Article,
Understanding learning contexts as ecologies of resources: from the zone of proximal development to learner generated contexts
(2006)
Abstract
The question at the heart of this paper is: how can we define educational contexts to help us identify the ways in which we might use technology to help learners (and teachers, peers and parents) to adapt the resources available to them to best support their learning needs? For theoretical grounding, we look to sociocultural theory and in particular the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) with its emphasis upon the internalization of the interactions that occur within a learner's context. The ZPD can be thought of as a context in which productive interactivity can take place. We present a framework for describing a learning context that consists of a concept: the Learner Centric Ecology of Resources and a process: a set of associated Organising Activities that can be deployed variously but with a concern to promote and support mediations, including those of the teacher and learner. A brief case study is included to illustrate one way in which this framework can and has been used.
