points to the role of the expert alongside the learner, helping them interpret the
demands as well as respond to them. In brief, learners enter a potential learning
situation and try to make sense of it using the knowledge they already have. But
their agency and desire to make sense is only one side of the dialectic, they also
need to pay attention to the demands. A situation will present a number of potential
demands which can take learners’understandings forward; but only some, and
perhaps none, of the demands will be recognised by the learner. What they
recognise will depend on what they are able to interpret in the situation.
For example, a 6-year old might enjoy a visit to an ancient fort, may recognise
that the walls she climbs over were built as a defence and might begin to consider
why the walls were needed. The 16-year old, bringing more knowledge of the
history of the fort, might examine how the walls were built in relation to the lie of
the land, who the potential enemies were and might consider these aspects in
relation to what weaponry was available at different periods in the fort’s history. In
both cases, it is possible that neither learner would recognise the conceptual
demands I have just outlined. It is therefore useful to have someone at hand who
can steer attention to what is important in relation to what the learners need to
know, to help them connect their attempts at making sense of the environment with
publicly validated knowledge. These demands are not random, but can be seen in
terms of curricula or pathways towards expertise in afield.
There are therefore clear roles for teachers within cultural-historical approaches
to pedagogy: helping learners to orient towards the demands; enabling them to use
their existing understandings in interpreting them; challenging their interpretations;
offering them fresh conceptual tools based in validated public knowledge; and
ensuring they use those tools in further problem-solving. Mediating publicly
accepted knowledge is therefore not simply a matter of informing or telling; rather,
the Vygotskian dialectic acknowledges that learners recognise and respond to new
challenges using conceptual tools, and the role of the teacher is to be at hand to
increase the conceptual demand and offer conceptual support.
Vygotsky explained the role of the teacher as follows:“[the teacher] has to
become the director of the social environment...where he (sic) acts like a pump,
filling up the students with knowledge, there he can be replaced with no trouble at
all by a textbook, by a dictionary, by a map, by a nature walk”(Vygotsky 1997 ,
p. 339). Vygotsky’s solution was the knowledgeable and“scientifically trained
teacher”(p. 344) who can help the learner make connections while they work on
tasks. The Vygotskian teacher is alongside the learner, sometimes close-by and
sometimes at more of a distance, as the learner takes control. Teaching, including
teacher education, is from this perspective, a relational activity, which involves
recognising what learners bring to a potential learning encounter and calibrating the
conceptual demands and tools offered to them in order to orient, guide and chal-
lenge them.
The relational interactions between teacher and learner occur in the practices that
make up schooling and teacher education. These practices are cultural products with
histories, values and purposes and are likely to differ between schools, and between
schools and universities. Leont’ev, a colleague of Vygotsky’s has helped us
37 Relational Expertise: A Cultural-Historical Approach... 557