Physical Education and the ZPD

Learning in theory and practice: Vygotsky’s ZPD and physical education in primary education Introduction Age-graded schooling is one of the most common and conventional features of today’s academic environment. For younger learners in the primary education levels, this separation of young children from adolescents may seem on the face of it like a common sense approach to education—yet, as Gray and Feldman (2004) point out, separation such as this actually is more restrictive to the educative experience than it is facilitative.

The reason is found in Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD) theory. Vygotsky was an early 20th century Soviet thinker who articulated the idea that individuals learn most effectively when they are aided by other skilled individuals who know how to perform a certain task.

Child learners can benefit, for example, from being placed in a zone of proximal development: alone or confined to a sphere in which they are surrounded by only their own peers—young children like themselves who have none of the skill sets that this same group of learners is expected to develop over time—they are cut off from the essential source of learning, i.e., those adolescents who are older who understand and have the skills to perform.

Yet, take these same children and place them in a zone in which they are near adolescents—older individuals who have acquired certain skills—and the young learners will be more apt to pick up on the skill sets that they require in order to advance in knowledge acquisition. This paper will explore Vygotsky’s theory of the zone of proximal development and show how it can be related to my own teaching in physical education at the primary education level.

Vygotsky’s ZPD The zone of proximal development is the area that exists between what an individual can do on his or her own without any help from others and what an individual cannot do. The ZPD is that region in the learning environment in which “the other” approaches the learner offering assistance in some form.

This assistance can literally take any form: it can be as simple as pointing to an object, the name of which the learner does not know; it can be as involved as demonstrating for a learning how to perform a function, like climbing a rope or changing a tire. The point is that the ZPD is that shade of experience in which the learner gets to follow a teacher, mentor, or tutor and use the guidance offered to do a task, gain understanding, or develop a skill.

Without ZPD, the individual learner is cut off from the source of knowledge. With ZPD, the individual learner is given access to those who have the ability to pass on knowledge to others and the learner can take advantage of this access to learn at his or her own pace. It is through ZPD that the idea of self-directed learning is made possible (Gray & Feldman, 2004). As Crain (2010) notes, Vygotsky was concerned about the manner in which educators approach education.

He believed that teachers should be there to guide—not to present material to students that was beyond their reach and then push, shove, pull or drag them to the next level before the young learner had firmly grasped the ideas presented previously. Inherent in this belief was the concept of scaffolding, which is essentially intertwined with the ZPD process.

Scaffolding is the teaching method in which the learner is empowered to “solve a problem, carry out a task, or achieve a goal through a gradual shedding of outside assistance” (Pinantoan, 2013). The notion of scaffolding is inherent in the idea of ZPD because it is in the ZPD that the learner engages with the guide in a manner that is direct and purposeful. The learner is mindful of what is going on and the guide is mindful of the knowledge acquisition process being activated.

It is a zone in which active learning is transpiring, which is a type of learning that has been deemed as most effective at helping students to develop a deep down understanding of concepts and acquisition of needed skills (Jensen, Kummer & Godoy, 2015). Education is a kind of apprenticeship, according to Gray and Feldman (2004), and this apprenticeship “was implicit in the educational writings of Lev Vygotsky, who claimed that children acquire knowledge and develop skills through interactions with others who are more competent than themselves” (p. 111).

By interacting with peers outside their own age group, children can pick up on traits, manners, skills, knowledge, and examples that they otherwise would not have access to. A school that facilitates this kind of action, like the Sudbury Valley School used as a case in point in the study by Gray and Feldman (2004) can lay the foundation for growth and development that all schools aim to achieve but that schools which are particularly aware of the importance of ZDP can achieve most successfully.

ZPD in Physical Education Physical education at the primary education level is more important today than ever before—particularly with the rise of obesity among school-aged children and the risk of the onset of diabetes associated with obesity (Todd, Street, Ziviani, Byrne & Hills, 2015; Mozaffarian, 2016). Hills, Dengel and Lubans (2015) have shown that teachers can play an important role in educating students about the need for and benefits of physical activity to reduce the risk of obesity and diabetes later in life.

By developing good habits with respect to physical activity, young children can have healthier cardiovascular systems and a brighter future.

While teachers are, of course, crucial in guiding children to embrace physical activity and to acquire knowledge of exercises through physical education, the zone of proximal development can actually play an even more important part in this acquisition because it is through the process of guidance that young learners are empowered to do the things they can do with a little help and assistance from those who can do on their own. Teachers can help but so too can older students.

The great part of ZPD being used in schools is that it does not just rely on teachers to serve as the guide or mentor for primary school learners. Rather it can give older students the opportunity to act as mentors and develop a sense of personal responsibility and leadership. ZPD helps learners to learn and teachers to teach. Anyone who possesses a skill is a teacher in waiting in the light of ZPD.

Anyone who has the potential to master a task with a little guidance is a student in waiting in the light of ZPD. Thus, the benefits of ZPD are enormous in the field of primary level physical education—especially considering the tightening of school budgets and the stretching of the duties of more and more teachers. By allowing older pupils to mix with younger ones, the entire school or at least the entire gym or wherever physical education is practiced can become a zone of proximal development.

This idea is crucial, in fact: ZPD is not just a method that a teacher should implement from time to time but rather it is an environment that a teacher can create with the help of the school place administration. By turning an entire classroom or an entire school into a zone of proximal development, the facilitation of education for young learners becomes much more enhanced.

Barker, Quennerstedt and Annerstedt (2015) showed in their study of group work sequences in physical education that there is a “flexible and fluid nature of ‘expertness’ as it exists within groups” (p. 409), which gives young learners the opportunity to compare guides, to experience different training styles, and to find a mentor that works for them. The fluid nature of “expertness” as Barker et al.

(2015) call it is one of the realities of the learning experience: everyone has come across the fact that experts are often divided in their opinions as to what methods for such and such an activity work best or why such and such a solution is preferable to another.

Young learners who catch on to this reality at an early age through the experience of being in a ZPD for their physical education are better positioned to be aware of how experts should be evaluated rather than accepted out of the gate. Physical education is particularly helpful for forming the consciousness and awareness of the young primary school student—not just for learning physical exercises or burning calories.

The mind is exercised during the active learning process in the classroom and during physical education it is given a new kind of learning experience—the experience of exercise through recreational activity. Jumping jacks, jogging, sprinting, jump roping, rope climbing, tumbling, racing, playing basketball, playing baseball or dodgeball or kickball—all of these activities help to develop the brain as well as the body. They require tactical thinking, forethought, decision making, attention to detail, awareness of surroundings and so on.

Young learners can learn to use their brains to pay attention to all of these aspects by following the guidance of their teacher who can serve as their ZPD example—but they can also benefit from mixed-age groups or group work in the physical education course. They can see that there may be a variety of approaches to succeeding at a sport, or they may be different takes depending on the individual regarding how to do a good tumble (Barker et al., 2015).

The young learner in the ZPD environment has access to more than one approach or method and can begin to develop a sense of what method works best for him or her—or, if none of them work well, the learner can seek out a new guide or mentor—one who speaks to his or her needs. That is the beauty of creating a zone of proximal development in the realm of physical education: it opens up the experience for everyone—not just for learners.

It invites all who possess some skill in physical education to become mentors, and these young (or old) mentors are given the opportunity to test or practice their own mentoring skills. They are given the chance to see how well they can explain something or how effectively they can assist by giving little demonstrations, directions, guidance, or tips. They can see how well they really know something, how skilled they really are. The more that one can explain a phenomenon, the more likely it is that one understands it.

So if one is truly skilled in basketball or wants to be a leader among others, having the opportunity to teach those who do not know by giving simple demonstrations or offering a little bit of guidance is the perfect way to develop the kind of leadership mentality and skills that older students should strive to acquire.

The zone of proximal development thus has a two-way flow of benefits—or even a three-way flow: 1) it benefits the young primary level learners who can see various examples of how to do an exercise such as pull-ups or push-ups just by watching older students; 2) it gives older students the opportunity to serve as leaders to young students and impresses upon them the responsibility that they have to be good role models for others; and 3) it frees up the teacher’s time to devote it to students who need more one-on-one guidance.

The zone of proximal development lets students learn at their own pace, as well—which means that for students who master simple tasks quickly, they can move on to learn more advanced tasks from older students and may even soon be joining in their games. Everyone has surely seen a young athlete in the making joining in a game of soccer with older students: the young learner has the skill and competency to move forward and play with the older students and so should be given that opportunity.

Creating a ZPD in the physical education environment allows that to happen. Those young learners who are not quite so advanced will have the opportunity to engage in less challenging activities—sports that they can be competitive in or exercises that they want to master. By creating a zone of proximal development environment, the entire playing field becomes level in the sense that young learners are free to pursue and set their own learning pace.

A Need for More Focus on ZPD in Primary Education Currently there is not a great deal of literature available on the educational benefits of age-mixing among students. Gray and Feldman (2004) point out that their “systematic survey of the psychological and educational literature revealed that researchers have paid almost no attention to interactions between children and adolescents” (p. 112).

In other words, few researchers are looking at the ways in which the zone of proximal development is utilized through the process of age-mixed educational environments, in which young learners mix with older students and thereby have access to more ZPD opportunities. As Gray and Feldman (2004) note, this is unfortunate because the evidence indicates that age-mixing is a great way to facilitate ZPD instruction.

The case study of Sudbury Valley School shows, however, how age-mixed learning environments offer students that chance to engage in self-directed learning, using guides and examples through ZPD only as reference points. ZPD is not to be confused with the type of traditional teaching approach in which a teacher explains a concept at the front of the room to all the students and then orders them to execute the task associated with the concept.

ZPD is more about witnessing others engage in the task and understanding the concept through experiential learning. Experiential learning is not necessarily the key to knowledge acquisition—sometimes a learner in the ZPD can benefit from a simple word, hint, suggestion or direction before the scales fall from the eyes, so to speak, and the learner has an ah-ha! moment.

The point is that without the zone of proximal development, the learner is at a disadvantage because he or she must rely on messages getting through to them from the traditional but somewhat barricaded zone of instruction—the teacher giving a lesson and the student picking up on the lesson and moving on. Such an approach is not the best because it does not facilitate personal advancement or responsibility: the learner does not take ownership of the educative process.

In ZDP, the learner does take ownership, and the results are positive especially when the ZDP occurs in an environment where age groups can mix and young learners benefit from having access to older students (Gray & Feldman, 2015). Creating More Support for ZPD through Physical Education To drum up more support for creating ZPD environments in primary education, the best way forward may be to start off the process by introducing it by way of physical education.

Physical education by its very nature is focused on physical activity and exercises that require students to be up and running about. In this type of environment it is natural for interaction to take place among students—and with interaction and sociality being part of the process of development, the opportunity is there to allow age groups to mix. So long as there is enough room and space for groups to focus on their own activities, the opportunity that such an approach to learning presents is more than favorable.

Inter-student interactions and student learning in physical education can help physical education teachers achieve more (Barker et al., 2015) and it can also serve as an example of a how a school might promote ZPD learning throughout other fields as well. In short, the field of physical education can serve as the training ground for other disciplines and teachers who can share in the experience themselves by attending the physical education classes and seeing first-hand how age groups interact and how older students engage with younger students.

Zeichner, Payne and Brayko (2015) state that this type of approach to education is essentially the democratization of education: by reducing power hierarchies, more authority is given to others in the educational system—including to students, who thus become responsible for passing on what they have received. They take up the torch of teaching by acting as conduits of learning for younger learners.

Nowhere can this process be more easily seen than on the literal playing field, where learners of various age groups can partake in a single activity or sport, compete, develop skills through direct observation, simple instruction, or scaffolding. The physical education environment is easily the best for introducing the concept of ZPD to other teachers who might then take it back to their own classrooms and create an environment in their own rooms that uses the zone of proximal development concept by democratizing the educational experience for learners.

In My Own Practice In my own practice in the field of physical education in primary school, I would like to implement this practice of democratizing the educative experience for young learners by having volunteers from older grades come in during class periods for young learners. These volunteers would be tasked with playing with the young learners and serving as mentors and little assistants.

This would help to cut down on the strain that teachers can experience on the job as they try to look after so many different learners all at once. It would also be a good learning experience for the older students as it would give them the opportunity to test their leadership skills, apply themselves in mentorship and facilitate the learning for younger students. Physical education is about focusing on exercises, activities, and sports that can.