ABSTRACT
The chapter describes what the tutors believed helped them to establish a ZPD with their tutees, the challenges they faced, and how they addressed and overcame these challenges. The issues arising from the tutors’ accounts provide a unique perspective, akin to dynamic assessment (Feuerstein, Rand, & Rynders, 1988; Poehner, 2008; Poehner & Lantolf, 2005), on the long-term processes of interaction and development that emerged as tutors and students cooperated together to identify, assess, and advance each student’s potential for literacy learning. Following Vygotsky’s (1998) assumption that students’ actual and potential levels of development are only evident through responsiveness to assistance (because they are not fully exercised through individual problem solving), understanding the qualities of the ZPD in the ALTUR tutor-tutee situations-and the factors, challenges, and contexts associated with them-is especially crucial to answering the pedagogical dimensions of our central research question (cited above). In addition to describing particular approaches to teaching and learning that assisted the tutees to develop their literacy skills and strategies, the tutors all emphasized that establishing a solid interpersonal relationship based on mutual trust, confi dence, and respect was fundamental to the success of their tutoring, the development of students’ competence, and transformations in students’ identities. The tutors’ accounts highlighted the aff ective dimensions of the ZPD and its relations to the cognitive aspects.
