Widening the ZPD

At first glance the title might seem a bit odd, it may seem the opposite of what we want to achieve and it is. This may be a greater issue than we think. Normally a student which can't do something may ask for help from a peer or a more capable peer. Or in the case of a question, the student who doesn't know the answer may take a while to process something to answer. As Sir Ken Robinson said in his speech 'If children don't know, then they'll have a go.'

If a student can't answer right away, it is our jobs as teachers to allow the process time to naturally occur or to evaluate the interaction occurring and perhaps elicit from another student. But not to provide the answer.


Why do so many teachers answer their own question for the students? This gets into the whole issue of display questions and referential questions, but I've seen many teachers as a student a question only to answer it for them a few seconds later, not even waiting for that process time to occur.

They are essentially robbing the students' of their journey through their ZPD.

What we need to do, is help students discover their own ZPD, discover their abilities and in doing so narrow their ZPD's to the point where the student can incrementally process his or her own abilities and discover their own limits. By knowing their own abilities they will be more likely to be autonomous learners and be able to stretch their imaginations and gain confidence in whatever they do. They will be able to challenge anything. We will have taught them that they can.

But, the most disappointing of all is the teachers who don't allow students to process. If a student is working through a problem, there is silence, which some teachers fear. Why?

This silence is necessary for students to work out an answer, so why do teachers intervene and answer for them to spur the class along? It doesn't do any good for the student and it teachers them two things.

1. That if they don't answer, the answer will be provided for them.

2. If they don't answer fast enough, then something is wrong. It teachers them that thinking through something is wrong and it isolates their disability to answer fast enough.

So, students who don't like to answer, get the answer provided and students who need a little more time get robbed of their opportunity to answer. No one discovers their own abilities and the ZPD widens.

The students who wait for the answer, don't learn to think and never discover their abilities. They are too busy avoiding them.

The students who need more time to process learn that they can't answer and despite the fact that they may really know the answer, may end up just giving up because their journey through their 'self' ZPD was interrupted.

I don't think this is what Vygotsky had in mind in his ZPD theory.
Students who may know the answer but are told the answer before the processing is finished learn a very great bad thing.
They learn that getting help from a more capable peer means that the answer is provided whether they want it or not. They learn that their abilities are limited and someone thinks that their ZPD is too wide to be able to process on their own. They learn that there is a teacher who they hold in high regard doesn't think they have ability. The ZPD is not just a concept, it is our responsibility to help students learn to process their way through it through scaffolding and through collaborative efforts. The ZPD is I think, directly linked to self worth and self recognition.

So for teachers who don't pause, who don't wait for that process time to occur are not helping. We need to challenge our students and help our students really discover their own abilities. Not provide the answers because we want to hurry the class along.

List of My Books - Mind in Society - the first entry

I have added a new list on the right hand page of my blog, called 'list of my books'.

This is my first entry. This book called Mind in Society is based upon the works of Vygotsky and covers his concept of the Zone of Proximal Development.

Vygotsky described the zone of proximal development as:
“…the distance between the actual development 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” (1978: 86).

Vygotsky adds:
“an essential feature of learning is that it creates the zone of proximal development; that is, learning awakens a variety of internal developmental processes that are able to operate only when a child is interacting with people in his environment and in cooperation with his peers” (1978: 90).

Michael Cole is one of the editors for this book.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in Society. Harvard University Press. Cambridge MA.

Vygotsky

This is a picture of Lev Vygotsky, because of whom the evolution of this blog came to be.
In my quest as a teacher to make a difference, many of the lessons I have been doing of late have been a result of the theories of Vygotsky.
In the past, a teacher largely of the PPP methodology and yet unsure of why we taught this way, began an MA course through the University of Birmingham. After a year of the course and about halfway completed, my dissertation has been decided. I have decided to use the Vygotsky's concept of ZPD and social interaction to tie in a link to TBL. The current TBL concept is more of a communication based focus, but under my research I have decided to to a revision of the TBL methodology to make it fit with the concept of social interaction, scaffolding and ZPD. A recently submitted paper as part of my studies proposed a new type of task, called a V-Task, which the students in their efforts to acquire language need to access it first. But the accessing of the language would need to come from a type of task that motivated students to become autonomous learners, and realize that the best way to learn is through social interaction within the classroom. The teacher, also playing an autonomous role, is not the only resource in the classroom to get information from, but other students, books and dictionaries etc, are also available. The V-task, based around this concept differs from a procedural or a process type syllabus, where the task can still be centered around a certain target or theme, yet in order to complete the task, the students need to access language and the completion of the task is a by-product of language access.

Teachers, providing scaffolding, and also providing the means for students to understand how to learn the language rather than just learning the language, play a much different role in the classroom rather than the traditional one which we are so used to.

So the link between Vygotsky and this new type of task V-task, is a type of lesson which I will be focussing much more on in the future, already having many classes work with this type of task. The results are amazing and the students are putting more and more energy into their lessons.

If anyone wants to comment on the V-task, or would like to discuss it further, I would be more than happy to share or exchange ideas.

Mark

This is R-chan.
She is currently in SuperKids 4, yet, most of the lessons we do are from a variety of sources, as well as from whatever R-chan wants to do. She pretty much decides what she wants to learn. She has gone from a student who followed the PPP method to one of now who much prefers learning things on her own using a much more holistic method. So the SuperKids 4 book isn't followed from the traditional PPP format it was designed for, but instead we move around a lot, covering things from the book but in a TBL format.

The picture here was taken after we played 2 games.

The first game was based on the lesson in SK4 making comparisons between 2 animals.
We played the memory game. But when two cards were turned over they had to be compared in some way.

So I went first.
I turned over the ostrich and hippopotamus cards. I said 'An ostrich is faster than a hippopotamus'. Her response was one of '???' So I said the word 'fast' again and then repeated my sentence. This time going slower and emphasizing the faster.
She agreed and then it was her turn.

She turned over the lion and the elephant. 'Elephant big is lion.' Far from a perfect sentence, but the word order was correct.

The game progressed to the point where she heard enough of my language so that she could begin to create the comparisons herself with much more sentence structure.

Then came the moment that defines the new v-task. She asked me to help her with a new word so that she could make the sentence.

She turned over the elephant card and the bear card. She could have said bigger, but she asked me 'How do you say 'omoi' in English? I replied 'heavy', I didn't want to give the comparitive form, she didn't ask for it. Her sentence 'A elephant is heavier is than bear.' Her interlanguage was working its way through and she was discovering that the adjective -er form was used for comparisons. The word order remained correct and the emergence of the -er form told me she was on her way.
The rule she then applied to the peacock and snake card which she used the word beautifuller.

The next game we played was designed to reduce this simple form to something more applicable. In the picture, on the table you can see all of the cards face up. The object of this game was to choose an animal and the other person had to guess which animal it was.

I went first. I chose 'elephant'. She guessed lion. I said 'it's bigger'. She then said 'rhinocerous'. I replied 'It's heavier'. So every animal she guessed I used her new guess to compare it to my animal. She was pretty much in tune with this game. It was simpler, the language was simpler and it allowed me also to focus on the 'more' structures, although these structures were not part of her ZPD on this day. She wasn't able to distance this zone.

It came to the point in this game though that she could guess my animal within 3 guesses based on the clues I gave her. Also using the idea of the v-task, I added new adjectives and in order for her to guess the animal, she needed to know what this new adjective meant. She was allowed to ask me. I used slower, more beautiful, taller (she got the word longer, but the concept of taller wasn't there until I had picked giraffe as my animal to introduce this new adjective). She immediately guessed 'giraffe' and then turned around and used 'taller' herself in her next turn.

Having a student by themselves at this age can sometimes be very tedious, but R-chan has the personality and the motivation to be able to learn on her own.

Other things we do in class;

She does 10 minutes of reading out loud, from Penguin Readers 'Anne of Green Gables' level 2 book. At the 10 minute mark, I stop her and we look at the progress she has made based on previous week's readings. She can read a little over a page in 10 minutes, as opposed to 3/4 of a page from when she first started.
She also signs out a book a week from our library, she picks it. She has read over 50 books since the library began.We have a variety of readers from various publishers, so there is a variety for her to choose from. She has no favorites, but she has read a lot of the Story Street series from Longman. She is reading level 5 of that series. Sometimes she chooses a much lower level book than she is more capable of, but it is her choice.

We also do a lot of writing in class, she does study a little grammar when the need arises, or when the homework dictates that grammar needs to be covered, but I design the lesson around a more 'noticing' approach. For example when we covered past tense. I laid all of the cards on the table, so she could see the words. I asked her to point out similarities between the cards, and she immediately pointed out the -ed ending.

A pleasure to teach. Her dream is to work at Disneyland as a guide.

Good luck R-chan!

Mark