I know that "the relation between learning and development remains methodologically unclear because concrete research studies have embodied theoretically vague, critically unevaluated, and sometimes internally contradictory postulates, premises, and peculiar solutions to the problem of this fundamental relationship; and these, of course, result in a variety of errors" (Vygotsky, p. 79). That stated, "teachers need to resist temptations to [climb aboard bandwagons, or to] look to ideologies or other oversimplifications of the complexities of the profession and instead to develop rich repertoires of knowledge and skills that will enable them to make good decisions about the kinds of teaching needed in particular situations" (Good & Brophy, p. 451).

Given the hard work of my one eye critically evaluating "research studies" and of my other eye hungrily scanning for new "repertoires of knowledge and skills," I get rejuvenated when I find such repertoires that I know from experience and good research ¹ can help students learn. Consider "the zone of proximal development" (Vygotsky, p. 86) and social constructivism. Professor Harlow at the University of British Columbia applied them, although he didn't employ any education-based terminology, to help me in 1976 to improve in my Creative Writing 497 course.

I'd handed in my first short story for the tutorial course, in which Professor Harlow met privately with me for about an hour each week to discuss my latest efforts.

I sat before his cluttered desk, and he looked over his black-rimmed glasses, somewhat apprehensively, at me:

"Dan," he said, "I read your story. It's awful, Dan. I only marked up the first three pages, because after that I couldn't stand it any longer. I mean, I read it all, but it was just awful."

I didn't shrink like Alice. I didn't die of humiliation, although my heart sank like a millstone in the sea. But I knew that expression of his. He was trying to help me. He was trying hard. "Awful?"

"Yes. This isn't a story, Dan." He looked at me over the upheld story-pages as if they were a chasm between us that he was trying to eliminate.

Not a story. I was certainly thinking about that. But I had lots of knowledge about the elements of fiction! Plot. Scene. Transition. Theme. Protagonist. Antagonist. Conflict. I could even write clear prose, or so my English 303 composition teacher had told me. But, somehow, according to Professor Harlow, I had not written a story. In terms of social constructivism, I had "prior knowledge." But, "constructivists emphasise the importance of relating new content to the knowledge that students already possess, as well as providing opportunities for students to process and apply [in a social setting, such as I was in] the new learning" (Good & Brophy, p. 415). I needed to apply what I had learned about the elements of fiction. Isn't wisdom the application of knowledge? I needed fiction-writing wisdom.² "Not a story?"

"No. A story is about somebody with a problem that gets worse and worse, until some sort of resolution takes place. What you have written is not a story." Again, he was looking over his glasses at me. He was looking for a spark of understanding. Then he made sure I understood what he meant. He provided examples of stories we both knew. He spent a lot of time reasoning with me, helping me understand those examples.

That event was like a revelation, silly as that might sound until one reads the often-inept products of neophyte writers who don't understand what Harlow was helping me "construct" as knowledge. That discussion enabled me to leap ahead in my progress as a writer. On my own, I might have taken a looooong time to gain the same understanding.

Vygotsky could have related that event to "the zone of proximal development. It is the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance [as in Harlow's helping me] or in collaboration with more capable peers" (p. 86).

My "actual development" related to my textbook description of story elements, but my "potential development," realised, thereafter enabled me to become the published author of many stories and narrative poems, and of, so far, one novel.

Clearly, teachers can use social constructivism to help students move through their own "zone[s] of proximal development" as Professor Harlow used social constructivism to help me.

I don't, however, encourage anybody to climb aboard a social constructivism-bandwagon because, as Good and Brophy say, "the best teaching is adapted to the situation, including the instructional purposes and goals, the students, and the subject matter.[, and] an approach that is well adapted to one situation might not work in another" (p. 456). But these educators present considerable (apparently) good research that, along with my own here-related experience, tells me that social constructivism does have a place in teachers' "repertoires of knowledge and skills".

References

Good, T. L., & Brophy, J. E. (1998). Chapter 10: Helping students construct knowledge. Looking in Classrooms (8th ed., pp. 413-470). Don Mills, Ontario, Canada: Addison Wesley Longman.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Interaction between learning and development. Mind in society (pp. 79-91). Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA: Harvard University Press.

Footnotes

¹ Poor research could be defined from Vygotsky's words in paragraph one.
² In terms of Carl Glickman's model for supervisors (mentors) helping student teachers (teacher candidates), a model that in general can be extrapolated to work for teachers helping students, I was in the high commitment/low abstraction quadrant. In the words of Teresa Saunders (Simon Fraser University-mentor for teacher candidates), I "[hadn't] put it all together yet."