Why Zone of Proximal Development is Important in Education

The Zone of Proximal Development is the sweet spot of education; this is where meaningful learning happens. If you are an educator, you are bound to come across Vygotsky’s ZPD and Social Development Theory. A theory that is based on performance-based learning, individualized learning, and customized learning.

What Is the Zone of Proximal Development?

The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), or zone of potential development is a learning or cognitive development theory developed by psychologist Lev Vygotsky. The ZPD is the range of abilities a student can perform with the guidance of an expert or teacher, but still not have the proficiency to perform it by themselves. Vygotsky (1978) believed that “what the child [or learner] is able to do in collaboration today, he will be able to do independently tomorrow.” There are three separate stages a student may fall in terms of their skill set and for learning to take place, the teacher must be able to understand and identify the student’s ZPD stage. These three stages are:

Tasks a Learner Can Accomplish without Assistance

This is the Zone of Achieved Development (ZAD). At this stage the student can independently complete tasks or have mastered the skills to do it. In most cases the student does not require any assistance from the teacher. When a student is at this stage, the teacher should assign more challenging or difficult tasks to encourage further learning. The difficulty can be increased in increments until they have reached the student’s ZPD.

Tasks a Learner Can Accomplish with Assistance

This is the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). When students have not quite mastered a skill set to complete the assigned task and they still require guidance, they are considered to be in the zone of proximal development. At this stage teachers may implement various methods or techniques to help the student better understand the concepts and skills required to complete the given tasks independently. This simply means that the teacher gradually offers less support until the student has mastered the skills to complete a task.

Task a Learner Cannot Accomplish with Assistance

Tasks that are outside of the learner's ZPD are those that can’t be completed by the students even with guided support from a teacher. If this occurs the teacher should consider decreasing the difficulty level or assign tasks that are appropriate to their proficiency level. 

How does the ZPD relate to scaffolding?

Vygotsky referred to the teaching methods used to help a child learn a new skill as “scaffolding.” It is a practical system or framework of support provide by the teacher to assist them in reaching the next level of learning and cultivating student independency and interdependency in the learning process. These can be applied in most academic subject like math, science, and languages. 

So, what does this actually mean? Well, take a preschooler for example. Most can count from 1 to 10 that would be the Zone of Achieved Development (ZAD). This is what they have mastered and can do independently without any guidance. However, they are still unable to effectively count from 11 to 20, but with limited explanation and guided support from the teacher they would be able to do this independently in no time. This would be the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), or the “sweet spot”. Let them count from twenty to ninety or even higher would be beyond their ZPD and they would be frustrated and even discouraged to learn. Giving them too much support counting 1 to 10 would be working below the ZPD which is counter-productive, and they would become bored. So, scaffolding is the support during the ZPD learning process but is removed or no support is given once they have mastered that skill. This means, to properly scaffold a student, you must come to their level and then build from there. To effectively implement a scaffold is to set a task slightly higher than their proficiency level and provide support until they have mastered it. See it as teaching your child how to ride a bike, you will support them and run along holding them up, but once you see they can balance, pedal and steer on their own, you let go.

In addition, it is important to recognize that the ZPD is individualized and to effectively provide scaffolding you must know the proficiency level of that student or find their baseline knowledge by doing pre-assessments to determine what they already know. This is a key point in targeting the ZPD for students in your class and if no pre-assessment is done the instruction or lessons will be either below the ZPD which will not make the lessons challenging enough and help them learn new skills and knowledge, or it might be above the ZPD, and students might not learn anything and become disengaged because it is not meaningful to them as students. Pre-assessments will also identify if the learning objective of the lesson plans are achievable and helps you plan meaningful instructions. There are three ways to pre-assess your students:

1. Give the test first

The is the most effective way to determine how much they know. By giving them the unit test, midterm, or final exam at the beginning of the course will help identify their baseline, how much time should be spent on each topic and what adjustments should be made to your formative and summative assessments.

2. Anticipation guide

This will help identify confusion related to student’s conceptual understanding of the topic or subject. This can involve a simple quiz where students are asked to agree or disagree with a series of statements related to the topic. It can also serve as a great tool to compare start-of-unit thinking to end-of-unit-thinking.

3. KWL Table

A KWL table, or chart, is a graphical organizer designed to help in learning. The letters KWL are an acronym, for what students, already know (K), want to know (W), and ultimately learn (L).

How to Use a KWL Table

K - Know 

Under the first column, students share what they already know about (or associate with) the topic at hand. 

W - Want to know

The teacher discusses with the students what they want to learn or know about this topic. Students write down specific questions they have about the topic and in the event, they have little or no understanding of the topic or don’t know what to ask then the teachers will provide prompting questions to help them brainstorm by adding “Who, What, When, Where, Why, How” to the top of the column.

L - Learned 

At the end of the lesson, students are asked if they found out the answer to any of their questions in the W column. Students can share anything they found interesting or surprising and identify any misconceptions they might have had from Column 1. Students record a summary of what they learned in the L column.

Gradual Release Framework ‘I Do, We Do, You Do'

Instructional scaffolding supports student learning and growth by shifting cognitive engagement from the teacher to the student (Fisher & Frey, 2007) through the gradual release framework. As the teacher delivers new content to the student, they must be aware of each student's location within the ZPD.

‘I do’

The ‘I do’ stage is where the teacher implements 90 per cent of the work or instructional process and 10 per cent is student engagement. This engagement can include signaling, pairing, and sharing with a peer, writing a response, showing a written response via a whiteboard, or actively participating in a cooperative learning activity. The responses should be mandatory so that teachers can see or measure the students’ level of understanding.

‘We do’

At this second stage, the level of responsibility begins to shift for both student and teacher. Students own 40 per cent of the learning responsibility but the role of the teacher balances leading instruction with a more facilitative and indirect formative assessment of the new learning. The teacher regularly moves around the classroom observing and checking in on individuals and small groups as students demonstrate their learning.

‘You do’

Once the teacher has determined that the students are ready for the next stage they will move on to the final stage of the framework. Here, students are responsible for 90 per cent of their own learning and mastery of the content. At this stage, the students are comfortable with the content and can easily progress through learning activities assigned, participate in small and large group discussions with little assistance by the teacher, can generate new questions and discussions, and apply the newly learned content. Teachers fully facilitate the learning, listen in on conversations, and formatively assess the progress of each student. Skillful educators encourage students to debate, agree, disagree, and contribute alternative answers or solutions of the topic being discussed. As a result, students engage in critical thinking and most of the learning is done independently.

The gradual release framework facilitates the concept of independent learners through personalized learning and scaffolding around the ZPD. If implemented correctly in the learning process it can help students understand the importance of becoming independent learners and so students will exhibit qualities like establishing personal learning goals, initiate action plans to achieve learning outcomes, lead conversations and make connections to content and community, and be able to monitor personal academic goals. 

Teachers can support independent students by facilitating the learning process rather than directing it. Creating a learning environment that fosters goal setting and collaboration in the ZPD promotes students to become autonomous learners (Vygotsky, 1978). As a result, students learn the most when they're in their ‘zone’ and will experience greater self-efficacy through ownership of their learning experiences.

The zone of proximal development is an important concept in the fields of both education and psychology. Educators can be better prepared to creating lessons that will maximize the tools and resources available to students if the understand how the ZPD works.