08/02/2023 – Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development
VIDEO LINK FOR THE TEACHING AND LEARNING MICRO-SESSION
A 15minute micro teaching session, hosted by Santanu Vasant.
The concept, zone of proximal development was developed by Soviet psychologist and social constructivist Lev Vygotsky (1896 – 1934).
The zone of proximal development (ZPD) has been defined as:
“the distance between the actual developmental 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” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86).
I found this on the Teaching exchange program, and I thought it would be particular interesting to attend, after my own micro-teaching session. I went into this online learning experience to see how other teaching staff contribute their knowledge in micro teaching scenarios. This was mostly set up for the teaching fellowship, so the attendees are experts in their fields and contributed to the conversation, I was merely amazed at the conversation and tried to evaluate between my physical practice and how I was teaching during Covid and mostly in a digital environment.
My summary for this session, was the use and importance of space, equipment, peers and social activities are to the individual learning experience and how one who attends in a physical manner has more successful chance of succeeding in their practice/course.
Social learning queues are ample in knitting cultures and also in the knitting workshops, we encourage peer to peer engagement and normally learn new subjects or equipment in a ‘buddy’ system that allows two sets of learners to engage together in the taught areas. This was a practice that I, myself was taught in and something I find incredible useful and reminiscent of ‘knitting circles’ pivoting social culture norms around the subject matter into open learning environment, this encourages engagement amongst peers and problem solving to happen amongst each other.
” In the terms of learning, it’s the educator’s role to provide task that allow students to cross the ZPD. with SCAFFOLDING (engaging the students interest, avoiding distraction, clear instruction, supportive interactions with the educator, emphasis the important features of the task, demonstrate the task), probably the most useful concept from ZPD” Santanu Vasant.
Scaffolding – Link to webpage to learn move. Below are the benefits extracted from this link for using scaffolding in teaching.
- Improves the likelihood that students will retain new information
- Helps connect foundational knowledge to new concepts
- Engages students with their learning and tracking their own progress
- Gives students more autonomy and independence in the classroom
- Bridges student learning gaps in traditionally difficult course content
- Reduces students’ feelings of frustration, confusion and negative self-perceptions in the classroom
- Improves communication between students and teachers
- Allows students to “fail productively” and encourages asking for help
- Keeps classes organized and on schedule
Scaffolding vs Differentiation
Scaffolding uses the concept of following discrete steps to master a concept, were differentiation reads the audiences and analyses students needs to learning scenarios. It can be said that using both methods in teaching can give different types of learnings a chance to keep up with their peers and this would fall in line with inclusive learning/teaching practices. Below is another extract of both methods side by side:
| SCAFFOLDING | DIFFERENTIATION |
|---|---|
| Breaks up a lesson, concept or skill into distinct units or parts | Presents different students with different methods of learning |
| Teachers decrease their support as students progress through lessons | Lessons may follow a different format for different students, with varying levels of teacher support |
| Enables students to develop autonomy | Allows students to interact with course content in the ways most comfortable or effective for them |
| Example: Read a summary of a book chapter, define key vocabulary words, then read the chapter as a group and answer a short quiz. | Example: Watch a video about the chapter, define key vocabulary words using a dictionary, then watch the video again and summarize out loud to the teacher. |
A whole new concept for my own teaching and learning practice, questions that I need to ask myself:
1. Do I engage the student interest?
I believe I do, I allow for questions, ‘what ifs’ and active learning to participate in my teaching practice giving the students opportunities to explore the teaching, question it and hopefully challenge it.
2. How do I avoid distractions?
I do find this incredible hard, as workshops are busy and my taught sessions are not a whole class room, but a small selection of student learning or ‘think tank’/’study groups’ while also having academics grab students for 1 to 1 tutorials all day long, I have to be strategic and energetic to repeat myself 5-6 times a day with consistency and while allowing for mobile phones to be used for recording (something that is against my will).
3. Do I provide clear instructions?
Yes, I work both asynchronously and synchronously in an active learning format, I have written hand outs as back ups but I challenge students to make their own notes and with that I have built majority of the technical resource content to be used asynchronously. I have extensively with students/alumni simplified my hand outs to be as easy to read and follow along with my classes but also in self directed study.
4. Do I provide supportive Interactions?
As I work in the studio 9-5 and with a small team, I believe that my teaching and supportive interactions are daily and I encourage conversation around practice and challenge students on what they are doing, reciting their instructions so I know they have understood the task or if its outside of the task at hand they are welcomed to come and ask questions around the subject matter.
5. Do I emphasis the importance of the task?
I do this through demonstration of task, student participating and also a tactile environment with different types of evidence around the subject matter. The whys and hows are co-existing and it involves no single person but a team, that we must consider.
A simple presentation led me to challenge my preconceptions of teaching and practices around learning environments, something I wish to learn more about as my subject matter is very physically demanding but my interest lays in digital tactility. A late interaction led to the beauty of digital learning environments with a participant who couldn’t attend during the session but followed up with some really interesting connections between habits and scaffolds and learning environments, that really intrigued me. I have been granted permission to share this interaction:
Habit informed scaffolds – ‘reinforced pedagogy’ (something I just made up)
That is also a pedagogic movement –
“Reinforcement can be used to teach new skills, teach a replacement behavior for an interfering behavior, increase appropriate behaviors, or increase on-task behavior (AFIRM Team, 2015). Reinforcement may seem like a simple strategy that all teachers use, but it is often not used as effectively as it could be. The goal of this article is to describe how reinforcement can be used more systematically in the classroom.” Extract link
Could this lead in a direction that could benefit my rhizomatic journey in pedagogy and how disruption is used as a benefactor to education and the alignment with scaffolding techniques and habit building around taught sessions. Questions, I need to ponder and dive deeper into, I have just purchased the book ‘Atomic Habits’ but I will also embed the video from you-tube. Understanding the system used in this book and outlining with lets say assessment outcomes could a reinforced addon to rhizomatic pedagogy be distilled into practice? or is it a stand alone research topic that needs to be investigated.
Technical pedagogy and research falls in this alignment of ‘reinforced pedagogy’ we are artisanal/crafters and masters in our practice that is only succeeded through practice and habit building but do we do this unintentionally? or do we embed this in our practice that we are unaware that we are doing it? but have not named that unconscious behaviour.
The scenario or world that I am relying on in this ‘concept’ is as;
1. We continuously practice, redo, remake and teach technical skills yearly/daily etc.
2. We advance our knowledge through peer to peer interaction with technical teams inside and outside of subject matter.
3. We challenge or push our own skills in advancing or translating complex technical skills into a suitable teaching environment that is emphasized on task and purpose.
4. We reflect, re-analyze, test and require feedback on all our teaching and practice, be it from student, academic and management.
Points that we don’t really do;
1. We are only level 4, so a lot of the research options are mostly self driven out of curiosity and not recognized with in UAL.
2. Knowledge exchange doesn’t happen on a technical level, which could really benefit and shake up technical teaching scenarios with industrial foresight and funding opportunities.
3. Technical staff are seemly used as the ‘work force’ and the hierarchy between academics and technical staff is extremely off putting for many.
4. Many technical staff members feel that they aren’t represented in the terms of opportunities, pay and equality in work.
Although these are just my thoughts, from previous discussions and opportunities to express concerns, I do think it would be worth while researching and studying the comparison between technical pedagogy and ‘reinforced pedagogy’ I will leave you with the you tube video below to ponder thoughts and see this incredible book broken down into a short 30 minute video.