Vygotsky’s work has particular relevance to CPD and to social media as he regards the individual learner and their provider of scaffolding as having agency in an individualised learning process (Vygotsky 1978). In Vygotsky’s (1978) “Zone of Proximal Development” the learner must be ready and able to progress, and they must be willing and able to use the “scaffold” they are provided with. The scaffold - which might be a steer, new information, advice or similar enabling information - is provided for the learner’s development but there is no requirement that the learner make use of it. That model resonates with informal learning mechanisms and with the place CPD occupies in many professionals’ lives: opportunities may be provided but it is up to the individual to exploit these and ensure that they make relevant and beneficial use of what they learn.
Vygotsky (1978) discusses scaffolding in the context of childhood development and formal educational environments, suggesting a long-term relationship between the scaffolding provider and the learner. Billett (2001) argues that scaffolding-like encounters are “not the product of single interactions, but rather as ongoing and interactive interactions” (Billett 2001:10). However Moll and Greenburg’s (1990) work on visiting mentors’ impact on learners suggests that even fleeting moments of scaffolding, of knowledge exchange or support, may have more substantive effects than Vygotsky (or Billet) accounts for.
Moll and Greenberg (1990) argue that the value of community knowledge can easily be overlooked, that scaffolding actions can be provided by a learner’s extended network and exchange of their “funds of knowledge”. Learning processes here are situated within both formal learning environments and informal learning processes in the wider community. Actors in these processes include current culture, the social use of language, and values, goals, and knowledge assets of the learner’s community. Moll and Greenberg’s work thus connects Vygotsky’s ZPD and scaffolding to social networks and to ANT approaches, seeing a network, a community, a whole, having agency in the scaffolding process.
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