Situating the Zone of Proximal Development
George E. Marsh II, Ed.D.
Director, Institute for Interactive Technology
College of Human & Environmental Sciences
The University of Alabama
gemarsh@ches.ua.edu
John J. Ketterer, Ed.D.
Director, International House Program
Jacksonville State University
jkettere@jsucc.jsu.edu
Abstract
Social constructivist theory has advanced the notion that
distance education is inferior, because effective learning is thought to
require immersion in a cognitive apprenticeship under the guidance of a
mentor. Effective learning is said to be situated in activity, context, and
culture as a collaboration in a community of practice. Administrators and
practitioners in distance education are confronted with a challenge to the
efficacy of their endeavors. The authors briefly trace the evolution of social
constructivism, the influence of Piaget and Vygotsky, and analyze the effects
of contemporary social constructivism with implications for instructional
theory and practice.
Introduction
Administrators of distance education enterprises are
frequently moved to defend online instruction because of criticism and
uncertainty about the nature of distance instruction. They are challenged to
counter deeply embedded and frequently unquestioned beliefs that distance
teaching cannot adequately provide a "virtual presence" sufficient to overcome
the ontological fact of distance in terms of space, place, and intimacy. In
spite of a substantial body of research demonstrating that there are no
differences in achievement between online and traditional instruction, the
belief persists that a distance education course is inferior to the "real
thing" on campus. The ubiquity of social constructivism among practitioners
and theorists, as posture or pedagogy, has contributed to a fragmentation of
approaches and misinterpretation of distance technology as an instructional
tool. Since spatial proximity is a prerequisite of social constructivism, the
theories of cognitive apprenticeship and situated cognition condemn distance
education for lacking the essential components of tangible mentors, peers, and
contiguous social environments. A closer examination of the provenance of
these theories may provide both instructors and distance education
administrators with helpful principles for the effective integration of theory
and defensible practice.
Distance education is held to different standards and higher
expectations than conventional teaching. Distance learning is regarded as
deficient because it is said to lack social experience and personal
interactions apart from a community and the presence of a mentor. Social
constructivism makes strong claims for deep and active learning. In social
constructivism, students are said to acquire knowledge by participation in
authentic tasks situated in an environment that is permeated with
"distributed" knowledge (Gibson, 1979; Lave, 1988; Lave & Wenger, 1991).
Brown and Duguid (2000) regard distance education as a poor substitute for
classroom instruction, apparently because it lacks spatial and social
proximity, although, ironically, they also contend that communities need not
be spatially close. In a community a mentor or master teacher directs students
by use of such techniques as modeling, scaffolding, coaching, and fading.
Despite instruction centered on a teacher and communal behaviors, the learning
environment under social constructivism is still considered to be
student-centered. The logic is explained partly by the two elements of evolved
social constructivism, situated cognition and cognitive apprenticeship.
In situated cognition, mental construction is the result of
authentic tasks, social interaction, and collaboration in context. Knowledge
is distributed among persons and objects in a particular social context. Lave
and Wenger (1991) argue that learning occurs through participation in action
contexts. Situated cognition has been elaborated as cognitive apprenticeship
(Collins, Brown, & Hollum, 1991; Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989).
Cognitive apprenticeship, like apprenticeship in the trades, is a way to
induct a neophyte into a work culture through a sequence of experiences that
culminate in competence.
The rich abundance of metaphors and terminology generated by
social constructivists—situated learning, collaborative learning, contextual
learning, apprenticeship, community, scaffolding—leads to questions about how
accurately the language of social constructivism reflects the epistemological
and psychological bases found in the works of Piaget and, in particular, those
of Vygotsky.
Since an emphasis on the importance of culture and context is
a valid epistemological concern that may inform and influence practice, the
question of the impact of the cluster of metaphors on professional practice
must be entertained. The metaphorical coherence of a pedagogical framework or
model is not necessarily an empirical validation. Cognitive apprenticeship,
situated learning, and Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD) are
collapsed into a simple bromide such that instruction is a classroom technique
to guide a student to complete a task. One is tempted to distinguish between
an instructional scheme and an instructional model. Instructional schemes are
staged practices based on loose or nonexistent relationships to established
epistemological and psychological principles. The elements of an instructional
model may yield metaphorical terminology, but do they have an integral and
accurate relationship to known principles? A review of social-constructivist
models and the basic tenets of Vygotskian and Piagetian theories should lead
to some preliminary conclusions in this respect.
The Influence and Interplay of Vygotsky and Piaget on
Sociocultural Theories
The origins of constructivism have been attributed to many
(e.g., Jean Piaget, Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky, John Dewey, and Giambattista
Vico), but the contemporary growth of constructivism in the classroom owes
much to the work of Jerome Bruner (1966) who advocated discovery learning as
an alternative to conventional instruction. Bruner's notion was
straightforward—that students would better learn and retain concepts they
discover on their own instead of passively through rote learning and lectures.
Bruner rooted his pedagogy in Piagetian and Vygotskian principles and extended
the work of Vygotsky by employing the concept of scaffolding. With the passage
of time, social constructivist theory now reinforces teacher-centeredness. To
understand how the switch from student-centered to teacher-centered
instruction seems to have come full circle, it is necessary to consider the
procession of social constructivism.
Language and psychological processes develop initially as
social, interpersonal interactions among people, which Vygotsky referred to as
interpsychological. These are gradually "turned inward" or incorporated as
internal tools, which he referred to as intrapsychological. The infant and the
child learn first learn by imitating the immediate social environment, which
is influenced in different ways by the larger culture. One's psychological
processes are always bound to the culture in some way because each person must
use a particular "set" of cultural tools into the society in which one is born
or cast. In the second instance, the child begins to think for himself.
Vygotsky (1978) revealed his basic theory about human cognitive development
with this statement:
...the most significant moment in the course of
intellectual development, which gives birth to the purely human forms of
practical and abstract intelligence, occurs when speech and practical
activity, two previously completely independent lines of development,
converge (p. 24).
One significance of this "convergence" is that internal
speech is ultimately used for thinking, reasoning, solving problems, and
learning. Vygotsky (1978) said, “The internalization of socially rooted and
historically developed activities is the distinguishing feature of human
psychology, the basis of the qualitative leap from animal to human psychology”
(p. 57).
Social constructivists emphasize the importance of the ZPD,
which seems to have been elevated to the status of a quintessential core
practice. Gredler and Shields (2004) declare that the common understanding of
the ZPD as an educational model is wrong, because Vygotsky defined it as an
area of maturing psychological processes and a construct for understanding
social influence in ontogenesis. Vygotsky (1978) put it this way:
The zone of proximal development defines those
functions that have not yet matured but are in the process of maturation,
functions that will mature tomorrow but are currently in an embryonic state.
These functions could be termed the "buds" or "flowers" of development
rather than the "fruits" of development. The actual developmental level
characterizes mental development retrospectively, while the zone of proximal
development characterizes mental development prospectively (p.
87).
Vygotsky also said the ZPD is the “distance between the
actual developmental 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 peers" (p. 86). Vygotsky
elaborated by describing how a teacher or a more advanced peer might provide
an explanation to enable a child to attain a higher level of achievement with
support. The importance in developmental theory is not the actions of a
capable adult or peer but, rather, the learner's state of cognitive
maturation. External stimuli are consequential to a learner "only to the
degree that he can assimilate them by means of his existing structures"
(Piaget, 1969, p. 5). This is in concert with Vygotsky's contention that
cognitive development can be assessed within the ZPD. To Vygotsky, the
evaluation of cognitive maturation in the ZPD is the major purpose, but this
has been disregarded in favor of its relevance to pedagogy.
Cognitive apprenticeship, situated cognition, and the ZPD
reflect the power hierarchy by affirming the teacher's role while apparently
attempting to also endorse the primary constructivist principle of
self-created knowledge. Cheyne and Tarulli (1999) made this observation:
The social relationship that stands as a model for
Vygotsky is markedly asymmetrical, hierarchical, and organized around the
developmental goal of instrumental control. Moreover, the master-slave,
supervisor-subordinate relationship is itself a social transformation of the
worker-tool relation and hence it is easy for Vygotsky to recover, through
reciprocal transformation, the tool-like instrumentality of inner speech
from such social relationships. Social relationships are based on the same
labour-production instrumentality as action-tool relations. All of this is
organized around the issue of control which, through ontogenesis, becomes
transformed from that of an external agent over a subordinate to one of an
internal agent over self and ultimately to a principle over an instance. .
.Vygotsky's metaphor also highlights another significant ingredient of such
dialogue—power. Vygotsky, at least in his view of the ZPD, clearly portrays
a knowledge differential as power differential. That differential brings
into focus the role of the other in the ZPD (para
27).
Distributed knowledge emanates from an authoritarian
hierarchy. Knowledge production is entrusted to the school by the culture with
explicit and implicit rules that define the practices and the agencies of
governance. Administrators, teachers, and professors are certified or licensed
by the state or a professional organization, as are the programs that train
them; the curriculum is prescribed, and policies are established to define the
extent of control over employees and students and what students may learn.
Professional and/or governmental organizations evaluate both the work of
schools (accreditation) and the knowledge production of those who contribute
to the methodology and pedagogy deemed acceptable in schools (peer review).
Education is governed amid a set of countervailing forces where no individual
valence prevails: federal and state laws, policies, courts, cultural
narratives, standards, legal interpretations, professional agencies,
organizations, elected officials, appointed administrators, teachers, parents,
students, and more. The educational institution exists as a compromise among
sources of power.
The ZPD, scaffolding, and the apprenticeship are embedded in
the power structure as tools of control, both as a way to initiate neophytes
into a community of practice and to define and deliver the curriculum. While
there is a clear similarity between Piaget’s theories of accommodation and
assimilation and Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive maturation as evaluated by the
ZPD, the ZPD seems to be more appealing to the practitioner or theorist as an
instructional device.
The progression of theoretical perspectives coincides with the
shifts in pedagogical philosophy over time. Teachers who found themselves
watching students individually engaged with programmed learning materials
repudiated behaviorism. However, banishment of behaviorism by constructivism,
owing to the epistemological view that learning is self-created, (the
so-called psychological constructivism of Piaget), relegated the teacher to
the fringes as a guide. Social constructivism restores the teacher firmly at
the head of the instructional process, reinforced by the social metaphors of
situated cognition, cognitive apprenticeship, and the ZPD. The teacher
determines the instructional use of the ZPD by judging “right” and "wrong"
answers, and "correct" and "incorrect" procedures. The ZPD is a deliberate
strategy to engage the student, connect prior understanding with new content
or skills, and assist the student to achieve predetermined outcomes. While the
ZPD is popularly regarded as "scaffolding" or "support" to allow learners to
achieve success, it involves a deliberate restriction of a student's choices
(Wood, Bruner, Ross, 1976).
Some constructivist practitioners are hesitant to state goals
or objectives for teaching out of respect for the cardinal principle of
constructivism—that knowledge cannot be imposed. However, their instructional
practices reveal intended instructional outcomes, otherwise how could the ZPD
be employed? When the mentor is engaged either in modeling a sequence of
manual skills or mental concepts (making thinking visible), the mentor
evidently has goals and objectives in mind. Feedback along the way (i.e.,
scaffolding, coaching, fading) is for the purpose of imposing a specific
process and reaching a specific outcome. The language chosen by social
constructivists conforms to constructivist principles but truly emphasizes the
instructor's role. In doing so, practitioners of social constructivism may
ignore a major element of the principles of their epistemological history, or
at least the writings of Bruner. The hope expressed in nascent constructivism
of the 1960s was that teaching would surrender didactic practice in the
interest of active, engaged learning.
Locating the ZPD
If conceptual knowledge is a tool, it can be used by the
learner apart from the mentor and the classroom environment. An observation by
Vygotsky (1978) has particular importance for work inside the ZPD:
The central characteristic of elementary functions is that
they are totally and directly determined by stimulation from the
environment. For higher functions, the central feature is self generated
stimulation, that is, the creation and use of artificial stimuli which
become the immediate causes of behavior (p. 39).
It is at this point that one must observe that both Vygotsky
and Piaget recognized a developmental juncture at which the individual
character of the learner is asserted and the dialogue central to the learning
process becomes discreet rather than only communal. Knowledge begins in
context methodologically and phenomenologically; it survives as truth when
individual mental processes and subjective intentionality sustain it. Like
Piaget, Vygotsky believed that conceptual thinking develops at adolescence
when there are logical relationships among concepts. At this stage, knowledge
and thinking are relevant psychological tools—only if they affect the mind and
behaviors of the individual. Unless it can influence thought and behavior, a
psychological tool is not useful for any particular individual. While many
tools exist in the culture, not everyone can use them without proper
experiences and mental development. Psychological tools enable independent
mental functions free of the immediate environment for those who can use
them.
A student learns through socialization and individual effort,
but the uses of books, e-mail, online courses, videos, or other artifacts are
imbued with social content and context. These tools are situated, if one
accepts the view of distributed knowledge. A book, video, and a computer
environment can be used for meaning-making without continuous, direct,
personal contact with a teacher. Indeed, the Oxford tutorial may be said to be
work in the ZPD, where students must assume an active role in learning,
develop self-directed study skills, work independently, all of which are
individual pursuits punctuated by intermittent evaluations by a tutor
(Palfreyman, 2002). Vygotsky demonstrated that what is learned in the
classroom can be applied elsewhere in the absence of a teacher. Vygotsky
(1987) described the ZPD or collaboration as "invisibly present" (p. 216),
which may be the case with children and adults. Presumably, such collaboration
can also be made over the Internet and used as a referent for further work,
invisible or not. The concept of the ZPD is much different when applied to a
mature learner rather than to a child.
Wilson (2002) argues that human cognition can occur
"decoupled" from immediate interaction with the environment and that large
portions of cognitive processing are not situated. "In short, our ability to
form mental representations about things that are remote in time and space,
which is arguably the sine qua non of human thought, in principle
cannot yield to a situated cognition analysis" (Wilson, 2002, p. 625). Brown,
Ash, Rutherford, Nakagawa, Gordon, & Campione (1993) claim that the ZPD
may include people and such artifacts as books, videos, wall displays,
scientific equipment, and "a computer environment intended to support
intentional learning" (1993, p. 191).
Social Distance and the ZPD
Saba (2004) rejects the comparison of conventional instruction
with distance education, saying "...comparison of interaction in the context
of classroom instruction with the kinds that occur in distance education
becomes difficult, if not irrelevant" (para 2). But deeply entrenched
metaphors are not so easily dismissed. Comparisons of different distance
education models with conventional instruction find few significant
differences in achievement (Haythornthwaite, Kaymer, Robins, & Shoemaker,
2000; Russel, 1999). Regardless of the differences in spatial proximity, a way
to compare programs is to put both "places" on common ground by means of
transactional distance (Moore, 1972; Moore, 1980; Moore & Kearsley, 1996).
Transactional distance is a relative pedagogical construct that envisions the
transactions between a teacher and a learner to operate among three variables:
structure, dialog, and learner autonomy. Structure is the extent of the
responsiveness to a learner's individual needs, dialog is the extent to which
a learner and educator are able to communicate with each other, and learner
autonomy is a student's commitment to self-direction and study. Moore proposed
that these factors characterize both distance education and the classroom, and
some writers claim to have confirmed the theory (Chen, 2001; Bischoff,
Bisconer, Kooker, & Woods, 1996; Saba & Shearer, 1994).
Programs differ in transactional distance according to the
extent of dialogue and structure within them, and the characteristics of each
learner. A distance or online model can have high or low structure, dialog,
and learner autonomy. The dialog between the instructor and the student can be
achieved with technologies now available to all instructors, but teachers and
students must learn how to use them in the ZPD. Multimedia programs, books,
and videotaped lectures, a "worked example," discussion board, or other
artifacts can provide the necessary social stimuli for learning.
When a metaphor becomes specific its applicability narrows,
restricting the range of what is possible. This may be the case with the
metaphors of apprenticeship and situated cognition whose implications are that
learning can only occur in a classroom (i.e., spatial proximity). Also,
equating the ZPD with the apprenticeship is false. Seeing instruction only as
an apprenticeship leads to solipsistic excesses. If social constructivism is
true to its foundations, then internal speech and logic are valid cultural
tools, and learning can occur with electronic representations of the
instructor as well as with instructors in the flesh. Vygotsky (1930) said:
As an individual only exists as a social being, as a member
of some social group within whose context he follows the road of his
historical development, the composition of his personality and the structure
of his behaviour turn out to be a quantity which is dependent on social
evolution and whose main aspects are determined by the latter. Already in
primitive societies, which are only just taking their first steps along the
road of their historical development, the entire psychological makeup of
individuals can be seen to depend directly on the development of technology,
the degree of development of the production forces and on the structure of
that social group to which the individual belongs (para
4).
The relative intimacy of one instructional environment as
opposed to another is questionable as an epistemological trait. This inference
is probably related to a misunderstanding of the nature of knowledge for
Piaget, Vygotsky and Bruner—none of whom can be accused of having asserted
that the validity of learning depends on some kind of continuous, intimate
social process of validation. Vygotsky and Piaget agreed that the learning
process culminates with the autonomy of the learner. Independent knowledge is
neither place-specific nor situated. If Piaget and Vygotsky were correct,
abstract knowledge is transformed knowledge, neither bounded by nor restricted
to situations in which it was originally constructed. As Vygotsky put it, in
contrast to situated cognition, "becoming a master of one's own behavior"
rather than a "slave to the environment" (Vygotsky, 1978).
Conclusions
Directed thought, which is internal and occurs without
communication with another, is social thought that is increasingly influenced
by experience and logic and no longer tied to an immediate social context.
Higher mental processes engage the "social" interactions of inner speech to
create new knowledge. Vygotsky proposed that human beings achieve control over
natural mental functions by bringing socioculturally formed mediating
artifacts into thinking activity (Lantolf & Thorne, 2005). Cultural
artifacts mediate human activity and they are always situated within a human
activity system (Petrina, 2004).
Vygotsky's references to artifacts included many kinds of
tools (Vygotsky, 1978). Bannon and Bødker (1991) emphasize the process and the
context in which a tool is used is important because cognition is "socially
and historically situated, and it is tied to the physical conditions in which
it takes place" (p.227). Tools are discarded if they are no longer useful.
Obviously, many young people today do not recognize or know the purpose of a
“church key” or the horse-hoof awl on a Swiss army knife, because these
tools are obsolete. On the other hand, many children and youth can use
computers and software as tools, something some of their teachers cannot do.
Learners can only employ the new media artifacts inside the ZPD if they have
the ability to do so, and teachers cannot take advantage of them unless they
also know how to use them.
It is indefensible to maintain that existing and emerging
electronic instructional tools in distance education lie outside the ZPD. As
John-Steiner and Souberman (1978), the editors and translators of
Mind in Society, explained, “Vygotsky argued that the effect of tool
use upon humans is fundamental not only because it has helped them relate more
effectively to their external environment but also because tool use has had
important effects upon internal and functional relationships with the human
brain” (p 132-133). The emphasis that social constructivism puts on historical
development implies that online learning and self-study are possible because a
learner has inherited evolved cultural tools deliberately devised for
intentional learning. Social constructivists who would restrict learning only
to a classroom appear to assume that the "tools" of learning, in the
Vygotskian sense, are constants not subject to independent use or cultural
evolution. Vygotsky maintained that the psychological processes change with
sociocultural history, evolving with the culture, which is the case with
distance education. Seen in this light, some social constructivists may be
guilty of the perennialist error of absolutism.
Technological adaptations address the perceived need for
socialization and, properly used, may be effective artifacts for learning.
These include electronic listservs (forums, threaded discussions); e-mail,
instant messaging, chat; video; radio and audio; anchored instruction (CTGV,
1990, 1993); computer-supported collaborative learning (Bowers & Benford,
1991; Heilesen, Cudrio, & Cheesman, 2002; Etheris & Tan, 2004);
computer supported intentional learning environment CSILE (Scardamalia,
Bereiter, McLean, Swallow, & Woodruff, 1989; Salovaara & Järvelä,
2003); learning communities (Barab & Duffy 2000); cognitive flexibility
hypertext (Spiro, Feltovich, Jacobson & Coulson, 1992; Godshalk, Harvey,
& Moller, 2004); goal-based scenarios (Schank, 1996; Naidu, Ip, &
Linser, 2000); and, case-based learning (Kolodner, 1993; Tsinakos &
Margaritis, 2001). Administrators and practitioners in distance education
continue to create innovations that may also augment the traditional classroom
and the apprenticeship. Mature learners can recognize the ZPD for themselves
as an intrapsychological process. There is no reason to believe that people
cannot learn through distance education or through any other, as yet
undiscovered, socially-constructed artifact for that purpose, for it is
obvious that this is exactly what learners do. The ZPD is situated with the
mature learner.
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