Enhancing and inhibiting: Framing of innovation in educational encounters

Abstract

In the present paper, I introduce the concept of the Zone of Inhibited Action (ZIA) for the knowledge production within universities. Different zones (Zone of Free Movement (elaborated within Lewinian field theory) extended by Zone of Promoted Action (ZPA) by Valsiner in conjunction with Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) known via the legacy of Lev Vygotsky are central to the present paper. The new concept (ZIA) is at the foreground. For that purpose, I draw upon an autoethnographic event—from the perspective of a student—showing how the ZFM, ZIA, ZPA relate to each other in an academic context. In this regard, I exemplify how negotiation between course instructor and student can help to define and sharpen the borders of the ZIA and ZPA which alters the relation of the life-space. Here, I underline that democratic back-and-forth negotiation makes the ZPA and ZIA dynamic meaning that different actions become promoted or inhibited. ZIA and ZPA only become illuminated in a democratic back-and-forth-process between student and course instructor which changes their relation to the ZFM showing that the borders of the ZFM become re-structured.