The Zone of Proximal Development and the Twin Poles of Teaching and Assessing in Vygotsky’s Developmental Education

Abstract

Although Vygotsky was active more than eighty years ago, his understanding of schooling as the essential driver of psychological development needed for participation and opportunity in industrialized societies has perhaps even greater relevance in the globalized, post-industrial Twenty-First Century. If we charge schools not merely with the task of imparting knowledge to learners but with guiding them toward ways of thinking and acting, then Vygotsky’s insights cannot be overlooked. The understanding of the ZPD he articulated offers a coherent approach to diagnosing and promoting learner development. The range of procedures generated under the rubric of DA point educators toward the dimension of learner development that are not captured by most assessments, namely the range of abilities that are still in the process of forming. As should be clear, existing DA protocols may be applied by classroom teachers wishing to trace learner development over time relative to their mastery of curricular goals, but DA is equally suited to more formal and even large- scale assessment contexts. Mediated Development, drawing from both Vygotsky’s recommendations for the teaching of abstract concepts and Feuerstein’s commitment to enriching learner functioning through specialized materials, is currently being pursued by L2 researchers to better understand how the curriculum itself may be organized to provide learners access to new tools for thinking. As mentioned, work such as Kinard and Kozulin’s (2008) program in mathematics establishes that the value of Mediated Development is not limited to any particular content area. If one accepts that academic disciplines each represent specific ways of thinking, then the expansion of DA and Mediated Development across the curriculum could realize Vygotsky’s vision of schooling that promotes development of all individuals.