The Role of ZPD in Promoting Students’ Syntactic Knowledge: from Vygotsky’s Social Developmental Theory

Methods and approaches to teaching have been greatly influenced by the research of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky who have both contributed to the field of education by offering explanations for children's cognitive learning styles and abilities. While Piaget and Vygotsky may differ on how they view cognitive development in children, both offer educators good suggestions on how to teach certain material in a developmentally appropriate manner. Because Piaget concentrated on the individual child, he failed to consider the effect that the social setting may have on cognitive development. Vygotsky is credited with developing the concept of Social Cognition (Social Development Theory of Learning), which proposes that: Social Interaction and culture has a dramatic impact on cognitive development. Cognitive processes (language, thought, reasoning) develop through social interaction. Learning is largely mediated by social interaction of students and More Knowledgeable Others (e.g. teachers, parents, coaches, peers, experts, etc.) (Vygotsky, 1978).Vygotsky centred much of his research on a phenomenon he coined as the Zone of Proximal Development, or ZPD. Wertsch and Stone (1985) believe that research on teaching has been galvanized in the past few years by some seminal concepts from recently translated works of Vygotsky. His thoughts affect our understanding of learning and teaching. Vygotsky’s insights have also affected our understanding of teaching. The present study investigated the effect of teaching within the realm of ZPD on studentsꞌ better and deeper learning. After certain treatment regarding teaching verb tenses to students, it was found that students learn better and deeper if they are taught English grammar, within their ZPD. Learning is significantly enhanced when the class atmosphere is ready for this kind of learning

کلیدواژه ها:

Social Development Theory ، More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) ، Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) ، Syntactic knowledge