Zone Of Proximal Development Essay

“The true direction of the development of thinking is not from the individual to the social, but from the social to the individual” (Vygotsky, n.d.) Within Vygotsky's sociocultural theory he believed that the two most important concepts were zone of proximal development and scaffolding. Between these two concepts the child will gain knowledge from someone with more experience and education. Using the Sociocultural theory I will explain how zone of proximal development and scaffolding shaped my education, and shaped the way I learned and how I learned it based on the environment I grew up in.
The first portion of the sociocultural theory is zone of proximal development. As stated by Rathus (2017) “zone of proximal development is a range of tasks that a child can carry out with the help of someone who is more skilled” (p.25).Using the word proximal to describe this concept shows that the learning is done in a very close or near by environment. Zone of proximal development is how I personally gained majority of my skills in life and education. As a child all the way to my college years my mother gave an amazing education just at home alone. Reading, singing and speaking on a constant basis allowed me to listen and gain that knowledge on my own. The surroundings of a child makes a big …show more content…
As stated by Janneke van de Pol and Monique Volman, and Jos Beishuizen (2010) “a scaffold is a temporary structure erected to help with the building or modification of another structure” (p.271). Although the definition is quite literal it explains the concept, another definition is from Rathus (2017) explaining “a scaffold is a temporary skeletal structure that enables workers to fabricate a building or bridge or other permanent structure”(p.25). With these definitions we see that scaffolding provides a child with a framework in which they learn something and eventually will not need the skeletal structure of it later