Zone of Proximal Development

The concept of a zone of proximal development (ZPD) was developed by Lev Semenovich Vygotsky during the late 1920s and elaborated progressively until his death in 1934. In Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, Vygotsky defined the ZPD 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 peer” (p. 86). That is, the ZPD was understood by Vygotsky to describe the current or actual level of development of the child and the next level attainable through the use of mediating semiotic and environmental tools and capable adult or peer facilitation. The “size” of the ZPD was not posited as a fixed property of the child across age periods. It would, presumably, require continual assessment at each level.

An outgrowth of Zygotsky's model of psychological development, the concept of the ZPD inspired an entire generation of Russian research in the area of developmental psychology that was generally disregarded in the West, where behaviorism was in ascendance. In the latter half of the 20th century, Vygotsky's developmental model and the centrality of the ZPD in the context of teaching and learning benefited from a wider dispersion in the West, and the publication in 1962 of Thought and Language and in 1978 of Mind in Society seemed to coincide with a greater receptivity in Western pedagogical circles to sociocultural theory and led empirical support and theoretical clarity to a new wave of educational praxis that continued unabated into the next century.

The zone of proximal development was present in Thought and Language, but not central to the focus of that work, which was concerned principally with psychosocial development and the processes that led children from egocentric speech and spontaneous concepts to conscious learning, the use of speech as a mediating tool, and the importance of inner thought processes as vehicles for the development of (systematic and learned) scientific concepts. The elaboration of the concept of the ZPD in chapter 6 of Mind in Society engendered great excitement in the academic community, and a generation of educators, to greater or lesser degrees, anchored a flotilla of pedagogies and practices to Vygotsky's concepts. This latter work clearly posited the inextricable link between learning and development and emphasized the social environment (and formal schooling) as the significant mediating factor in maturational processes.