ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT
The zone of proximal development, sometimes called the ZPD or the Zo-ped, is the âareaâ between the level at which students know something or can do something on their own, and the level of performance or skill they could reach given the right support, teaching or structured learning. This is a crucially important idea for the classroom teacher because it provides a way of visualising the area that they should be aiming at or constructing in their teachingâit is the area or zone where teachers should be âpitchingâ their lesson. If they succeed in targeting this zone, teachers and mentors often say that they are âpitching their lesson at the right levelâ. Another way of putting it is to call it the zone where there is a âmanageable level of difficultyâ for the student (Berk, 2003, p.258). It can also help to think of it as a zone of potential development.
The ZPD is an idea created by the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. The ZPD is the zone between what the child or student already knows and where he or she could be if given the right kind of support and intervention by a teacher. This intervention might be direct teaching or it could be âscaffoldingâ, in which the right learning and teaching environment can gradually bring the student up to a higher level (just as scaffolding can enable a solid and permanent building to be constructed). The skill in scaffolding, and in teaching generally, involves breaking things down into manageable learning steps.
A slightly broader concept than scaffolding was given the term âguided participationâ (Rogoff, 1990, 1991). She used this idea to stress the importance of teacher/adult/parent and the learner in co-operating together in the ZPD.
The ideas of a âzoneâ and âscaffoldingâ are useful metaphors for considering learning at all levels. Teachers should aim to target the ZPD in order for progression to take place. If they aim too high, i.e. way above the âtarget zoneâ, then no learning will take place (except perhaps rote learning, âparrot fashionâ). If teachers aim too low, then the learner will not progress:
Learning which is oriented toward developmental levels that have already been reached is ineffective from the viewpoint of the childâs overall development. It does not aim for a new stage of the developmental process but rather lags behind this process.
(Vygotsky, 1978)
Pitching learning and teaching at the right level is crucial for motivation and the affective domain: if there is no challenge, the learner is bored and apathetic; too much challenge leaves the learner frustrated and disaffected.
Figure 9 shows an illustration of the ZPD. The shaded zone, Region 1, represents the learnerâs current development. Region 2 is the ZPD representing the learnerâs potential development in the near future. As learning proceeds, a portion of the ZPD becomes part of the learnerâs present knowledge or skill and so a smaller ZPD remains. The arrows in Figure 9 represent learning, leading towards new development.
Vygotsky (1978) defined the ZPD as âthe distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peersâ. In other words, a student can perform a task under adult guidance or with peer collaboration that could not be achieved alone. The zone of proximal development bridges the gap between what is known and what can be known. Vygotsky claimed that learning occurred in this zone.
His view is that the social environment and social interaction, not least talking, is vital in promoting learning. The role of the teacher is to create this environment for learning to take place. Thought, language and learning go together. For scaffolding to be successful, it must provide step-by-step progression (no huge jumps), the correct âpacingâ, a structured environment and (not least) motivation and interest for the learner.
Vygotskyâs model of learning can apply as valuably to on-line (or e-) learning as it can in face-to-face situations. Students can use on-line communication to create a learning community, to collaborate and to learn from each otherâespecially if this is facilitated by guidance and scaffolding by a teacher or on-line tutor.
Figure 9 One way of picturing the ZPD
Related ideas
The notion of a ZPD relates to, at the very least, two other ideas about learning. The first is diagnostic assessment: if teachers wish to pitch their lesson at the right level, i.e. in the ZPD, they need to know first the level that âstudents are atâ. The second is the idea of meaningful learning: learning will only be meaningful if it is pitched at the right level and built on a foundation of previous learningâscaffolding can help to make learning meaningful by taking learning up to the next storey in a sound and structured way, as opposed to jumping up to an unrealistic level which is unsupported, disconnected and left hanging in the air. As you can see, there is no limit to the metaphors that can be lifted from the construction industry in considering learning: foundations, bridging gaps, scaffolding, zones, storeys and things left hanging!!
One final important point about the ZPD is that it is not some sort of property or characteristic of the learner alone. It is certainly not some sort of entity or zone in the learnerâs brain that the teacher should âaim atâârather, it is an area or zone constructed by the interaction between the learner and the teacher or adult.
References and further reading
Berk, L. (2003) Child Development, 6th edn, Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Rogoff, B. (1990) Apprenticeship in Thinking, New York: Oxford University Press.
ââ(1991) Cognitive Development in Social Context, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scaife, J. (2000) âLearning in Scienceâ, in Wellington, J. (ed.) Teaching and Learning Secondary Science, London: Routledge.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind and Society: The Development of Higher Mental Processes, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Useful websites
There is a vast number of websites on the ZPD (try Google or Google Scholar to find several hundred). Two of the more readable and valuable are:
http://chd.gse.gmu.edu/immersion/knowledgebase/theorists/constructivism/vygotsky.htm
Too little challenge leaves the learner bored, and too much leaves him frustratedâ:
http://chss2.montclair.edu/sotillos/_meth/00000014.htm
For Barbara Rogoffâs work, see:
http://psych.ucsc.edu/faculty/brogoff/index.php?Bio
