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564 A.-C. Wennergren and K. Rönnerman
voices heard, which can be considered to be something of an asymmetric situation.
On the other hand, as Greenwood and Levin (1998) point out, in a social process
grounded on democratic values it is necessary to encourage participants to realise that
they have a valuable store of knowledge (e.g. by giving voice to that which, locally, is
unspoken).
In a ZPD arena comprised of a group of critical friends (6–10 people), it might be
complicated to achieve an atmosphere that, at the same time, emphasises trust and
encourages criticism. In our case, not all members in the web dialogue were active
recipients or active in presenting challenges in the ZPD. A passive member on the
Web could, at the same time, be an active member in the facilitating sessions. This
might be a question of making an active choice in preferring either a written or verbal
tool. Learning potential, according to Dysthe (1993), involves the systematic use of
language in interaction between written or verbal activities. It seems that some people
are ‘verbal’ and some people are ‘writing’ thinkers.
The group perspective also indicates that the power of many voices may emanate
from the differing cultures at the five schools and the university. The cross-school
concept seems to bridge the paradox identified by Wenger (1998b, p. 8) that ‘no
community can fully design the learning of another; but conversely no community can
fully design its own learning’. A special educational setting can become highly focused
in questions about the specific context. However, as in this case, members in a group
with different experiences were much more open up to more general questions. Irrespective
of the content, the use of a multi-voiced tool illuminates differences between
voices, and thus constitutes an enhanced learning potential. Development always
involves stimulating meetings between different voices (Bakthin, 1981; Dysthe, 1993).
As we see it, the greatest challenge for the facilitator is not only to make every voice
heard, but also to support each participant in being an active recipient. At the same
time, an important task is to clarify that the visualisation of varying, and contextually
different practices can be valid in everybody’s practice. Thus, the role of the facilitator
may be rather complicated, since she/he is perceived both as a friend but also as someone
who is critical, not only of individuals, but also of school cultures. This might be
a reason why an outsider is better equipped for initially taking on the role of the critic.
According to Greenwood and Levin’s (1998) definition, the outsider must be a risktaker
and someone who can coach participants to be talented players. However, the
actors participating in the ZPD are the more permanent colleagues and not a temporary
scaffolding recourse, such as the facilitator.
Bonk and King (1998) believe that Vygotsky himself would be both amazed and
confused to witness the emergence of computer learning tools that have been justified
by reference to his theories. Our experiences in this study, from the perspective of
sociocultural theories, reveal difficulties with combined social interaction patterns
and learner-centred ideas in a web dialogue. One the other hand, using computers for
collaborative writing related to professional development might provide a compass for
future directions of use. We therefore hope to continue to work in extending experiences
about the learning potential of web dialogues as a part of scaffolding in school
improvement processes.