Week 3

We have no blog assignment for week 3, so I'm just going to post some random thoughts and observations.

First off, my 4 year old (almost) son asked me read about constructivist theories for almost half an hour before he fell asleep. An interesting observation - in his mind, if I'm not reading aloud, I'm not reading, I'm just looking at the page.

So - regarding the ZPD. If the method is to give a student a learning task too difficult for them to manage on their own, and thus require a teacher, won't that tend to create a kind of learned helplessness if you try to work in this area too much? Or perhaps I just keep thinking of is as the zone of "optimal" development, and that's not what it's about at all. Thinking about it (and checking the description in the text again), I see it's more just a description/measure of the area between what a student can do on their own,  and the maximum they can achieve with help. Although really, how can you determine the maximum? What if some super smart alien came along with super amazing teaching methods? It seems more like it's the LID (Line of Individual Development), the most you can do on your own. And as that varies by task, and changes every time you learn something, it doesn't seem like a very useful thing at all?

I'm writing these things because asking questions (even of yourself) and reflection are supposed to improve learning.