Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 252e258

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Teaching and Teacher Education

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The zone of proximal teacher development

Mark K. Warford*
Buffalo State College, 1300 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo, NY 14222, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Toward the end of his short life, Lev Vygotsky found himself teaching teachers in a remote part of the
Received 19 August 2009 USSR. Though his inuence as a developmental psychologist is well-established, little is known about his
Received in revised form approach to teacher development. This article applies the researchers core concept, the zone of proximal
27 July 2010
development to teacher education. The resulting model for educating teaching candidates within zones
Accepted 31 August 2010
of proximal teacher development (ZPTD) integrates Vygotskyan theory into Western models of teacher
education. Recommendations are offered with regard the four stages of the ZPTD and implications for the
Keywords:
content and sequence of the teacher preparation curriculum.
ZPD
Vygotsky
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Teacher development
Pre-service

1. Introduction
Toward the end of Lev Vygotskys short life, Alex Kozulin (1990)
describes the renowned developmental psychologists nal work
assignment as a teacher educator in a remote eastern university in
the Soviet Union and how he would dazzle teaching candidates
with his photographic memory and ability to write on the board
continuously using both hands. This quirky anecdote raises more
questions than answers with regard to what a Vygotskyan
approach to the education of teachers might look like. Unfortu-
nately, he was taken from us before a denitive approach could be
developed and studied. Undaunted and fueled by disenchantment
with the dominant technicist views of teacher education (Edwards,
1995; Samaras, 2000; Smith, 2001), researchers in sociocultural
theory (SCT) have extrapolated Vygotskys genetic model to teacher
development. In contrast to the accountability movements pref-
erence for commodied, direct ways of approaching teaching (i.e.
Bartholomew & Sandholtz, 2009) and teacher education (Cochran-
Smith, 2001; Reid & Michael ODonoghue, 2004), Vygotsky (1986)
stated, direct teaching of concepts is impossible and fruitless. A
teacher who tries to do this usually accomplishes nothing but
empty verbalism, a parrotlike repetition of words by the child,
simulating a knowledge of the corresponding concepts but actually
covering up a vacuum (p. 150). Mediated concept formation
comprises the core of the Vygotskyan view of developmental
processes. Facts are not simply transferred to teaching candidates;
* Tel.: 1 716 878 4814; fax: 1 716 878 6730.
E-mail address: warformk@buffalostate.edu.
rather, the candidates take the facts and appropriate their own
meanings by means of cultural tools (Golombek & Johnson, 2004).
This process, according to Lempert-Shepell (1995), grows in sys-
tematicity and complexity as teacher knowledge is continually
re-shaped to accommodate the dynamic nature of schools and
classrooms; consequently, a Vygotskyan approach to teacher
development sees the education of teachers as situated learning.
A socially situated view of teacher cognition traces the move-
ment of pedagogical knowledge from the inter- to the intramental
plane. Vygotsky used the zone of proximal development (ZPD), to
describe this mediational process in greater detail. The ZPD
measures the distance between what a learner is able to do and
a proximal level that they might attain through the guidance of an
expert-other. Using SCT as a base, this article advances
a Vygotskyan approach to educating teachers within zones of
proximal teacher development (ZPTD).
Perhaps the most salient feature of a Vygtoskyan way of seeing
teaching and learning is a holistic, authentic approach that is
consistent with whole language rather than the dominant IRE
(teacher initiates, student responds, teacher evaluates) recitation
scripts that pervade traditional classrooms (Edwards, 1995, citing
Tharp & Gallimore, 1988) and often replicated by teacher education
programs. The sense of learning as a fundamentally dialogic,
emergent process also resonates with the notion of discovery
learning and other constructivist approaches that have often failed
to gain acceptance in mainstream educational practice.
Teaching teachers the Vygotskyan way envisions a three-way
conversation that places teachers prior experiences as learners and
often tacit beliefs about pedagogy into conversation with pedagogical
content of the teacher education program and observations of

0742-051X/$ e see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tate.2010.08.008
 M.K. Warford / Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 252e258
teaching and learning in eld placements. According to Edwards
(1995), this blending of eld-based and academy-centered ways of
thinking and talking about teaching are typically not well-connected
in teacher preparation programs. The latter has often been context-
free, exercised primarily by teacher educators and researchers,
whereas the former is characterized by classroom teachers who may
know how to teach very well, but lack the capacity to put those
lessons systematically into words. Edwards contends that this is not
so much a theory vs. practice divide as it is a language difference that
has the potential to create cognitive dissonance as teachers unfa-
miliar with the more powerful discourse of the academy are likely to
feel alienated by it and unwilling to test and develop the theories
carried by it in their own practices (p. 601). Such tensions reect
Vygotskys (1986) distinction between scientic and experiential or
spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts, which arise from
ones day-to-day experiences are often difcult for learners to employ
freely and voluntarily (p. 148). In contrast, scientic concepts,
which originate in formal schooling, benet from a systematicity of
instruction and cooperation (p. 148); however, they are fundamen-
tally idiosyncratic, limited by their excessive abstractness and
detachment from reality (pp. 148e9). There must be a blending,
a dialogue created between spontaneous and scientic concepts in
order for substantive development to occur. Consequently, situated
learning within a Vygotskyan framework blends the scientic
discourse of the college classroom with the experiential discourse of
local classrooms. Unfortunately, according to Samaras (2000), such is
not the norm in eld experiences (citing Zeichner, 1990); we are left
with this untenable and awkward rift between the academy and the
eld. According to Lempert-Shepell (1995), Vygotskyan teacher
education minimally requires external dimensions, including
a philosophy and curricular approach and internal dimensions that
address the psychological processes that will help teachers mediate
program values and content. This blending of the academy (scientic)
and eld (spontaneous) is essential; these external and internal
dimensions must both respond to and pregure the actual language
classroom settings into which candidates have been passively
socialized and toward which they must develop a critical style of
engagement. Perhaps for this reason, Edwards (1995) advocates the
front-loading real problems and cultural artifacts from actual
language classrooms in curricular content.
2. Initial stages of the ZPTD: self- and teacher-assistance
(Stages I & II)
Conceived around discrete interventions between researchers
and child-subjects that centered on block pattern recognition tasks,
the stages of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) traditionally
proceed from expert- to self-assistance (Stages I & II) and later from
internalization, as concepts are automatized, to recurrence through
earlier stages (Stages III & IV) as the learners de-automatize what they
have learned (Gallimore & Tharp, 1990). The goal, as stated earlier is
always to stay within the zone between a learners actual capacities
and a proximal set of knowledge and skills that they can reach
through expert-other mediation. In a similar fashion, what I describe
a zone of proximal teacher development (ZPTD) denotes the distance
between what teaching candidates can do on their own without
assistance and a proximal level they might attain through strategi-
cally mediated assistance from more capable others (i.e. methods
instructor or supervisor). This intervention-centered or microgenetic
aspect of development through the ZPD is part of a larger, deeper
framework, which encompasses: 1) phylogenesis, the human bio-
logical endowment that makes development possible, 2) sociocul-
tural history, which concerns the growth of cultural differentiation,
and 3) ontogenesis, represented by interaction between biological and
cultural forces across the developmental lifespan.
253
If, as it is often alleged, we have failed to engender commitment to
the programs philosophy and curriculum among our candidates, it is
because we have not fully respected the sociocultural and ontoge-
netic dimensions of teachers and teaching candidates cognitions. As
Lantolf and Poehner (2007) state: Our everyday practices are highly
inuenced at various stages of life by the particular types of activity
that our culture makes available to us (p. 14). Schooling is no doubt
a signicant part of our development, not only with regard to
instructional content but also in terms of instructional practices. As
Lortie (1975) established, candidates bring deeply embedded
apprenticeships of observation to teacher education programs,
having experienced teaching from the learning side for well over
a decade. The dominance of more conservative and custodial
teaching approaches in the sociocultural history of mainstream
schools predicts that more constructivist (i.e. discovery-based,
holistic instruction) teaching practices will likely be less known
within candidates ontogenetic framework, in contrast to the domi-
nant deductive and direct teaching styles that characterize main-
stream instructional practices. In order to coax tacit assumptions into
critical consciousness and subject them to new approaches, we need
to take greater care to establish pre- and in-service teachers actual
developmental prole and connect them to the larger story of how
researchers have approached teaching and learning (sociocultural
history), helping them to weave expert and experiential knowledge
into to personal narratives (ontogenesis). Failure to achieve this level
of engagement only serves to perpetuate the dominant transmission
approach of cramming curricular content around clusters of micro-
genetic interventions. Like skipping pebbles on the surface of a pond,
pouring on the prescriptions, the potpourri of practical tips seem to
generate momentum, then ultimately sink into the abyss.
Due to the weight of prior learning experiences that candidates
bring to their teacher education programs, the zone of proximal
teacher development (ZPTD, Fig. 1) requires a reversal of the rst
two stages (teacher-assistance, then self-assistance) in such a way
that starts with candidates reection (self-assistance) on prior
experiences and assumptions. I should clarify that the distinction
between self- and teacher-assistance, from a teacher development
perspective, is not an either.or phenomenon but rather a point of
emphasis. Obviously, there is some mediation provided by the
teacher educator, even at this self-assistance stage, but the
emphasis is on setting the eld by promoting reection on ones
experiences and tacit beliefs with regard to teaching and learning;
modeling or direct teaching should not prevail here. The prompts
used to promote such reection should anticipate the analytical
foci, formal concepts and constructs that candidates will be
exposed to in the curriculum. This focus on candidates actual level
of development represents a departure from the ZPD, as it was
originally conceived. To be sure, Vygotsky was enamored with the
idea of learning as a future-in-the making; this focus on pushing
learner capacities contrasted sharply with the Piagetian preference
for limiting interventions to mediation within prescribed stages of
cognitive maturation (Lantolf & Poehner, 2007; Vygotsky, 1986).
Had Vygotsky beneted from the opportunity to investigate the
ZPDs of teaching candidates, he would have collided with the
ossied labyrinth of adult cognitions. In contrast to the malleable,
maturing minds of child-test subjects, adult learners neural
networks lose some of their plasticity. Whatever they have gained
in developing an ego and an array of formal operations, such assets
transform into liabilities when confronted with the phenomeno-
logical complexities of teaching and learning. Most teacher
educators can readily identify with the irritation many teacher-
learners experience when asked to critique and analyze classroom
practices that they have come to accept as known and preferable.
In promoting self-assistance, Schn (1990) has advanced the
notion of shared meanings in the education of professionals,
254 M.K. Warford / Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 252e258

ZPTD Sample Interventionist DA Sample

I. Self-assistance
[Stage II in ZPD (Gallimore
& Tharp, 1990)]
II. Expert other assistance
[Stage I in ZPD) (Gallimore
& Tharp, 1990)]
III. Internalization
(automatization)
IV. Recursion
(De-automatization)
Interactionist DA
Preparing learning autobiographies, Discussion, sharing
Responding to prompts about prior autobiographies, follow-up
experiences questions
Analysis of teaching practices (demos., Leading questions and follow-up
videos, field observation) discussion.
Role-taking/playing Processing role plays
Forced choice quizzes (written) Oral quizzes
WebQuests
Cubing exercises
Journaling Discussion, dialogic partners
Micro-teaching
Candidate statement of teaching philosophy
Journaling Discussion, sharing
Clinical reflective reports: collecting autobiographies, follow-up
information and making warranted claims for questions, post-observation
change conferencing.
On-line forum Processing role-plays.
Role taking/playing
Fig. 1. The zone of proximal teacher development (ZPTD).

collapsing the traditional hierarchy between master and appren-
tice. With regard to the methods that best mediate teacher devel-
opment, Lempert-Shepell (1995) underscores the importance of
choice; the teacher must be given an opportunity to construct his
or her own frame of reference and professional action in a situation
of cultural self-determination (p. 439). A Vygotskyan framework
for teacher reection, according to Lempert-Shepell, promotes
candidate choice in determining the course of their own growth.
The tools should aid them in analyzing, planning, designing, and
reecting. The preparation of a learning autobiography sets the
stage for a lifetime of professional growth, offering a diagnostic of
directions toward which the candidates affective-volitional
disposition might be most protably directed and where they
might benet from sensitive, intensive mediation from the teacher
educator. According to Vygotsky (1986):
Thought itself is engendered by motivation, i.e. by our desires
and needs, our interests and our emotions. Behind every
thought there is an affective-volitional tendency, which holds
the last answer to why in the analysis of thinking. A true and full
understanding of anothers thought is only possible when we
understand its affective-volitional basis. (p. 252)
The importance of this initial, tuning-in phase cannot be over-
stated; the teacher educator cannot hope to promote teacher
learning without carefully calibrating the candidates pedagogical
dispositions. Learning autobiographies create a space for candi-
dates to get in touch with the experiences that led to their choice of
teaching as a vocational path. If a candidate seems to attach a lot of
generative energy to a particular teaching practice that contrasts
sharply with the program standards (i.e. a passion for free home-
work passes or candy rewards for getting the right answer), the
teacher educator should carefully consider crafting extra inter-
ventions to help the candidate bridge the gap between the real and
the ideal. However, even loathed practices have a way of worming
into the deep structure of emerging teacher cognitions. I have had
more than one teaching candidate muse about the Gestapo-like
verb conjugation chants and canned dialogue memorizations
associated with more traditional forms of language teaching only to
replicate them in their own initial teaching experiences. Like the
moth to the ame or the horse galloping back to the burning barn,
they often surrender to the iconic power of those odious but known
coercive teaching practices.
A core wisdom of a Vygotskyan approach is the idea that
learning leads development. One way to help learners weave
personal and programmatic narratives is a technique called
prolepsis, which involves teaching in a way that assumes (or
pretends) that the learners know more than they actually do (van
Lier, 2004, p. 153). Prolepsis, according to van Lier (2004), create[s]
invitational structures and spaces for learners to step into and grow
into (p. 162). Proleptic instruction serves the ZPD by exploring
optimal distance between actual and potential development. In
fact, as it was originally conceived, the ZPD viewed the learner as
an active organism in an ecosystem, in a social-cultural-historical
life space (p. 155, citing Lewin, 1943), a quality of participation that
emerges from the periphery to the center (citing Lave & Wenger,
1991) much in the same way that prolepsis anticipates the inter-
nalization of yet to be attained concepts. In applying prolepsis to
teacher development, teacher educators should acknowledge and
validate candidates prior experiences of teaching and learning,
while employing the future tense in discussing new lenses through
which they will consider the same phenomena. For example, if
a candidate professes their appreciation of teachers who motivated
students through candy rewards, the methods instructor might
respond by stating: Its so important to motivate students, isnt it?
An important question you will be able to address is: Is motivation
mainly a question of quantity or is the quality of motivation also
important? Hopefully, by the end of the semester, the candidate
will have developed an appreciation for more self-determined
qualities of learner engagement. Such leading discussions repre-
sent a bridge into the second stage of the ZPTD.
At the second, teacher-assisted stage of the ZPTD, there are more
intensive interventions at the microgenetic level as candidates
confront the plethora of scientic language of academic discourse,
which should be grounded in the experiential concepts that emerge
from their own learning autobiographies and exploration of
contemporary classroom realities. At this stage, teaching candi-
dates need to experience live and videotaped, as well as eld-based
demonstrations of how innovative teaching practices are carried
out in actual classrooms; this has the added advantage of reducing
the sense of division between the academy and eld. Analysis of
 M.K. Warford / Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 252e258
teaching episodes can also be used to help candidates recognize
illustrations of a variety of pedagogical constructs.
Particularly at this stage and throughout the rest of the process,
dynamic assessment (DA) (Lantolf & Poehner, 2007) provides
a compass for navigating emergent ZPTDs. Unlike traditional
assessment, DA blends teaching and testing in a way that tunes in
with great precision to developmental potential. There are essen-
tially two varieties: interventionist and interactionist DA. Inter-
ventionist DA has already been introduced vis--vis the learning
autobiography, an intervention that gathers essential information
about the kind of mediation that will be required to promote
concept maturation among the candidates with regard to core
program values and content. While interventionist DA involves
more formal tools like pre-/post-testing, cubing and graphic orga-
nizers, interactionist DA more closely connects instruction and
developmental processes through strategic teacherestudent dia-
logue. In both cases, candidates may struggle with the jargon of
classroom discourse, so it may be necessary to start with forced-
choice tasks. For example, an interventionist DA activity might
involve checklists that ask students to categorize teacher behaviors
according to a pre-selected list of pedagogical foci.
Role-taking, journaling (Reiman, 1999), and autobiographical
narratives (Golombek & Johnson, 2004) are tools espoused by
Vygotskyan teacher educationists that reect interventionist DA.
An interactionist DA variation would integrate into the aforemen-
tioned activities leading questions and discussions, as well as
simulations of situations candidates might encounter in eld
experiences and practice teaching (i.e. gently persuading a cooper-
ating teacher to accept the potential of inquiry-based approaches).
Fig. 1 offers additional examples of DA tools and tasks to comple-
ment each stage of the ZPTD. Writing is well-established in SCT as
an important tool for developing higher-order concepts (Vygotsky,
1986). According to Reiman (1999), writing centers attention,
claries thinking, provides a means of symbolizing thought
(p. 599) and stimulates inner speech (citing Luria & Yudovich,
1959). Writing as a tool for teacher development has recently
enjoyed prominence in teacher development. In selecting themes
and topics for journaling, Reiman (1999) suggests that prompts
should be directed just ahead of the actual level of development.
3. Advanced stages of the ZPTD: internalization
and recurrence (Stages III & IV)
To return to the example of the teaching candidate I referred to
in the previous section, there is an important lesson to be learned in
noting failures at more mature stages of teacher development. It is
well-established globally that teaching candidates often quick to
discard the academy for what they perceive as the real world of
P-12 teaching (Al-Musawi, 2001; Anderson, 2007; Borko &
Mayeld, 1995), which can be charted somewhere in the iconic
realm between the apprenticeship of observation and the teaching
practicum. As eager as he was to discard these discredited old ways,
the aforementioned candidate nonetheless struggled in his
attempts to accommodate a more emancipatory, discovery-based
pedagogy, a turn of events that reected intervention failures at the
third internalization and fourth recurrence phases of the ZPTD. In
looking back, I always wonder how things might have turned out
had we the opportunity to continue the conversation initiated by
his reections.
The ZPTD progresses toward internalization and repeated
application of the pedagogical concepts they have learned (Stages
III and IV). As internalization grows, candidates demonstrate their
capacity to use the pedagogical knowledge and skills espoused by
their particular program. Videotaped microteaching demonstra-
tions are common assignments employed at this stage. In order to
255
promote internalization and deeper integration of their learning
experiences into the larger ontogenetic framework of professional
growth, writing increases in importance as a tool for weaving
together personal, professional and theoretical narratives. Rather
than relying on the instructors evaluations of their execution of the
teaching episode, rubrics should instead focus on the distance
between the candidates capacity to reect on the strengths and
needs reected therein.
While journaling can be a powerful tool for promoting a more
critical perspective on ones beliefs and practices throughout the
ZPTD, candidates should have the opportunity to construct a more
formal statement of their beliefs, preferably before practice
teaching. In crafting a statement of their teaching beliefs; they
should be able to talk the talk, so to speak, in a way that suggests
the growth of an administrative function, a sort of emergent
teacher voice. In evaluating such statements, instructors need to be
careful to gauge the extent to which candidates have created
coherence from the interplay of their prior beliefs and assumptions,
critiques of contemporary teaching practices, and the scientic
language of the relevant research literature. Often, candidates
throw out buzz words that they know have capital with instruc-
tors; a closer look will reveal that the foundation is supercial and
clustered rather than systemic and conceptual. In a study of novice
TESOL teacher thinking, Warford and Reeves (2003, citing Freeman,
1996) found the Saussurian concepts of syntagmatic vs. paradig-
matic analysis is useful in distinguishing discourse that cops
a particular community of practice which one identies or that
which connotes a deeper, conceptual level of processing. In other
words, does the writing stand for afliation with a particular group,
or does it stand for an understanding? Most candidate statements
will reveal some intermingling of these two dimensions, and it is
important to study these writings from whole to part, as well as
part to whole. For example, on the surface, one might be pleased to
nd a lot of course constructs, and they may even be correctly
identied or dened. A closer look at the ow of the writing,
however, may reveal that there is no systematic analytical control;
in other words, the discourse lacks a sense of voice. Drafts of
candidate statements, completed near the beginning of the last
methods course prior to student teaching will often meander
signicantly. This lack of coherence does not just reect writing
ability; it sketches a portrait of the scientic and experiential
concepts that the candidate is still trying to sort out and systema-
tize. Writing, for Vygotsky (1986), provided the best possible
evidence for the higher forms of development as it offers a window
into the extent to which the learner is able to control and
systematize concepts. Syntagmatically, it is easy to note in the ow
of discourse, token references to whatever the candidate thinks has
capital with his or her program (Warford & Reeves, 2003). In
applied linguistics, this kind of discourse is referred to as an afli-
ation move. In evaluating candidates written statements about
teaching, teacher educators need to be careful not to be seduced by
these overtures and to focus intently on the systemic quality of the
writing. Early drafts tend to also feature iconic reveries on past
learning experiences, which may or may not reect the programs
pedagogical values and undermine analytic control. A close look at
early candidate statements tends to illustrate Vygotskys (1986)
distinction between concepts and clusters. Whereas the former
conveys a sense of systemic coherence, the latter represents an
accretion of terms. At rst glance, clusters may convey a sense of
categorization, but the content of the teacher education curriculum
has not been properly interrelated and internalized.
The Recurrence stage (Stage IV) of the ZPTD may aptly be
described as the theory into practice stage, as candidates prepare
to confront the dichotomy of theory and practice in all its intensity.
With regard to innovative tools and techniques learned in the
256 M.K. Warford / Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 252e258
program, this means letting go of more traditional variants that are
much more known and natural by comparison. Rather than
avoiding or dismissing discrepancies between pedagogical values
in the academy and the eld, a Vygotskyan approach embraces
conict as a catalyst for developmental change. According to
Reiman (1999), reection at this stage promotes equilibration
(Piaget, 1972), the process of accommodating new information into
a conceptual understanding, which necessarily entails discomfort,
stress, conict, sadness and loss: In fact, giving up an old friend of
ones current preferred method of problem solving (p. 601). If
there was a traditional teacher that was particularly inuential in
their choice of education as a vocational path, candidates may feel
as if teaching in alignment to current research and standards
amounts to the betrayal of a hero or heroine. If there are marked
differences between program coursework and the practicum situ-
ation, such realities exacerbate cognitive dissonance.
A promising solution to nagging rifts between the academy and
eld centers on recent applications of Activity Theory to teacher
education. Tsui and Law (2007) argue that the university program
and area schools comprise distinct activity systems that drive the
actions and goals associated with eld practica, which, borrowing
from Engestrm (2001) and Wenger (1998), they categorize as
a sort of boundary crossing. Though their depiction of the construct
assumes a candidates movement from university to school-based
activity systems in Hong Kong, it is perhaps just as often the case
that candidates are evenly split between the two worlds or that
they have never really left a primary identication with local
school-based ways of thinking about teaching and learning. A
related construct that is also useful to this discussion is the notion
of the boundary object, a mediational tool that can act as a source of
conuence between the often incongruent orientations of research
and standards-driven university supervisors and practice-centered
mentor teachers. In their study, lesson study, a process that involves
collective planning, individual execution and group conferencing in
relation to lessons, actually caused more discord than convergence,
but one can glean from the experience a sense of utility in creating
a common community of practice within the triad (university
supervisor, mentor teacher and candidate).
The rhythm of the dance of matching and mismatching calls for
a balance between action and reection, and it is a marathon of
a dance. Teacher reection, according to Reiman (1999), must be
sustained over time to stimulate substantive growth: Substantial
learning occurs in periods of conict, confusion, surprise, and over
long periods of time (p. 610, citing Sprinthall & Thies Sprinthall,
1983). Likewise, Lempert-Shepell (1995) argues that there is
value in cognitive conict (p. 438) as a tool to promote candidate
reection.
Given the feelings of isolation that many candidates experience in
their initial teaching experiences, collaboration with peers can also be
a powerful tool for teacher development at this stage. According to
Lempert-Shepell (1995) both co- and self-organization of contents
and activities are essential to successful teacher development.
Samaras (2000) structured collaborative planning among teaching
candidates and cooperating teachers. The rapport and empathy
facilitated by this process promoted development. Multiple data
points, including self-evaluations, planning materials, eld reports
and one-on-one interviews showed that a collaborative approach
facilitated growth in candidates sensitivity to learners diverse needs,
as well as their rigor of self-evaluation and sense of moral responsi-
bility. In the advent of on-line course platforms, Hsu (2004)
demonstrated how community building between pre- and in-
service teachers can be facilitated through on-line case study forums.
In both cases, the matching of experienced and novice teachers
creates opportunities to calibrate and explore the ZPTD in ways that
are more responsive and tuned in to the affective-volitional
dimensions of teacher learning than more traditional supervision-
and-seminar approach to the practicum, particularly since they are
driven by pre-service teachers concerns.
As candidates move through their initial teaching experiences,
the capacity to reect gains in prominence as a developmental
factor, particularly since mentor teachers tend to be uncritical and
or enabling in their approach to supervision (Bullough & Draper,
2004; Veal & Rikard, 1998). Reection, in itself, as Golombek and
Johnson (2004) pointed out, creates an imaginary dialogic partner
with oneself to make meaning of practical experiences. Lempert-
Shepell (1995) denes reection as the ability to make ones
own behavior an object of study; to manage it via the ability to
regard oneself as the ideal other (p. 434). With regard to the
connection between action and reection, reection changes the
character of the action. An acting person stops dealing with the
situational action but regards the sphere of possible actions. The
structure of an action can change (p. 435). In teacher development
settings, Lempert-Shepell (1995) argues that reection and action
in teaching should ideally be governed by a conceptual framework.
This process of systematizing practical experiences is captured in
Reimans (1999) denition of reective practice: a process of
problem solving, reconstruction of meaning, and subsequent
reective judgments while persons are engaged in signicant new
activity (p. 598).
Returning to the central point of the Vygotskyan approach to
teacher education, we cannot afford to dismiss teacher education as
a simple question of fact-cramming, but rather the promotion of
a fundamental shift in the candidates cultural identity. According
to Lempert-Shepell (1995) the teacher is not only expected to be
a cultural mediator but also a teacher-researcher; consequently, the
teaching candidate should experience investigative learning during
their professional preparation (p. 438). Ideally, this disposition
toward investigative learning should be supported through the rst
years of teaching, perhaps through a Masters level extension
program, one that continues to support beginning teachers
recursion through the concepts learned in their coursework in
a way that responds to classroom-centered questions. For Vygotsky,
recursion, the process of retracing the prior steps of the ZPD, rep-
resented an essential, nal stage of concept development.
Post-programmatic support of candidates recursion need not be
formal. In fact, teacher educators wishing to promote trans-
formative change in candidates approaches to teaching need to see
themselves as agents of cultural change. Bakhtins (1981) notion of
carnival is useful for this purpose. In his study of Renaissance
carnival culture, he found value in its atmosphere of abandon and
cultural crossings, a sense of deeper and more diverse ways of
participating in a given system. Hosting gatherings of alumni and
their colleagues for free workshops or symposia, gathering focus
groups among mentor teachers, or consulting with local schools are
ways teacher educators can demonstrate relevance and respon-
siveness to the local professional culture. The long-term benets of
blending academy- and eld-based cultures pay dividends for deep
teacher learning.
The barriers to this engaged sense of being a teacher educator
are well-established. Day and Leitch (2001), in their assessment of
British teacher educators suggest that they tend to be private and
introspective if not isolated (p. 413) in how they approach their
profession. Scholl (1990) offers up the pejorative image of the
circuit rider, the archetypal Appalachian evangelist spreading the
gospel on his white steed, to decry the extent to which US teacher
educators appeared to be alienating themselves from area schools.
In a dissertation study of foreign language teacher educators in the
Southeast US, Warford (2000) found that respondents tended to
reserve for themselves and their teaching candidates the highest
marks for innovativeness and openness to change in contrast to
 M.K. Warford / Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 252e258
lukewarm to low ratings of the local community, its teachers and
administrators. The collective portrait that emerges in the literature
appears to suggest one of teacher educator alienation from the P-12
community, though the rise of the PDS model in elementary
education has arguably corrected this ivory tower image.
That the trend toward more engagement of teacher education
faculty in area schools must continue cannot be understated. It is
said that all politics is local. With regard to the potential divide
between the academy and the eld, one might argue that all
pedagogy is local. Studies that have applied activity theory in
educational research have established that teaching and learning is
ultimately shaped by a multiplicity of roles, goals and motives
(Chvez, 2007: US; Storch, 2004: Australia). The carnival of
educational change calls teacher educators to don top hats and
become barkers and ringleaders, to prepare to pack up and pitch
our tents at the places where resistance to reform is greatest.
Vygotsky truly believed that in the individual-society continuum,
even one individual is capable of sending ripples that create waves
of cultural change. Teacher educators, poised on the precipice
between the world of the scientic and experiential, scholarship
and K-12 schools, might likewise create sea changes in teaching and
teacher development.
4. Adjustments to mainstream teacher education
programs around a ZPTD model
While the adaptation of a Marxian construct (ZPD) into main-
stream Western teacher education might have been deemed
unthinkable prior to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the ZPTD nds
favor in the rise of constructivism, schooleuniversity partnerships
and reective pedagogy. These innovations at least indirectly
corroborate Vygotskys genetic model and make integrating the
ZPTD into teacher education programs a reasonable proposition. In
addition to the previously mentioned notion of expanding linkages
with area schools, there are four core principles that are essential in
revising teacher education programs around the ZPTD.
First, as previously mentioned, academic and eld-based cour-
sework must be guided by the conviction that teacher knowledge is
inherently situated and mediated (not transmitted) within an
emergent and dynamic interaction between a multiplicity of roles,
goals and motives; consequently, the curriculum should center on
establishing and promoting ongoing inner dialogues between prior
experiences of teaching, the theoretical canon, and local practices.
The narrative of teacher socialization, from a Vygotskyan perspec-
tive, is a tale in which the text is heavily nuanced by pretext
(apprenticeship of observation) and context (area schools);
consequently, the authoritative teacher educator strives to attune
to this dynamic process.
A corollary to the rst point is that it is pointless to separate
theory (scientic concepts) from practice (experiential concepts) in
course offerings. In deference to the apprenticeship of observation
and Vygotskys emphasis on learning-as-appropriation, each
course, regardless of its stage in the curriculum, should start with
Stage I tasks such as diagnostic surveys and learning autobiogra-
phies, then, as candidates move through successive stages of the
ZPTD, these prior experiences provide a framework for the explo-
ration of the latest research and standards and local practices,
which means that eld observation and participation are essential
in all coursework, particularly since the ultimate goal is to close the
distance between academic and eld-based cultures. Candidates
rate and ultimate level of attainment with regard to the ZPTD will
vary according to the scope and sequence of a given course. More
advanced courses may quickly move up through the ZPTD because
they are engaged in recurrence. This may seem redundant to the
reader, but as one who has had the opportunity to follow
257
candidates from their content coursework all the way through
methods and the teaching program, even the most salient and
seemingly simple points of the curriculum have to be retaught
because the candidate has difculty applying them to novel situa-
tions or because the gravitational pull of the apprenticeship of
observation and eld experiences inhibit conceptual maturation.
Finally, the practicum, which should invariably center on the
fourth (recurrence) stage of the ZPTD, represents a critical and
vulnerable point in teacher development. So much of what the
candidate has achieved can be gradually or suddenly pulverized
between past experiences and present empirical realities of the
eld placement. As Vygotsky put it, psychological development as
a dynamic process full of upheavals, sudden changes, and reversals
(1986, xxix). A situated, Vygotskyan view of teacher development is
comfortable looking past assumptions of a linear progression to
embrace reexivity and spiralization in candidates experiences of
the curriculum. A mediational rather than checklist orientation to
supervision is critical. A lot has been published on the topic of
progressive supervision models, and a full discussion of these
innovations is beyond the scope of the present article. Ironically,
delity to the original conception of clinical supervision, as
advanced by Goldhammer, Anderson, and Krajewski (1993), is quite
sufcient in addressing mediation within the ZPTD. At each stage,
from pre- to post-conference, the method was designed to be
dialogic, democratic and closely attuned to intervention strategies
that meet the ZPDs emphasis on providing just enough assistance.
A nal point relates to technological innovations in teacher
education curriculum and assessment. As alluded to earlier, tech-
nology holds the potential of making curricular content more
concrete through the provision of teaching video segments and other
multi-media artifacts that serve to reduce the distance between
theory and practice. With regard to dynamic assessment, on-line
platforms offer the opportunity for both interactionist (Skype and
E-luminate conferencing, chat rooms) and interventionist (pre-/post-
testing, feedback boxes, on-line portfolios, standards-based evalua-
tion platforms such as TaskStream) varieties of DA.
5. Concluding remarks
In fashioning a Vygotskyan perspective on teacher education,
perhaps the most important benet of Levs lens lies in its capacity to
reveal developmental processes both close-up and from a distance.
Faced with quick x teacher-proof training schemes such as those
hatched at the height of the accountability movement, Vygotskys
genetic method points the way toward a situated, more trans-
formative approach to teacher development, one that respects the
fact that formation both precedes and follows study in a teacher
education program. Following in his footsteps requires further
progress reconceptualizing the professional mission of the teacher
educator e from knowledge transmission to cultural transformation.
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