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Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development

Deborah J. Leong, PhD and Elena Bodrova, PhD

The zone of proximal development or ZPD, one of the most well-known of all of Vygotsky's concepts, is a way of conceptualizing the relationship between learning and development (Vygotsky, 1934/87). More and more early childhood education and child development textbooks, as well as professional journals and publications, have begun to use the ZPD as a way of describing how children learn and develop. In this article adapted from our book Tools of the Mind: The Vygotskian Approach to Early Childhood Education (Merrill/Prentice-Hall), we will describe the ZPD and discuss implications for teaching.

Definition of the Zone of Proximal Development

Vygotsky chose the word zone because he conceived development not as a point on a scale, but as a continuum of behaviors or degrees of maturation. By the word proximal (next to, close to), he meant that the zone is limited by those behaviors that will develop in the near future. Proximal means behaviors closest to emergence at any given time-not all possible behaviors that will eventually emerge.

For Vygotsky, development of a behavior occurs on two levels which form the boundaries of the ZPD. The lower level is the child's independent performance-what the child knows and can do alone. The higher level represents the maximum the child can reach with help and is called assisted performance. Between maximally assisted performance and independent performance lie varying degrees of partially assisted performances (See Figure 1).

The skills and behaviors represented in the ZPD are dynamic and constantly changing. What the child does with some assistance today is what the child will do independently tomorrow. What requires maximum support and assistance today will be something the child can do with minimal help tomorrow. So the assisted performance level will change as the child develops.

Level of independent performance.

In education and psychology, we have traditionally focused on what is developed or achieved by independent performance only For example, we say that if five year-old Susan correctly adds 2 + 2 by herself, then she can add. Frank has learned to make the letter "N" only when he can draw it on his own. If there is a prompt by an adult, for instance when the teacher reminds Frank that an "'N' has one hump," then we say that the child has not "developed" or doesn't know the information yet. Vygotsky agreed that the level of independent performance is an important index of development, but he argued that it is not sufficient to completely describe development.

Level of assisted performance.

The level of assisted performance is performance that includes those behaviors performed with the help of and/or interaction with another person either an adult or peer. This interaction may involve giving hints and clues, rephrasing questions, asking the child to restate what has been said, asking the child what he understands, demonstrating a portion or the entire task, and so on. It can also be indirect interaction or help, like setting up the environment to facilitate practice of a specific set of skills. For example, a teacher can provide specially labeled sorting trays to encourage classification. Assisted performance also includes interaction and talking to others who are present or imaginary, such as explaining something to a peer. Thus level of assisted performance describes any situation in which there are improvements in the child's mental activities as a result of social interaction.

Dynamics, Variations, and Limits of the ZPD

The ZPD is not static but shifts as the child attains the higher level (See Figure 2). Thus, development involves a sequence of constantly changing zones. With each shift, the child becomes capable of learning more and more complex concepts and skills. What the child did only with assistance yesterday becomes the level of independent performance today, and a new level of assisted performance appears. This cycle is repeated over and over again, as the child climbs his way to complete acquisition of a body of knowledge, skill, strategy, discipline, or behavior.

The zone of proximal development is different for different areas of development or at different times during the acquisition process. For different areas of development the zone may vary in size. Some children require all possible assistance to make even small gains in learning. Other children make huge leaps with much less assistance.

At the same time, the size of the zone may vary for the same child from one area to another or at different times in the learning process. A highly verbal child may not have trouble acquiring concepts in reading comprehension, for example, but have great difficulties with long division. Vygotskians would interpret this as the child needing more assistance in one area than another. In addition, at various times in the process of learning, children respond to different types of assistance. Mary, who has been counting only a few weeks, needs more assistance, closer to her level of independent performance than she will require three months later, after she has been counting for a while. At that time the ZPD and the amount a teacher can facilitate Mary's doing with assistance will be greater.

The zone of proximal development reveals the limits of the child's development at any specific time. The ZPD is not limitless--a child cannot be taught anything at any given time. Assisted performance is the maximum level at which a child can perform today Children cannot be taught skills or behaviors that exceed their ZPD. Teresa and Linda, for example, may not be able to be taught to do handstands on the balance beam on a given day, because that skill is too far above their ZPD.

When a skill is outside of the ZPD, Vygotskians -note that children generally ignore, fail to use, or incorrectly use that skill, strategy, or piece of information. This is how teachers will know if the assistance provided falls within the ZPD. Teachers must carefully chart which prompts, dues, hints, books, activities, or peer cooperative groupings have a desired effect on the child's learning. Teachers should not be afraid to try a higher level, but teachers need to listen to the child by paying attention to her/his reaction to attempts at the higher level of the ZPD.

Using the ZPD in the Classroom

The zone of proximal development has three important implications for learning/teaching:

How we assist a child to perform a task. It is most common to think of the assisted performance level of the zone of proximal development in terms of "expert-novice" interactions, when one person has more knowledge than the other. hi this type of interaction, most commonly occurring in direct teaching, it is the experts responsibility to provide support and to direct the interaction so that the novice can acquire the necessary behavior. These expert-novice interactions can be informal, such as when children and parents or siblings interact (Rogoff, 1990).

However, Vygotsky's conception of the ZPD is much broader than the expert-novice interaction; he extended it to all socially shared activities. Also, not all of the assistance used by the child needs to be intentionally provided by an adult. Vygotsky believed that the child can start performing on a higher level of the ZPD through any type of social interactioninteraction with peers as equals, with imaginary partners, or with children at other developmental levels. For example, three year-old Benny cannot sit still during a story. The teacher tries to provide different types of assistance to help him focus. She calls out his name, places her hand on his shoulder, and signals to him nonverbally. In spite of these efforts, Benny continues to wiggle and look around the room. Later that day, Benny is playing school with a group of friends. Tony sits in a chair and "reads" a book just like the teacher, while Benny and several other children "pretend" to be students and listen. Benny sits and listens, focusing his attention for four to five minutes. Benny is practicing the same behavior that the teacher had desired--focused attention. The ability to concentrate for a short time is within his ZPD, but we can see that he requires a particular type of assistance--that of play and peers. With the assistance of his peers, Benny is able to perform at the higher levels of his ZPD, but with the teacher he is not able to do so.

How we assess children. The idea of the ZPD has direct implications for assessing what children know and can do. Instead of limiting assessment only to what children can do independently, we should include what they can do with different levels of assistance. Teachers should note how children use their help as well as what hints are the most useful. This technique, often called "dynamic assessment," has great potential for improving and expanding authentic classroom assessment (Cronbach, 1990; McAfee & Leong, 1994).

By using the ZPD in assessment, not only do we have a more accurate estimate of the child's abilities, but we have a more flexible way of assessing children. Teachers can rephrase a question, pose it differently, or encourage the child to show what she knows. Using the ZPD, we get at the child's best performance or understanding.

What is developmentally appropriate. The idea of the Zone of Proximal Development broadens the term developmentally appropriate. The term developmentally appropriate is defined by the child's independent achievements--by the processes and skills that have fully developed (Bredekamp, 1992). It does not currently include the level of assisted performance and emerging processes and skills. Thus, teachers are likely to wait until desired behavior emerges spontaneously before providing activities that encourage it. As a result, children only have lean-Ling opportunities at what Vygotsky considers the lower level of their ZPD.

The concept of the ZPD expands the idea of what is developmentally appropriate to include the things the child can learn with assistance. Vygotsky argues that the most effective teaching is aimed at the higher level of the child's ZPD. Teachers should provide activities just beyond what the child can do on her own, but within what the child can do with assistance. Thus, the learning/teaching dialogue proceeds slightly ahead of the child's status at any given time. If adults, for example, only provided language stimulation geared to the child's actual speech and not at a level slightly higher, then they would only use baby talk with toddlers and never speak in full sentences. But in actual practice, adults, both parents and teachers, intuitively add more information and use more complex grammar than the toddler is currently capable of producing. As a result, the child learns more complex grammar and expands her vocabulary.

Another example of how we intuitively use the level of assisted performance is seen when we deal with the conflicts that naturally arise between young children. When two-and-a-half year-olds are fighting, the teacher describes each child's feelings even though the children may not yet be able to take another person's perspective. Few teachers would want to wait to talk with the children until these perspective taking skills emerge naturally, when they are four and five years of age.

With the ZPD, Vygotsky emphasized that the child should practice what he can do independently and, at the same time, be exposed to things at higher levels of the ZPD. Both levels are developmentally appropriate. Teachers must be sensitive to the child's reaction to the support and assistance provided in the ZPD. If the child accepts the teacher's support, then the teacher has hit within the ZPD. If a child ignores help, and still cannot perform at the higher level of the ZPD as expected, then the teacher needs to rethink the support. Perhaps the skill is outside this child's zone, or the assistance provided is not useful and should be modified. The ZPD helps teachers look at what support to provide, and how the child reacts, in a more sensitive way.

References

Bodrova, E. and Leong, D. J. Tools of the Mind: The Vygotskian Approach to Early Childhood Education. New York: Merill/Prentice-Hall, 1995.

Bredekamp, S. (ed.) Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children From Birth to Age 8 (revised edition). Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1992.

Cronbach, L. J. Essentials of Psychological Testing (5th edition). New York: Harper & Row, 1990.

McAfee, 0. and Leong, D. J. Assessing and Guiding Young Children's Development and Learning. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1994.

Vygotsky, L. S. The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky (R. W. Rieber and A. S. Carton, translators). New York: Plenum Press, 1987 (original published in Russian in 1934,1960).

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Dr. Elena Bodrova is Visiting Professor, Department of Psychology, and Dr. Deborah Leong is Professor of Psychology, at Metropolitan State College in Denver. They have especially rewritten a chapter from their forthcoming book in order to provide this article for Of Primary Interest, they retain the copyright of this material. They may be contacted at Department of Psychology, Metropolitan State College, Campus Box 54, P. 0. Box 173362, Denver, Colorado 80217-3362, (303) 556-3205.