Learning in theory and practice: Vygotsky’s ZPD and physical education in primary education
Introduction
Age-graded schooling is one of the most common and conventional features of today’s academic environment. For younger learners in the primary education levels, this separation of young children from adolescents may seem on the face of it like a common sense approach to education—yet, as Gray and Feldman (2004) point out, separation such as this actually is more restrictive to the educative experience than it is facilitative. The reason is found in Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD) theory. Vygotsky was an early 20th century Soviet thinker who articulated the idea that individuals learn most effectively when they are aided by other skilled individuals who know how to perform a certain task. Child learners can benefit, for example, from being placed in a zone of proximal development: alone or confined to a sphere in which they are surrounded by only their own peers—young children like themselves who have none of the skill sets that this same group of learners is expected to develop over time—they are cut off from the essential source of learning, i.e., those adolescents who are older who understand and have the skills to perform. Yet, take these same children and place them in a zone in which they are near adolescents—older individuals who have acquired certain skills—and the young learners will be more apt to pick up on the skill sets that they require in order to advance in knowledge acquisition. This paper will explore Vygotsky’s theory of the zone of proximal development and show how it can be related to my own teaching in physical education at the primary education level.
Vygotsky’s ZPD
The zone of proximal development is the area that exists between what an individual can do on his or her own without any help from others and what an individual cannot do. The ZPD is that region in the learning environment in which “the other” approaches the learner offering assistance in some form. This assistance can literally take any form: it can be as simple as pointing to an object, the name of which the learner does not know; it can be as involved as demonstrating for a learning how to perform a function, like climbing a rope or changing a tire.
The point is that the ZPD is that shade of experience in which the learner gets to follow a teacher, mentor, or tutor and use the guidance offered to do a task, gain understanding, or develop a skill. Without ZPD, the individual learner is cut off from the source of knowledge. With ZPD, the individual learner is given access to those who have the ability to pass on knowledge to others and the learner can take advantage of this access to learn at his or her own pace. It is through ZPD that the idea of self-directed learning is made possible (Gray & Feldman, 2004).
As Crain (2010) notes, Vygotsky was concerned about the manner in which educators approach education. He believed that teachers should be there to guide—not to present material to students that was beyond their reach and then push, shove, pull or drag them to the next level before the young learner had firmly grasped the ideas presented previously. Inherent in this belief was the concept of scaffolding, which is essentially intertwined with the ZPD process. Scaffolding is the teaching method in which the learner is empowered to “solve a problem, carry out a task, or achieve a goal through a gradual shedding of outside assistance” (Pinantoan, 2013). The notion of scaffolding is inherent in the idea of ZPD because it is in the ZPD that the learner engages with the guide in a manner that is direct and purposeful. The learner is mindful of what is going on and the guide is mindful of the knowledge acquisition process being activated. It is a zone in which active learning is transpiring, which is a type of learning that has been deemed as most effective at helping students to develop a deep down understanding of concepts and acquisition of needed skills (Jensen, Kummer & Godoy, 2015).
Education is a kind of apprenticeship, according to Gray and Feldman (2004), and this apprenticeship “was implicit in the educational writings of Lev Vygotsky, who claimed that children acquire knowledge and develop skills through interactions with others who are more competent than themselves” (p. 111). By interacting with peers outside their own age group, children can pick up on traits, manners,...
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