Skip to content(if available)orjump to list(if available)

Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development

Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development

2 comments

·May 4, 2025
Visit

wisty

Teacher here. The problem with the continental philosophical approach of teacher theory is that often teachers can even agree on what things like the ZPD is.

Some teachers will use the ZPD to defend giving students work that is challenging.

Some teachers will use the ZPD to defend giving students work that is not challenging.

(Yes, obviously it's about finding some optimal point, but aside from the existence of some kind of optimal point of challenge there's not going to be any agreement).

Vyvotsky had some opinions, but virtually no-one reads his work, just summaries from the text book or picks up the term from papers that cite him (did the author of the paper even read his work? does it matter?).

It's just, like, words, and words don't mean anything in continental philosophical fields. They're just noises you make to gather the sound of a consensus among people who actually disagree. No surprise that any decent articles on teacher concepts come from scientists (e.g. psychologists) more often than teaching theorists.

meristohm

A decade on from my teacher certification, and not currently teaching classes (only parenting), and Vygotsky's ZPD is still a touchstone for me.