The Dialectical Relationship between

Prior and Present Learning: Mapping Vygotsky’s

Activity Theory to the Prior Learning Portfolio Process

Jessica Kindred, Ph.D. The College of New Rochelle

School of New ResourcesBrooklyn, New York

Industry ExperienceWorkplace training (manufacturing & transportation maintenance)

Academic Experience

Teaching psychology Integration

Teaching PLP

Jessica Kindred, Ph.D. The College of New RochelleSchool of New ResourcesBrooklyn, New York

Present

Past

Industrial ContextWorkplace research and training

1990s: international competition; new technologies; focus on planning; customer / market orientations

1993: changing job requirements (college degree for engineering and supervision)

1999: outsourcing and job loss

Academic context:Developing experiential learning activities for the classroom

Theory:Practice• Cultural Historical Activity Theory

Lev Vygotsky (1896 - 1934)

• Prior Learning Portfolio (PLP)Production, support, and evaluation

Prior Learning Process

Identify knowledge from work experience and life history

Represent prior learning in academically relevant ways

Qualify learning as college level

LearningExpertise Academia

work school

informal formal

implicit explicit

intuitive explanatory

concrete abstract

performative declarative

practical conceptual

experiential representational

spontaneous scientific

Somewhere between the experience and the representation is the learning.

Lev Vygotsky (1896 - 1934)

Vygotsky, L.S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Activity theoryHistorical materialismDevelopmental perspectiveDialectical dynamic of thought and signInternalization (Transformation of interpersonal to intrapersonal)

“Schematically, we may imagine thought and speech as two intersecting circles. In their overlapping parts, thought and speech coincide to produce what is called verbal thought… There is a vast area of thought that has no direct relation to speech. The thinking manifested in the use of tools belongs in this area, as does practical intellect in general.” (Vygotsky, Thought and Language, p. 88)

Verbal Thought

thought speech

Practical Academic

intellect intellect

Vygotsky’s Knowledge Kinds Theoretical Abstraction

Spontaneous Scientific

Informal Formal

Empirical Theoretical

Empirical Generalization

Dialectical interaction between kinds of knowledge in the developing mind

Spontaneous Scientific

Everyday Systematic

Informal Formal

Learned Taught

Empirical Theoretical

“Thought, unlike speech, does not consist of separate units [...] the whole thought is present at once, but in speech it has to be developed successively. A thought may be compared to a cloud shedding a shower of words [...] Experience teaches us that thought does not express itself in words, but rather realizes itself in them” (Vygotsky, Thought and Language, p. 250).

Mediation

• of thought by language

• of meaning by other people

• of prior learning by present context

Scaffolding

• Facilitative role of mentor toward learner’s generative reflection and effective articulation of prior learning

Dialogue

• The role of dialogic processes in realizing knowledge and prior learning–(interview as process of

cultivation)

ZPD • Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

–typically applied to the assessment of potential for learning

• Zone of Proximal Reflection–adapted to the situation of prior

learning as a zone of active reflection

Generative Reflection of PLP

Dialectical interaction between times of knowledge in the developing mind: the emergence of new learning

PresentPrior

PLP: prior internalization to present reflection

to future externalization