最近发展区(The zone of proximal development)

The zone of proximal developmentThe zone of proximal development is one of the most important concept of Vygotsky’s sociocultural perspective. The zone of proximal development is the area between the child’s current development level “as determined by independent problem solving”and level of development that child could achieve “through adult guildance or in collaboration with more capable peers”. It describe the proper level children could achieve.Rather than seeing learning and development as two independent processes as Piaget, Vygotsky believe taht the processes rely on each other. We must teach the child depend on his or her development level. So the most important thing is to know the children’s current development level. Thus，Vygotsky put forward the concept of the zone of proximal development. From the definition, we know it is an dynamic (动态的) concept. That is the zone of proximal development of each child is different, and one child’s zone of proximal development in different situation and different time is different. Vygotsky point out that education in some degree is development. What we must care is the forming development process rather than the finished development process. Only going ahead of development can education make the greatest contribution to development.In Vygotsky’s sociocultural perspective, he emphasize the importance of culture for children’s cognitive development, he believeed that human activities take place in cultural settings and cannot understood apart from these settings. One of his key ideas was that our specific mental structure and processes can be traced to our interactions with others, and cannot happen without others. All our mental structures and processes are co-constructed during shared activities with others, then the processes are internalized by the children and become part of the children’s cognitive development. Differ from Piaget , he emphasize the importance of more capable people such as teachers and parents rather than peers. Apprenticeships is an old form of teaching, indicating the importance of teachera. In fact, according to the zone of proximal development theory, work with classmates who are a little more capable is most helpful.The zone of proximal development theory is meaningful in educational area. As a teacher, we must be clear about children’s component, learning style and attitude, temperament and so on. This is the level the students already have, and we can foresee the children’s potential ability according to it. Then teacher can arrange proper tasks, neither too easy nor too difficult. Teachers give students the guidance to lead students to finish the tasks. After some exercise, teacher let students do it independently. During the process, students make progress. Besides, during the zone of proximal development, students are most creativity and active, they feel confident and interested in.Vygotsky died when he was only 38 years old, and he had not have time to make detais of his theory. Many years later , with the lasting efforts of many psychologists ,his theory has make great contribution to today’s education, and widelyaccepted as one of the most important theory in education. “Scaffolding” is one of the most important application of his theory in recent years. It was put forward by American educational psychologist Bruner depending on the zone of proximal development. A ctually, scaffolding is teacher’s appropriate help during students’ learning process. Children’s i mmature ability do not participate in problem solving. Then teacher can help students through offering scaffolding. The form of scaffold is various such as teacher’s demonstration, implication, asking questions and so forth. Whatever scaffolding we offer, we must offer it timely and remove it timely too. We can neither do everything for students nor leave them all alone. The scaffold will not make the task easier, but students can complete the task with it.Scaffolding includes three links:etudes,exploration and excursion. Etudes is the beginning of teaching, and teacher offer proper scaffolding to students. Then students establish goals and explore. During this, teacher can offer guidance,prototype of the problem, to feedback the outcome, but to add exploratory composition at the same time. After that teacher can let students determine the direction of the problem on their own. Only in the zone of proximal development , can scaffold make greatest contribution to children’s development.Another application of the zone of proximal development is i nteractive teaching. According to Vygotsky, interaction with others is the origin of individual thinking. Creating learning situation between classmate or teacher is necessary, and students can solve problems with each others ' help . They develop themselves through discussion and cooperation Teachers can use different strategies to help students with their problem solving and learn through interactions with others. Personally thinking, with the development of information technology, the communication with computers will become more and more important. Teachers can use computer programs to help students achieve in their potential development level in the zone of proximal development. Playing games is an excellent form of interaction. For children, games are not only for fun, they develop their language, schemas and culture tools at the same time. The children have similar development level and solve problems with each other’s help. Besides, they enjoy themselves at the same time. Every teacher should know, all works and no play makes Jack a dull boy.As far as I'm concerned, according to the zone of proximal development theory,we can probably divide students into several levels in each grade. Students inthe same class have similar development level. Thus, teacher can use proper strategies to teach them based on their zone of proximal development and the tasks will neither too easy nor too difficult for all students. But it is not to say, we adopt different attitudes towards different students. Every teacher for students must be excellent. Besides, we must know, every student is developing, and we must use differentt way to teach them at different time to make sure it is good for their development.After all, Vygotsky’s theory has its limitations. Miller had pointed out two disavantages of Vygotsky’s the zone of proximal development theory. Firstly, it only offers the information of the width of this area and has not give precise explanation of the children’s learning ability, style and development level when compared to each other which is of great importance. Secondly, it is quite difficult to measure the zone of proximal development. Despite of its weakness, Vygotsky has actually make great contribution to education and psychology which we can't offord to ignore..。