Laoshi's Corner: Zone of Proximal Development -by Mads Rud

Everyone steps into the role of a teacher at some point. Whether it be as a sihing, a classmate's tutor, or training a coworker—being asked to guide another person can feel overwhelming.

One of the many initial challenges is deciding how much help to give. This varies by individual, but there is a concept from psychology that can help us decide how much to present our students with—The Zone of Proximal Development (ZDP).

Developed by Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934), the ZDP is the gap between what a learner can do alone and what they can achieve with help. Material outside of the ZDP cannot be mastered, but anything below it is already within their skillset.

As teachers, we do not want to bore or frustrate students with something that they can already achieve (though whether or not they share this belief might be different). We also don't want to break their spirits by giving them impossible tasks. Instead, we want to give them something just challenging enough that they need assistance to achieve it—assistance that comes from more knowledgeable others. That oftentimes is us, but it can also be another student, parent, or friend.

Vygotsky used this theory with the understanding that learning is a social activity, guided and shaped by others. He also believed that a student progresses significantly faster when they encounter challenges within the ZDP, and experiences and tools become better integrated for a student through ZDP experiences.

In building lessons for students, applying the ZDP can help our students both develop new skills quickly, but also build resilience and the knowledge of how to learn in and of itself. A rough outline of doing so is to identify a task that your students can't do alone, but are able to achieve with help. At first, you or the other more knowledgeable other will need to provide support. This could look like prompting, scaffolding, or modeling—not necessarily giving every answer, but stepping in when frustration is overcoming the opportunity to learn. Over time, the assistance will be withdrawn as the student comes to gain skill. Eventually, the student will move to being able to perform the skill independently.

As with every martial arts tool, theory can't replace practice. Next time you're leading a student, consider their personal Zone of Proximal Development in deciding how to best approach their learning.