ABSTRACT
In Chapter 2, I spent some time examining the different constructions that have been put on Vygotsky’s ZPD. I drew attention to Daniels’ (2001) suggestion of ‘the possibility of a dialectical conception of interaction within the ZPD’, which I contrasted with the more limited dyadic version, increasingly associated with a version of ‘scaffolding’ and hence with teacher-initiated interventions in the learning of individual students. In ‘The Problem of Play in Development,’ an essay that was included as Chapter 7 of Mind in Society (1978), Vygotsky returns to the idea of the ZPD; this time, though, the idea appears in a context that does not seem to have much to do with questions of assessment or instruction. Instead, it appears in a remarkable passage where Vygotsky argues for play as a centrally important contributor to development:
play creates a zone of proximal development of the child. In play a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behaviour; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself. As in the focus of a magnifying glass, play contains all developmental tendencies in a condensed form and is itself a major source of development.
