Vygotsky's ZPD and Physical Education in Primary School

Introduction

Age-graded schooling is one of the most common and conventional features of today's academic environment. For younger learners at the primary education level, the 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, such separation is actually 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 twentieth-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 only by their own peers — young children who have none of the skill sets that this group of learners is expected to develop over time — they are cut off from an essential source of learning: namely, older adolescents who understand and can perform the relevant skills. Place these same children in a zone in which they are near older individuals who have already acquired certain skills, however, and the young learners will be far more likely to pick up the skill sets they need in order to advance in knowledge acquisition. This paper explores Vygotsky's theory of the zone of proximal development and shows how it can be applied to teaching physical education at the primary school level.

Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development

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 yet do. The ZPD is that region in the learning environment in which "the other" approaches the learner and offers assistance in some form. This assistance can take virtually any form: it can be as simple as pointing to an object whose name the learner does not know, or as involved as demonstrating how to perform a function, such as climbing a rope or changing a tire.

The ZPD is that dimension of experience in which the learner gets to follow a teacher, mentor, or tutor and use the guidance offered to complete a task, gain understanding, or develop a skill. Without ZPD, the individual learner is cut off from the source of knowledge. With ZPD, the learner is given access to those who have the ability to pass on knowledge, and can take advantage of that 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 instruction. He believed that teachers should be there to guide — not to present material beyond the learner's reach and then push, pull, or drag students to the next level before they had firmly grasped what had been 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 ZPD because it is within 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 taking place — a type of learning that has been found most effective at helping students develop a deep 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 would otherwise not have access to. A school that facilitates this kind of interaction — such as the Sudbury Valley School, used as a case in point in Gray and Feldman's (2004) study — can lay the foundation for growth and development that all schools aim to achieve, but that schools particularly aware of the importance of ZPD can achieve most successfully.

ZPD in Physical Education

Physical education at the primary level is more important today than ever before — particularly given the rise of obesity among school-aged children and the associated risk of diabetes onset (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 in reducing the risk of obesity and diabetes later in life. By developing good habits around physical activity, young children can enjoy healthier cardiovascular systems and a brighter future. While teachers are crucial in guiding children to embrace physical activity and to acquire knowledge 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 guided engagement that young learners are empowered to do things they can accomplish with a little help from those who can already do them independently. Teachers can help, but so too can older students.

One of the great advantages of ZPD being used in schools is that it does not rely solely on teachers to serve as guides or mentors for primary-level learners. Rather, it gives older students the opportunity to act as mentors and to 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 context of ZPD; anyone who has the potential to master a task with a little guidance is a student in waiting. The benefits of ZPD are thus enormous in primary-level physical education — especially considering the tightening of school budgets and the expanding workload faced by more and more teachers. By allowing older pupils to mix with younger ones, the entire school — or at least the gym or wherever physical education takes place — can become a zone of proximal development.

This idea is crucial: ZPD is not merely a method a teacher should implement from time to time but rather an environment that a teacher can create with the support of school administration. By turning an entire classroom or school into a zone of proximal development, the facilitation of education for young learners becomes far more powerful. 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, experience different training styles, and find a mentor that works for them. This fluid nature of expertise is one of the realities of the learning experience: everyone has encountered the fact that experts are often divided in their opinions about which methods for a given activity work best. Young learners who catch on to this reality early — through the experience of being in a ZPD during physical education — are better positioned to develop the capacity to evaluate expertise critically rather than accepting it uncritically.

Physical education is particularly valuable 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 any 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, baseball, 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, and awareness of surroundings. Young learners can learn to direct their attention to all of these aspects by following the guidance of their teacher as a ZPD example, but they can also benefit from mixed-age groups or group work in the physical education class. They may see a variety of approaches to succeeding at a sport, or encounter different takes on how best to complete a 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 works best for them — or, if no existing approach suits them, they can seek out a new guide or mentor who speaks more directly to their needs.

That is the value 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 older) mentors are given the opportunity to test and practice their own mentoring skills. They can see how well they can explain something or how effectively they can assist through demonstrations, directions, guidance, or tips. They can see how well they truly know something and how skilled they really are. The more thoroughly one can explain a phenomenon, the more likely it is that one genuinely understands it. So if one is skilled in basketball or wants to be a leader among peers, having the opportunity to teach those who do not yet know — by giving simple demonstrations or offering 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 — or even three-way — flow of benefits: (1) it benefits young primary-level learners, who can observe various examples of how to perform exercises such as pull-ups or push-ups simply by watching older students; (2) it gives older students the opportunity to serve as leaders and impresses upon them the responsibility to be good role models; and (3) it frees up the teacher's time to devote to students who need more one-on-one guidance. The ZPD also allows students to learn at their own pace, which means that students who master simple tasks quickly can move on to more advanced tasks with older students and may even soon be joining in their games. Everyone has surely seen a young athlete joining a game of soccer with older students: the young learner has the skill and competency to move forward and should be given that opportunity. Creating a ZPD in the physical education environment allows exactly that. Those young learners who are not yet so advanced will have the opportunity to engage in less challenging activities — sports in which they can be competitive or exercises they want to master. By creating a ZPD environment, the entire playing field becomes level in the sense that young learners are free to pursue and set their own learning pace.

Conclusion

Vygotsky's zone of proximal development theory explains how young learners rely upon guidance to acquire knowledge or skills that they cannot achieve on their own. The guidance can come in virtually any form — from simple instructions such as pointing to a place and indicating what should be performed, to asking a student what the best way to perform an exercise would be. It is ZPD that allows the young learner to become an active learner; that makes self-directed learning possible; and that gives older students the chance to develop their own leadership skills, take responsibility for passing on what they have received, and serve as mentors and role models.

The ZPD facilitates a holistic approach to education: it educates in all directions, not just one. It may be designed to help young learners, but in helping young learners, older learners are helped as well. The great benefit of understanding how ZPD works is that it gives educators a powerful option to consider when thinking about the best way to facilitate the educative experience. In physical education, the ZPD environment is a natural fit.

References

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