Life Failed Target \'Zone Proximal Development\' Scaffold

¶ … life failed target 'zone proximal development' scaffold learning, resulted person confused / frustrated. While normal heard term, reflect back 'lessons' friends, family work colleagues understand a complete success. ID

Assessment 2,-Week 2 Journal Entry

Discuss an instance in your everyday life where you may have failed to target one's 'zone of proximal development' to scaffold learning, which may have resulted in the person becoming confused and/or frustrated. While it is quite normal to have never heard of the term before, you may now be able to reflect back on one of the many 'lessons' you have given to friends, family or work colleagues and understand why it wasn't a complete success.

The 'zone of proximal development' is what a learner can do without assistance from an outside authority. According to the learning theory of 'scaffolding,' an effective instructor builds upon the existing knowledge of the student to give the student confidence and to help the pupil establish a sense of continuity between his or her old and new learning. Intuitively, I tried to do this when I was trying to teach another employee how to use a new computer system at work. The situation was already awkward because the other employee was an older woman, recently returned to the workforce, and I was younger than she was. I tried to use common reference points that I thought would draw upon her previous knowledge, such as saying: "you know when you are writing a document in Word at home" and use examples of how it was easy to navigate the graphics of the system, much like using an iPhone. However, she was extremely uncomfortable with technology and soon it became clear that she seldom used other technical devices in her life outside of work.

She could use her phone to contact her friends and family, but other forms of technology intimidated her. The use of new software made her nervous. She insisted on taking notes on a piece of paper, rather than watching and learning from how I manipulated the system while demonstrating it, although I personally believed that watching me would be an easier way to learn, based upon the manual nature of the tasks she had to perform. This also meant that she did not look at what I was doing very much, because she was so busy writing things down. She constantly had to ask me to repeat steps, resulting in further confusion. She acted as though she was learning a foreign language from the 'ground up' versus learning how to use a new computer system.

The woman was also unaware of how to perform simple tasks like cutting and pasting, which I took for granted. Eventually, she was able to learn the system over time, but only after asking many questions of myself and my colleagues. Even then she was very slow and seemed to be following her notes rather than just 'doing it.' The experience highlighted to me how confidence is also a part of a learning foundation on which a scaffold must be built. If someone feels they are not 'good' at math or do not understand technology, they will be more resistant and less confident about using the knowledge they have, and the teacher must work harder and be more creative to scaffold the new knowledge upon existing structures. Scaffolding requires the teacher to see the world from the student's point-of-view.