Dialogkompetens i skolans vardag - Publikationer - LTU - Luleå ...

554 A.-C. Wennergren and K. Rönnerman
always up to the participants themselves to use a tool as an activity or to promote
learning. However, during the period of trying out and developing the ownership of
tools, the facilitator is presented with the challenge of guiding the participants in their
search for different paths in ZPD, as opposed to directing the participants towards
the best path. When teachers take responsibility and assume ownership of school
improvement it has to be a part of the school culture. To be in the ZPD during a
process of school improvement involves an acceptance and understanding of the
school’s culture, since the culture and the process of changes are mutually dependent
upon one another. As discussed earlier, the headteachers’ attitude and participation
is of considerable importance, not only for the school culture, but for the outcome of
the anticipated improvements.
Wells (1999) recounts experiences of using the ZPD in studies concerning learning
among students and teachers. These illustrate that learning in the ZPD changes the
communities of practice since it changes not only the participation, but also transforms
the learner’s identity.
And because individuals and the social world are mutually constitutive of each other,
transformation of the learner also involves transformation of the communities of which he
or she is a member and of the activities in which they engage. (Wells, 1999, p. 331)
By tradition, teachers in classroom situations typically have little faith in the potential
for learning inherent in tackling problems to which no one knows the answer. According
to Wertsch (1998), authentic and open questions, combined with reactions, are
required in dialogues. Authentic questions allow an indeterminate number of acceptable
answers and open the floor to different ideas, whereas a test question allows only
one possible answer and is hence monologic. Outside the classroom, it is often in a situation
that, where no member of the group has a clear idea about how to proceed, many
of the most significant advances in understanding are made. Therefore, it seems that
for learning to occur in the ZPD it is not, according to Vygotsky, essentially a question
of gaining the support of a more capable colleague that is required, but rather a willingness
on the part of the participants to learn with and from one another (Wells, 1999).
Thought has got its origins in the motivating sphere of consciousness, a sphere that
includes our inclinations and needs, our interests and impulses, and our affect and
emotion […] A true and complex understanding of another’s thought becomes possible
only when we discover its real, affective-volitional basis. (Vygotsky, 1987, p. 282)
Bakhtin analyses many aspects of dialogue, a number of which may be of value in
the current context. In Dysthe’s reading of Bakhtin, all understanding is active and
social; I meet myself through others, and the difference between the various voices
constitutes learning potential (Dysthe, 1993). In terms of Bakhtin’s theories, the ZPD
can be described as places where voices and utterances of various individuals are
allowed to evolve into speech. The individuals are taken seriously and are offered
opportunities for confronting views and thoughts with one another. Dialogue is based
on ‘the other’, providing some form of reaction to what has been said and on the
actual driving force being the divergences between the utterances (Bakthin, 1981;
Holquist, 1990).