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The zone of proximal development is the gap between what a learner has already mastered (actual level of development) and what he or she can achieve when provided with educational support (potential development). It is the level of a child’s development which displays itself in collaborative activity with an adult but not in the child’s individual activity. Bruner (1982) describes the zone of proximal development figuratively as the child’s ability to recognize the value of hinges and props even before he is conscious of their full significance. The concept was introduced by Lev Vygotsky to deal with two problems of developmental and educational psychology: (1) how to correctly assess children’s intellectual abilities and (2) how to evaluate the efficacy of instructional practices (Vygotsky 1978; Wertsch 1985). “It is the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of...
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References
Galperin, P. (1992). The problem of activity in Soviet psychology. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 30(4), 37–59.
van Oers, B., Wardekker, W., Elbers, E., & van der Veer, R. (2008). The transformation of learning: Advances in cultural-historical activity theory. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wertsch, J. V. (1985). Vygotsky and the social formation of mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Podolskiy, A.I. (2012). Zone of Proximal Development. In: Seel, N.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1428-6_316
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