presented in Table 1. As can be seen, the performance of all learning disabled children fell in the middle range of scores, with no learning disabled subject in either the highest or lowest categories. By contrast, no normal child scored in either of the two lowest categories and no mentally retarded child scored in the highest. Note also that the modal performance for both learning disabled and mentally retarded subjects fell in the same category: average-low. In the second stage of the experiment, children in all three groups were presented with a teaching album in which pairs of pictures differing on a single feature (e.g., number, shape, configuration, etc.) were arranged so that each child saw only those pictures relevant to features which had not been discriminated during initial independent performance. The child was asked to look at each pair of pictures and describe the difference. If the child had difftculty noticing or naming the feature, the experimenter assisted with a series of prompts. At the conclusion of stage 2 training, the original picture was presented once again with instructions and procedure identical to the initial presentation. The mean number of features discriminated by each of the three
12.5
MH ML L
Average
See Egorova (1969).
8-11 4-7 o-3
H
Note.
12+
Level
AND AVERAGE
TABLE OF NORMAL,
27 73 6.5
12.5
-
LD
20 4.5
IS 65
-
MR
subjects at each level
PERFORMANCE
40 -
60
Normal
Percentage
Preintervention
DISTRIBUTION,
Number features
RANGE,
1
L
MH ML
H
Level
LD,
AND MR
o-5
11-15 6- 10
16+
Number features
SUBJECTS
ANALYSIS
TASK
18.1
15 -
85
Normal
10.5
50 47
3
LD
45 5.7
55
-
MR
Percentage subjects at each level
Postintervention
ON A VISUAL
z W
is s r;
2 :: 2 > r
0-0
z
2
180
R. H.
WOZNIAK
groups after training was 18.1 (normals), 10.5 (learning disabled), and 5.7 (mentally retarded). Egorova draws particular attention to the fact that although normal children profited most from adult assistance (an increase of 5.6 features on the average), learning disabled children also benefited substantially (an increase of 4.0 features on the average), achieving almost the initial level of independent performance of normal students, while the mentally retarded benefited only minimally (an increase of only 1.1 feature on the average). Furthermore, a glance at the distribution of posttraining description scores also presented in Table 1 suggests that for normals and the learning disabled, training produced a distinct upward shift of the distribution, with the vast majority of normal and some leaming disabled children now scoring in the highest category and with the highest percentage of learning disabled subjects now in the average-high category. The mentally retarded, on the other hand, despite minor improvement, were all distributed after training in the bottom two categories. Egorova interprets these findings as support for the notion that children with learning disability may be distinguished from the mentally retarded far more easily by their ability to take advantage of adult-provided organizational assistance than by the level of their initial independent performance. She concludes with a comment to the effect that the critical pedagogical characteristic of learning disabled children is their inability to perform well in independent work and their concomitant capacity for improved performance with structured adult assistance. A second investigation employing the “zone of proximal development” format was conducted by Tsymbaliuk (1973). The goal of this research was to evaluate individual differences among learning disabled and normal students in comprehending the higher-order relationships which exist in a complex visual array-in this instance a picture with a plot. Thirty 8- and 9-year-old learning disabled and a comparable group of 7and 8-year-old normal subjects were shown a picture in which a flock of doves is scattered across the roof of a shed. A cat is creeping up on the doves unnoticed. A boy is putting up a ladder intending to drive away the cat but goats are coming out of the shed, hindering the boy and threatening to knock over the ladder. The subjects were told to look at the picture as carefully as possible and to tell the experimenter what was happening. Explanations of the pictured events were rated according to a fourcategory system based jointly on the number of cause and effect relationships noted (maximum of 3: cat-doves; boy-cat; goats-boy) and on qualitative attributes of the explanation (e.g., sequential connections, tendency to merely list objects, etc.). As indicated in Table 2, categories I and II explanations show no apparent comprehension of the plot. In category I, not a single causal relation is mentioned, and generally the move-
ZONE
OF
PROXIMAL
TABLE
DEVELOPMENT
181
2
CHARACTERISTICS OF FOUR CATEGORIES OF PLOT EXPLANATIONS (Tsymbaliuk)
I
Attempts to explain the story but with no apparent comprehension of the plot. Not a single causal relation is mentioned, and generally the movements of the animal, pose of the boy, etc., are only vaguely understood.
II
Attempts to explain the story with no real comprehension of the plot. One cause and effect relation may be mentioned; but the child generally only lists objects and actions.
III
Explanations of the story which achieve some success, but with a partial or one-sided comprehension of the meaning of the cause-effect relations. Two cause and effect relations are usually indicated, but the sequence of events is poorly elucidated.
IV
Adequate explanations of the plot. All three cause-effect relations are noted and integrated into a single unified theme.
Note. See Tsymbaliuk (1973).
ments of the animal, pose of the boy, etc. are only vaguely understood. In category II, one cause and effect relation may be mentioned; but the child generally only lists objects and actions. Category III explanations, on the other hand, achieve some success but indicate only partial comprehension of the total complex of plot relations. Typically, one cause and effect pair is omitted and the sequence of events is poorly elucidated. Finally, category IV explanations are adequate to the plot. All three cause and effect relations are noted and integrated into a single unified theme. Explanations given by learning disabled and normal subjects were distributed as follows: Among the learning disabled, 3 were assigned to category I, 14 to category II, 8 to category III, and only 5 to category IV. The mean category score for the entire group was 2.5. For normal students, on the other hand, none of the explanations were assigned to category I, only 6 to category II, 10 to category III, and 14 to category IV. The mean category score for the normal group was 3.3, differing significantly from that obtained by learning disabled children. Although there is a sizeable overlap in the performance distribution of the two groups, it is clear that on the whole normal students were better able than the learning disabled to integrate the information in the visual array to produce a coherent account of the plot. The second part of the procedure involved a training session in which children giving incomplete explanations (levels I-III) on the initial task were shown a set of additional pictures depicting substories of the main plot. These pictures were shown to the children in three sequential stages, with experimenter assists progressing from a bare minimum to direct demonstration. The first set of training pictures presented the characters in the main picture (doves on the roof, cat creeping, goats coming out of
182
R. H.
WOZNIAK
the corner of the door, etc.); but each character was portrayed separately, with no unifying plot. The child was told to look the pictures over in sequence and describe them. This minimum level of training was included on the theory that for some children poor performance on the original task might have been a simple function of inadequate visual analysis. The child might have neglected one or another of the components of the picture and thus have failed to comprehend the plot as a whole. At the completion of minimal training, the children were shown the main picture and again asked to tell what was happening. Children who did not achieve a category IV plot explanation at this point were given a second, intermediate level of training. Intermediate training presented children with pictures isolating single cause and effect relationships (e.g., goats coming out of the shed and rushing at the ladder, cat approaching the doves, etc.). Children were shown only those pictures appropriate to cause-effect relations which they had previously omitted in explanation. This was followed by another opportunity for the child to explain the plot of the main picture. Finally, any child whose explanation still did not reach the level of category IV was provided with a third training session. In this training, a set of five subpictures which clearly depicted the serial order of events in the main picture was shown to the child; and the child was told to describe the events thus portrayed. When this task was completed, the child was once again shown the main picture and asked to explain the plot. The results of training and retesting suggested that minimal training (simple pictures of isolated characters) was effective primarily for normal children. Following this procedure, none of the normal students remained at level II and four had successfully crossed from levels III to IV. Among the learning disabled children, however, minimal training affected only four students, two who crossed from II to IV and two who crossed from III to IV. Intermediate training (isolating binary cause-effect relations) assisted all of the remaining normal subjects to achieve a category IV explanation. Among the learning disabled, however, with a sole exception, only those children already at level III managed to achieve adequate category IV explanations after the intermediate training routine. The remaining leaming disabled children (and only the learning disabled) required the final, most explicit training experience in order to produce level IV explanations. In discussing the total pattern of results from this study, the author suggests that among children with learning disabilities, just as between the learning disabled and the mentally retarded, there exists a wide range of individual differences in zone of proximal development. Thus, for example, although the measure of initial performance failed to differentiate
ZONE
OF PROXIMAL
DEVELOPMENT
183
among the 14 learning disabled subjects whose explanations fell into category II, the results of the training tasks suggested that some of these children were capable of rapid progress with minimal assistance while others improved their performance only very slowly, requiring a much higher level of adult intervention. Clearly, appropriate educational placement requires assessment techniques which are sensitive to individual differences of this sort, techniques, in other words, which can measure the zone of proximal development. CONCLUSION
In conclusion, let me express my hope that this brief presentation has served to illustrate the integration of theory and practice in Soviet psycho-educational research. Philosophical principles provide the context for psychological theory, in this particular case, for the concept “zone of proximal development,” and psychological theory conditions psychoeducational practice. Although this is a topic which must await another occasion, it should as well be pointed out in closing that the best of the Soviet work psycho-educational practice also feeds back to develop and correct the theoretical concepts by which it is informed. REFERENCES EGOROVA, T. V. Analiz zritel’no vosprinimaemykh ob’ektov neuspevaiushchimi shkol’nikami mladshikh klassov (Analysis of visually perceived objects by failing students in the early grades). Defektologiia, 1969(2), 29-37. LEONT’EV, A. N., AND LURIA, A. R. The psychological ideas of L. S. Vygotskii. In B. B. Wolman (Ed.), Historical roots of contemporary psychology. New York: Harper and Row, 1968. LURIA, A. R. Study of the abnormal child. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 1961, 31, l-16. TSYMBALIUK, A. N. Ponimanie ciuzhetnoi kartiny v usloviiakh obuchaiushchego eksperimenta det’mi s zaderzhkoi razvitiia (Comprehension of a picture with a plot under conditions of a training experiment in children with delayed development). Defektologiia. 1973(3), 25-32. VYGOTSKY,L. S. Thought and language. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1962. WOZNIAK, R. H. Psychology and education of the learning disabled child in the Soviet Union. In W. M. Cruickshank and D. P. Hallahan (Eds.), Perceptual and learning disabilities in children. Psychoeducational practices. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1975. Vol. 1. (a) WOZNIAK, R. H. Dialecticism and structuralism: The philosophical foundations of Soviet psychology and Piagetian cognitive developmental theory. In K. F. Riegel and G. C. Rosenwald (Eds.), Structure and transformalion: Developmental and historical aspects. New York: Wiley, 1975. (b) WOZNIAK, R. H. So\,iet psycho-educational research on learning disabilities: Implications ,filr American research and practice. Paper prepared for the National Institute of Education and available through the ERIC Clearinghouse on Handicapped and Gifted Children, 1979.
EDUCATIONAL
Theory,
PSYCHOLOGY
5,
175-183 (1980)
Practice, and the “Zone of Proximal Development” in Soviet Psychoeducational Research R. H.
Psychology
Department,
WOZNIAK Teachers College,
Columbia
University
One of the most striking characteristics of Soviet psychoeducational research and practice is a relative interdependence among philosophical, psychological, and educational considerations. Philosophical principles have explicitly influenced the direction taken by psychological theory; and psychological theory has, in turn, helped to determine educational practice. One area in which this interdependence has been especially close is that of psychological assessment, particularly as it applies to differential program placement of learning disabled’ and mentally retarded children. Although assessment is a broad topic which can hardly be addressed in all of its subtleties here (cf., Wozniak, 1975a, 1979 for more detailed discussion), there is one aspect of Soviet assessment policy which is of particular interest as illustrative of the theory-practice interaction. This is the use of a three-stage assessment procedure to measure individual differences in what Vygotsky (Luria, 1961) termed the child’s “zone of proximal development.” This notion is embedded in Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of cognitive development; and the theory is, in turn, founded on principles of dialectical materialism. My objective in this presentation will be to illustrate the philosophy-theory -practice interdependence exemplified in Soviet use of the concept “zone of proximal development.” PHILOSOPHICAL
PERSPECTIVE
From the dialectical philosophical perspective which underlies Soviet research (Wozniak, 1975b), consciousness and practical human activity are mutually interdependent. Consciousness guides and directs the activity by which human beings alter their surroundings. Activity in the surround corrects and develops human consciousness. Through this interaction, man is capable of self-development, introducing consciously controlled change into external reality which, in turn, reflects back upon and ’ The Soviet classification is “zaderzhka psikhicheskogo razvitiia,” literally translated as a delay in psychological development. Paper presented at the symposium entitled “Soviet Pedagogical Psychology: Theory and Practice,” Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, New York, Sep tember 1979. 175 0361-476X/80/020175-09$02.00/0 Copyright0 1980 by Academic Press, Inc. AU rights of reproduction in any form rcsened.
176
R. H. WOZNIAK
develops consciousness. By altering the world to which our action must be accommodated, in other words, we are able to regulate that action and control our own psychological functioning. PSYCHOLOGICAL
THEORY
It was from this perspective that Vygotsky (Leont’ev and Luria, 1968) developed his socio-cultural theory of psychological development. Specifically, Vygotsky emphasized the importance of “cultural mediators”-socially developed instruments (of which language is the most important) by which the child comes to regulate his own higher mental functions. The two essential features of cultural mediators, in Vygotsky’s view, were that they are socially transmitted and that they are “signs” which reflect some aspect of reality. In the employment of such signs, individuals develop the capacity to detach practical activity from the specific social and physical context in which it was formed, abstracting, generalizing, and internalizing the structure of that activity as the basis of higher mental processes such as complex perception, voluntary memory, and logical thought. Human psychological development, in short, is characterized by a progressive, socially mediated transfer of control from the environment to the individual. In discussing the ontogenesis of this regulatory process, Vygotsky (1962) argued that all specifically mediated human mental processes arise through cooperative social intercourse. Thus, the child’s cognitive development begins in the earliest interactions with parents and older siblings and continues through cooperative relations with teachers and other adults in society. At all stages, children find themselves confronted with situations which require skills which they do not yet possess. When difficulties are encountered, adults and older siblings may intervene to provide information and strategies prerequisite to adaptive action. It is a central tenet of Soviet developmental theory that what children are initially able to do only with social assistance, they come eventually to do on their own by incorporating into the structure of their own action and eventually internalizing the organizational principles inherent in the assistance which they receive from others. PSYCHO-EDUCATIONAL
ASSESSMENT
Luria (1961), in discussing this principle of the social origin of cognitive development, has applied it to the question of psycho-educational assessment, asking: “When we know that the higher psychological processes, including intellectual activity, have this complex developmental history and are formed in the course of the child’s speech-based social relationships, can we continue to adhere to the former static principles in assessing a child’s abilities and intellect? Can we continue to make confi-
ZONE
OF PROXIMAL
DEVELOPMENT
177
dent judgments of a child’s intellectual development merely on whether he performs a given task on his own with greater or lesser success (40-41).” In answer to his own question, Luria suggests that, given the principles of social development, a more appropriate method of psychoeducational evaluation might involve a comparison of children’s initial independent performance with that of which they are capable using direct adult assistance and then, particularly, with that of which they are capable after adult intervention, in subsequent independent performance. This suggestion is similar to one made originally by Vygotsky which he termed “investigation of the child’s zone of proximal development” (Luria, 1961). This “zone” is the range of potential development characteristic of a particular child and manifest in ability to profit from adult-provided organizational cues. LEARNING
DISABILITY, MENTAL RETARDATION, AND WIDTH OF THE ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT
The concept of “zone of proximal development” has received broad currency within the Soviet Union and particularly so with respect to the investigation of individual differences in cognitive and perceptual abilities among normally achieving, learning disabled, and often mentally retarded children. The application of this notion to psycho-educational assessment necessitates the three-stage procedure alluded to above. Typically, children are presented with a task which demands that they supply a measure of organization not completely inherent in the task materials. Initially, children are asked to perform the task by themselves. Then they are invited to engage in the same or in similar tasks while the experimenter provides a graded, individually tailored series of organizational assists. Finally, children are once again asked to perform in independence. From research employing this technique, one finding consistently emerges. Appropriately aged, normally achieving children are typically able to provide a degree of organization to task materials by themselves. Learning disabled and mentally retarded children are not. When, on the other hand, the same task is presented with increasing levels of adult organizational intervention, learning disabled subjects are capable of improving performance to a level achieved by normal subjects acting independently. Mentally retarded children, by contrast, are generally found to be unable to take much advantage of adult-provided prompts to increase their performance. Thus, although their independent performance may appear to be similar, the learning disabled are distinguished from the mentally retarded by the width of the zone of proximal development. For this reason, Soviet special educators see evaluation of the zone of proximal development as a central tool for proper diagnostic classification.
178
R. H.
RESEARCH
WOZNIAK
EMPLOYING THE ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT
In order to illustrate the way in which the “zone of proximal development” concept is applied in Soviet research and, also, to elaborate a bit more on the above finding, I would like to describe two experiments which have appeared in the Soviet psycho-educational journal Defektologiia. The first experiment, by Egorova (1969), was undertaken to explore two hypotheses. The first was that, relative to normals, learning disabled and mentally retarded children would possess only a poorly developed ability to analyze the features of a visual display. The second was that learning disabled subjects would manifest a wider zone of potential development than the mentally retarded. Twenty normal, 30 learning disabled, and 20 mentally retarded 2nd and 4th graders were shown a color drawing of a cherry tree branch and instructed to look the picture over as carefully as possible and describe it in detail, telling the experimenter what had been drawn, how many objects there were, what were the details of shape, color, arrangement, and so forth. The number of features (defined in terms of parts and properties of the main drawing) described by the child was employed as a measure of visual analytic ability. As is evident in Table 1, normally achieving subjects described 12.5 features on the average in comparison to learning disabled and mentally retarded children who named only 6.5 and 4.5, respectively. Differences among all groups were statistically significant. The range and distribution of performance of the children in the three groups is also presented in Table 1. As can be seen, the performance of all learning disabled children fell in the middle range of scores, with no learning disabled subject in either the highest or lowest categories. By contrast, no normal child scored in either of the two lowest categories and no mentally retarded child scored in the highest. Note also that the modal performance for both learning disabled and mentally retarded subjects fell in the same category: average-low. In the second stage of the experiment, children in all three groups were presented with a teaching album in which pairs of pictures differing on a single feature (e.g., number, shape, configuration, etc.) were arranged so that each child saw only those pictures relevant to features which had not been discriminated during initial independent performance. The child was asked to look at each pair of pictures and describe the difference. If the child had difftculty noticing or naming the feature, the experimenter assisted with a series of prompts. At the conclusion of stage 2 training, the original picture was presented once again with instructions and procedure identical to the initial presentation. The mean number of features discriminated by each of the three
12.5
MH ML L
Average
See Egorova (1969).
8-11 4-7 o-3
H
Note.
12+
Level
AND AVERAGE
TABLE OF NORMAL,
27 73 6.5
12.5
-
LD
20 4.5
IS 65
-
MR
subjects at each level
PERFORMANCE
40 -
60
Normal
Percentage
Preintervention
DISTRIBUTION,
Number features
RANGE,
1
L
MH ML
H
Level
LD,
AND MR
o-5
11-15 6- 10
16+
Number features
SUBJECTS
ANALYSIS
TASK
18.1
15 -
85
Normal
10.5
50 47
3
LD
45 5.7
55
-
MR
Percentage subjects at each level
Postintervention
ON A VISUAL
z W
is s r;
2 :: 2 > r
0-0
z
2
180
R. H.
WOZNIAK
groups after training was 18.1 (normals), 10.5 (learning disabled), and 5.7 (mentally retarded). Egorova draws particular attention to the fact that although normal children profited most from adult assistance (an increase of 5.6 features on the average), learning disabled children also benefited substantially (an increase of 4.0 features on the average), achieving almost the initial level of independent performance of normal students, while the mentally retarded benefited only minimally (an increase of only 1.1 feature on the average). Furthermore, a glance at the distribution of posttraining description scores also presented in Table 1 suggests that for normals and the learning disabled, training produced a distinct upward shift of the distribution, with the vast majority of normal and some leaming disabled children now scoring in the highest category and with the highest percentage of learning disabled subjects now in the average-high category. The mentally retarded, on the other hand, despite minor improvement, were all distributed after training in the bottom two categories. Egorova interprets these findings as support for the notion that children with learning disability may be distinguished from the mentally retarded far more easily by their ability to take advantage of adult-provided organizational assistance than by the level of their initial independent performance. She concludes with a comment to the effect that the critical pedagogical characteristic of learning disabled children is their inability to perform well in independent work and their concomitant capacity for improved performance with structured adult assistance. A second investigation employing the “zone of proximal development” format was conducted by Tsymbaliuk (1973). The goal of this research was to evaluate individual differences among learning disabled and normal students in comprehending the higher-order relationships which exist in a complex visual array-in this instance a picture with a plot. Thirty 8- and 9-year-old learning disabled and a comparable group of 7and 8-year-old normal subjects were shown a picture in which a flock of doves is scattered across the roof of a shed. A cat is creeping up on the doves unnoticed. A boy is putting up a ladder intending to drive away the cat but goats are coming out of the shed, hindering the boy and threatening to knock over the ladder. The subjects were told to look at the picture as carefully as possible and to tell the experimenter what was happening. Explanations of the pictured events were rated according to a fourcategory system based jointly on the number of cause and effect relationships noted (maximum of 3: cat-doves; boy-cat; goats-boy) and on qualitative attributes of the explanation (e.g., sequential connections, tendency to merely list objects, etc.). As indicated in Table 2, categories I and II explanations show no apparent comprehension of the plot. In category I, not a single causal relation is mentioned, and generally the move-
ZONE
OF
PROXIMAL
TABLE
DEVELOPMENT
181
2
CHARACTERISTICS OF FOUR CATEGORIES OF PLOT EXPLANATIONS (Tsymbaliuk)
I
Attempts to explain the story but with no apparent comprehension of the plot. Not a single causal relation is mentioned, and generally the movements of the animal, pose of the boy, etc., are only vaguely understood.
II
Attempts to explain the story with no real comprehension of the plot. One cause and effect relation may be mentioned; but the child generally only lists objects and actions.
III
Explanations of the story which achieve some success, but with a partial or one-sided comprehension of the meaning of the cause-effect relations. Two cause and effect relations are usually indicated, but the sequence of events is poorly elucidated.
IV
Adequate explanations of the plot. All three cause-effect relations are noted and integrated into a single unified theme.
Note. See Tsymbaliuk (1973).
ments of the animal, pose of the boy, etc. are only vaguely understood. In category II, one cause and effect relation may be mentioned; but the child generally only lists objects and actions. Category III explanations, on the other hand, achieve some success but indicate only partial comprehension of the total complex of plot relations. Typically, one cause and effect pair is omitted and the sequence of events is poorly elucidated. Finally, category IV explanations are adequate to the plot. All three cause and effect relations are noted and integrated into a single unified theme. Explanations given by learning disabled and normal subjects were distributed as follows: Among the learning disabled, 3 were assigned to category I, 14 to category II, 8 to category III, and only 5 to category IV. The mean category score for the entire group was 2.5. For normal students, on the other hand, none of the explanations were assigned to category I, only 6 to category II, 10 to category III, and 14 to category IV. The mean category score for the normal group was 3.3, differing significantly from that obtained by learning disabled children. Although there is a sizeable overlap in the performance distribution of the two groups, it is clear that on the whole normal students were better able than the learning disabled to integrate the information in the visual array to produce a coherent account of the plot. The second part of the procedure involved a training session in which children giving incomplete explanations (levels I-III) on the initial task were shown a set of additional pictures depicting substories of the main plot. These pictures were shown to the children in three sequential stages, with experimenter assists progressing from a bare minimum to direct demonstration. The first set of training pictures presented the characters in the main picture (doves on the roof, cat creeping, goats coming out of
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the corner of the door, etc.); but each character was portrayed separately, with no unifying plot. The child was told to look the pictures over in sequence and describe them. This minimum level of training was included on the theory that for some children poor performance on the original task might have been a simple function of inadequate visual analysis. The child might have neglected one or another of the components of the picture and thus have failed to comprehend the plot as a whole. At the completion of minimal training, the children were shown the main picture and again asked to tell what was happening. Children who did not achieve a category IV plot explanation at this point were given a second, intermediate level of training. Intermediate training presented children with pictures isolating single cause and effect relationships (e.g., goats coming out of the shed and rushing at the ladder, cat approaching the doves, etc.). Children were shown only those pictures appropriate to cause-effect relations which they had previously omitted in explanation. This was followed by another opportunity for the child to explain the plot of the main picture. Finally, any child whose explanation still did not reach the level of category IV was provided with a third training session. In this training, a set of five subpictures which clearly depicted the serial order of events in the main picture was shown to the child; and the child was told to describe the events thus portrayed. When this task was completed, the child was once again shown the main picture and asked to explain the plot. The results of training and retesting suggested that minimal training (simple pictures of isolated characters) was effective primarily for normal children. Following this procedure, none of the normal students remained at level II and four had successfully crossed from levels III to IV. Among the learning disabled children, however, minimal training affected only four students, two who crossed from II to IV and two who crossed from III to IV. Intermediate training (isolating binary cause-effect relations) assisted all of the remaining normal subjects to achieve a category IV explanation. Among the learning disabled, however, with a sole exception, only those children already at level III managed to achieve adequate category IV explanations after the intermediate training routine. The remaining leaming disabled children (and only the learning disabled) required the final, most explicit training experience in order to produce level IV explanations. In discussing the total pattern of results from this study, the author suggests that among children with learning disabilities, just as between the learning disabled and the mentally retarded, there exists a wide range of individual differences in zone of proximal development. Thus, for example, although the measure of initial performance failed to differentiate
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among the 14 learning disabled subjects whose explanations fell into category II, the results of the training tasks suggested that some of these children were capable of rapid progress with minimal assistance while others improved their performance only very slowly, requiring a much higher level of adult intervention. Clearly, appropriate educational placement requires assessment techniques which are sensitive to individual differences of this sort, techniques, in other words, which can measure the zone of proximal development. CONCLUSION
In conclusion, let me express my hope that this brief presentation has served to illustrate the integration of theory and practice in Soviet psycho-educational research. Philosophical principles provide the context for psychological theory, in this particular case, for the concept “zone of proximal development,” and psychological theory conditions psychoeducational practice. Although this is a topic which must await another occasion, it should as well be pointed out in closing that the best of the Soviet work psycho-educational practice also feeds back to develop and correct the theoretical concepts by which it is informed. REFERENCES EGOROVA, T. V. Analiz zritel’no vosprinimaemykh ob’ektov neuspevaiushchimi shkol’nikami mladshikh klassov (Analysis of visually perceived objects by failing students in the early grades). Defektologiia, 1969(2), 29-37. LEONT’EV, A. N., AND LURIA, A. R. The psychological ideas of L. S. Vygotskii. In B. B. Wolman (Ed.), Historical roots of contemporary psychology. New York: Harper and Row, 1968. LURIA, A. R. Study of the abnormal child. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 1961, 31, l-16. TSYMBALIUK, A. N. Ponimanie ciuzhetnoi kartiny v usloviiakh obuchaiushchego eksperimenta det’mi s zaderzhkoi razvitiia (Comprehension of a picture with a plot under conditions of a training experiment in children with delayed development). Defektologiia. 1973(3), 25-32. VYGOTSKY,L. S. Thought and language. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1962. WOZNIAK, R. H. Psychology and education of the learning disabled child in the Soviet Union. In W. M. Cruickshank and D. P. Hallahan (Eds.), Perceptual and learning disabilities in children. Psychoeducational practices. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1975. Vol. 1. (a) WOZNIAK, R. H. Dialecticism and structuralism: The philosophical foundations of Soviet psychology and Piagetian cognitive developmental theory. In K. F. Riegel and G. C. Rosenwald (Eds.), Structure and transformalion: Developmental and historical aspects. New York: Wiley, 1975. (b) WOZNIAK, R. H. So\,iet psycho-educational research on learning disabilities: Implications ,filr American research and practice. Paper prepared for the National Institute of Education and available through the ERIC Clearinghouse on Handicapped and Gifted Children, 1979.