Zone Of Proximal Development Research Articles

Intuitive to Strategic Translanguaging: Insights From Vietnamese EFL Classrooms

This article reports a qualitative case study on the translanguaging practices of Vietnamese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) educators and explores the mechanisms behind individual differences in their practices through an integrative cultural-historical activity theory perspective. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and post-observation interviews with three educators at a public university in Vietnam. The findings highlight diverse functions of translanguaging, including checking comprehension, emphasizing content, and reducing English-speaking anxiety. Rooted in Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), this research introduces Proximal Language Scaffolding to highlight a strategic approach to using L1 and L2 for language learning within students’ ZPD. This research provides new insights into the nuanced implementation of translanguaging in EFL contexts and offers significant implications for teacher development and educational practices.

Teachers’ Perception and Experiences on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Integration in English Language Teaching and Learning

This study reports English language teachers’ perceptions and experiences of integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and the professional development needs for its effective integration subscribing to Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) as a theoretical lens. We employed narrative inquiry research method and semi-structured interviews to elicit the experiences of three secondary level English teachers in Butwal Sub-metropolitan City of the Rupandehi district. The research questions focused on teachers' perceptions and experiences of AI integration and their professional development needs. The findings revealed that teachers recognized the potential of AI to enhance personalized learning and instructional efficiency but face significant challenges, including technological proficiency, training, and ethical considerations. The implications of this research extended to educators and policymakers to address the digital divide and ensure equitable access to AI technologies in education to create more effective and personalized learning environments.

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Flipped Interactive Learning: Building a Generation of Critical Thinkers, Skilled Communicators, Effective Collaborators, and Creative Innovators

This study examines the impact of targeted interventions on the development of 4C skills—critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity—among students in control and experimental groups. Using pre-test and post-test designs, the results revealed significant improvements in the experimental group compared to the control group. The experimental group showed a mean increase of 9.3 points in post-test scores, while the control group exhibited a smaller increase of 3.4 points. Statistical analyses confirmed the homogeneity and normality of the data, with significant differences observed between pre-test and post-test scores in the experimental group (p < 0.05). These findings align with constructivist theories, including Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development and Bloom's Taxonomy, emphasizing the role of active, student-centered learning in fostering higher-order thinking skills. The results also, highlighting the importance of integrating 21st-century skills into educational practices. The intervention’s success may be attributed to its ability to balance the cognitive load and foster intrinsic motivation through engaging in relevant tasks. This study supports innovative teaching strategies and underscores their transformative potential in modern education

Using L1 to Learn L2 Enhances Language Acquisition at University

This paper investigates how strategically learners' first language [L1] should be used in higher education to improve second language [L2] learning. The paper emphasizes the need of the first language in improving comprehension, retention, and cultural awareness using concepts including Cummings' Common Underlying Proficiency and Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development. It also takes counterarguments into account, including too reliance on L1, thereby supporting a mixed approach. The paper shows how, when correctly incorporated, L1 can improve language and conceptual development in L2 acquisition by use of research and personal pedagogical experience.

Mediation Through Dynamic Assessment: Facilitating EFL Learners’ Self-efficacy in Speaking Skills

Though we cannot deny the importance of testing learners’ proficiency to determine their successful intake, the traditional forms of assessment often hinder their linguistic and cognitive development. In the context of Bangladesh, where English is considered a foreign language, it can be noticed that it is their inability to speak in English that the tertiary-level students experience the most difficulties with at universities following English medium instructions. Their situation worsens when they are evaluated traditionally for their spoken performances in their university language courses. That is why dynamic assessment can be an alternative to traditional assessment for evaluating learners’ speaking skills. It is closely associated with Lev Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory. It believes that the proximity to written or spoken competence cannot be achieved by learners on their own. Therefore, mediation and zone of proximal development play crucial roles in establishing and extending the scope for learners to communicate with others. The interactionist approach of dynamic assessment benefits students in improving their speaking skills in many contexts because of its dialogic and mediated process. Thus, with the help of qualitative data analysis, this paper examines how consequential dynamic assessment will be in evaluating speaking skills at the tertiary level.

Supporting Human and Machine Co-Learning in Citizen Science: Lessons From Gravity Spy

We explore the bi-directional relationship between human and machine learning in citizen science. Theoretically, the study draws on the zone of proximal development (ZPD) concept, which allows us to describe AI augmentation of human learning, human augmentation of machine learning, and how tasks can be designed to facilitate co-learning. The study takes a design-science approach to explore the design, deployment, and evaluations of the Gravity Spy citizen science project. The findings highlight the challenges and opportunities of co-learning, where both humans and machines contribute to each other’s learning and capabilities. The study takes its point of departure in the literature on co-learning and develops a framework for designing projects where humans and machines mutually enhance each other’s learning. The research contributes to the existing literature by developing a dynamic approach to human-AI augmentation, by emphasizing that the ZPD supports ongoing learning for volunteers and keeps machine learning aligned with evolving data. The approach offers potential benefits for project scalability, participant engagement, and automation considerations while acknowledging the importance of tutorials, community access, and expert involvement in supporting learning.

Remedial Teaching to Improve Performance Among Hearing-Impaired Pupils: Insights from Selected Public Primary Schools in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

This study examines the impact of remedial teaching strategies on the academic performance of hearing-impaired pupils in four public primary schools in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The research focuses on three key strategies: sign language demonstration, teaching media applications, and exploration-based learning methods. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, data were collected from 124 participants, including pupils, teachers, school heads, and parents. The findings reveal that while remedial teaching significantly improves engagement, retention, and academic performance, systemic challenges such as resource shortages, insufficient teacher training, and low parental involvement hinder its full potential. Drawing on Cognitive Development Theory, Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development, and Human Capital Theory, this study offers theoretical insights and practical recommendations. Key interventions include enhanced teacher training, resource investment, and greater parental engagement to ensure inclusive and equitable education for hearing-impaired pupils.

Teaching strategies used by English First Additional Language teachers in teaching reading for comprehension

Reading is a fundamental skill essential for deep understanding and engagement across all subjects. This study explores Grade 6 teachers’ perspectives on strategies for teaching reading comprehension in the Intermediate Phase of English First Additional Language (EFAL). Using a multiple-case study design, it provides an in-depth exploration from various participants’ perspectives. The target population comprised Grade 6 EFAL teachers, with a purposeful sample of ten teachers from ten primary schools in the Nquthu circuit, uMzinyathi district, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Data collection methods included individual face-to-face semi-structured in-depth interviews and classroom observations, offering a comprehensive understanding of teachers’ classroom practices and strategies. The study reveals a significant gap between teachers’ reported strategies and their actual classroom practices. While teachers are aware of effective strategies such as guided reading, skimming and scanning, and the top-down approach, their implementation often reverts to traditional methods, highlighting the need for professional development. The findings emphasize the importance of aligning teaching practices with theoretical frameworks like Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development to support learners effectively. Integrating assessments into the reading process is crucial for activating prior knowledge and confirming comprehension. Additionally, the study identifies a gap between teachers’ theoretical understanding and practical application of the Directed Reading Thinking Activity strategy. The study recommends bridging the gap between theory and practice through continuous professional development, practical training, and the availability of relevant resources to strengthen practices. Addressing these gaps can better foster reading comprehension skills, ultimately enhancing learners’ academic performance.

An Exploration of the Use of Educational Robotics in Preschool Education

Digital technologies are increasingly present in the daily lives of adults and children, which increases the need to better understand this digital world. Given today's society, the premises of the key competencies that early childhood education must provide future students based on the Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and supported by constructivist theory (of Vygotsky's zone of proximal development), this study aims to investigate the development of computational thinking for the child in preschool education. Using as a method for the case study, the observation of children's behavior during nine weeks in which we carried out specific activities, we tested three hypotheses regarding the development of computational thinking, using both connected and non-connected tools, the levels of communication and collaboration between the participating children. The results show that the use of educational robots in different stages of teaching, learning and evaluation helps in the development process of children by understanding the cause-effect relationship, acquiring spatial and temporal orientation skills, developing communication skills and supporting socio-emotional interactions with children of the same age. Decomposition, abstraction, pattern recognition and algorithms were the four components of computational thinking analyzed and all obtained a score above the mean of the Likert scale used. Future research is needed to study the more in-depth effects of STEAM activities on children's cognitive acquisitions and social-emotional skills.

Exploring the ‘Invisible’ in GTAs: Reflections on Intuition and Post-Graduate Mentoring

Postgraduate researchers who teach (Graduate Teaching Assistants) always navigate their academic spaces among several psychological factors in their routines from both inside and outside. They can often be observed attending to students, advising them on their problems and sometimes even relying on their seniors for various topics. In such situations, practitioner intuition remains a well-known and relied-upon source of GTA's decision-making skills but also an underexplored area of investigation, especially in mentoring and language teaching literature (Ushioda, 2023; Burns & Williams, 2023 & Kumar, 2024). Based on this premise, this reflective paper aims to simplify and understand the GTA's pedagogic intuition towards success and failures in PG thesis writing contexts from peer-mentoring perspectives. The initial sections of the paper, imagining GTA's as mentors and their learners as mentees, establish what GTA intuition can be thought of, how it is related to Vygotsky's ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) and the potential operations based on an intuitive decision-making model. The latter part of the paper offers detailed practical insights about these theoretical connections through my own workings of intuition while scaffolding the PG mentees to plan, execute and write their theses. Detailed reflections of both the GTA/mentor and the mentees elicited through think-aloud and discursive puzzling measures are reported extensively. Lastly, the paper advocates for more work towards exploring GTA's intuition in mentoring scenarios (and otherwise), getting more awareness from their cognitions and becoming more intuitive practitioners.

INVESTIGATING THE IMPACT OF WEB-BASED LANGUAGE LEARNING (WBLL) THROUGH WRITE & IMPROVE ON WRITING SKILLS IN SECONDARY SCHOOL

This study examines the impact of Web-Based Language Learning (WBLL) using the program Write & Improve on secondary school students' writing skills at SM St. Michael, Penampang, using the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). The study sought to investigate students' perspectives and impact in writing through guided practice and feedback. The technique used a two-cycle action research design that included both writing activities and open-ended surveys to collect information about students' writing performance and perceptions. Initial studies revealed that students struggled with the tool's UI and feedback mechanisms, restricting their development throughout the first cycle. However, significant increases were seen in the second cycle, with students obtaining higher CEFR bands and showing a greater grasp of feedback. Surveys revealed high satisfaction and perceived effectiveness of Write & Improve, despite some technical issues and occasional inaccuracies in feedback. The study emphasizes the significance of teacher participation, as SCT and Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) indicate that directed learning and feedback can improve student outcomes. Researchers should conduct longitudinal investigations and perform different demographic testing. For educators, the findings emphasize optimal practices for incorporating WBLL technologies into instruction. This study adds to the growing body of knowledge about digital learning aids as well as providing ideas for better writing teaching through technology.

Conferencing: A Catalyst for Developing Children’s Writing

AbstractThe writing process approach is recognized as an effective instructional practice for engaging children in the writing process and developing emerging writing skills. The writing conference is an integral component of the writing process. One-on-one conferencing sessions create differentiated instructional spaces for teachers to respond to the individual needs of learners. Understanding how teachers leverage conferencing sessions to effectively engage and support young learners’ writing remains a limited area of research. This case study documents one experienced teacher’s conferencing practices with 19 first-grade writers. Findings show conferencing conversations worked in an integrated, multidimensional way to support young writers. Conferencing dimensions leveraged children’s funds of knowledge, questioning and affirming statements, and writers’ craft components to nurture relationships and offer feedback aligned with children’s zone of proximal development.

The Zone of Proximal Flow in K-12 Creative Collaborative eLearning: A synthesis of the zone of proximal development and creative flow

Student groups coexist on individual and team levels toward learning symmetry within two zones: the zone of proximal development (ZPD) for new knowledge co-construction and the zone of proximal flow (ZPF), which occurs once a balance between the learner's skill and challenge of the task emerges. Thus, each group functions within the ZPF, especially for K-12 students engaging in social behavior and collaborative learning activities. eLearning must support the dual persona of learners as users engage and remain within the ZPF via diverse pedagogical methodologies and tools, such as multimodal learning analytics, to support and enrich students' learning curves in self-organized as well as collaborative eLearning.

MyFeedback: an online writing feedback service with students as partners

MyFeedback is an online feedback service run by the academic tutoring team at the University of East London (UEL). The service provides a formative type of feedback on the academic writing of students based on drafts they upload to a digital inbox. The service is a differentiating support mechanism that complements the one-to-one guidance provided by the academic writing tutors. This is possible by training and supervising students (online feedback initiators) to provide reviews of assignment drafts. In this ALDCon24 workshop, we discussed how the development and operation of the service has thrived through a partnership between learning developers and students, and thus establishing a community of practice (Wenger, 1998) of shared learning and vision. We provided insights into the working model and the ways in which students become partners and occasionally co-creators. We highlighted the opportunities and benefits that are shared among all those involved and the roles they assume. Student users of the service engage in a self-regulated learning experience (Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick, 2006) enacted by their repeated exposure to peer feedback interactions that is underpinned by pedagogical principles, such as the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) and differentiation, for example in Tomlinson (2001). Tutors and student partners collaborate to consolidate their feedback mechanisms by bringing together teaching expertise, fresh enthusiasm, first-hand student experiences, and a sense of belonging, inclusivity and collaboration. At the same time, tutors direct their capacity efficiently to students who can benefit more from a live dialogue based on their assessment at hand.

New Perspectives on Collective Collaboration Within and Between Change Laboratory Sessions

This article contributes new knowledge on collaboration within and between Change Laboratory sessions and how it offers the potential to support the zone of proximal development and the expansive learning of participants. The Change Laboratory is a formative intervention method that helps participants transform their practices. This qualitative study examines how six educators participating in a Change Laboratory intervention dealt with problems that arise when implementing digital artifacts in teaching mathematics. We collected data through participant observation between sessions and video recordings during sessions. We conducted the data analysis abductively, using the seven expansive learning actions as an analytical framework. The findings highlight how collaboration between the researcher and the participants, both during and between Change Laboratory sessions, helped support the participants’ zone of proximal development and expansive learning. This close collaboration enabled the educators to collectively reflect on and transform their teaching practices, specifically by incorporating digital artifacts into their educational routines. The study provides important insights into how digital artifacts can be successfully implemented in practice using Change Laboratories, emphasizing the importance of supporting educators in their zone of proximal development. Using a theoretical perspective grounded in cultural-historical activity theory, the study contributes to understanding how change occurs in the educational field.

Physician development through interprofessional workplace interactions: A critical review.

Increasingly, medical training aims to develop physicians who are competent collaborators. Although interprofessional interactions are inevitable elements of medical trainees' workplace learning experiences, the existing literature lacks a cohesive model to conceptualise the learning potential residing in these interactions. We conducted a critical review of the health professions and related educational literatures to generate an empirically and theoretically informed description of medical trainees' workplace interactions with other health professionals, including learning mechanisms and outcomes. Informed by Teunissen's conceptualisation of workplace learning, we highlight the individual, social and situated dimensions of learning from interprofessional workplace interactions. Workplace interactions between medical trainees and other health professionals tend to be brief, spontaneous, informal and often implicit without the predefined educational goals and roles that structure trainees' relationships with physician supervisors. Yet they hold potential for developing trainees' knowledge and skills germane to the work of a physician as well as building their capacity for collaboration. Our review identified a spectrum of learning theories helpful for examining what and how trainees learn from these interactions. Self-regulated learning theories focus attention on how learning depends on trainees interpreting and judging the cues offered by other health professionals. Sociocultural frameworks including the zone of proximal development and legitimate peripheral participation emphasise the ways other health professionals support trainees in performing tasks at the border of their abilities and facilitate trainees' participation in clinical work. Both the landscapes of practice theory and cultural historical activity theory highlight the influence of surrounding social, cultural and material environments. These theories are unified into cohesive model and demonstrated through an illustrative example. Interprofessional workplace interactions harbour a range of learning opportunities for medical trainees. Capitalising on their potential can contribute to training collaborative practice-ready physicians alongside traditional intra-professional interactions between physicians and merits future research.

Exploring the impact of integrating AI tools in higher education using the Zone of Proximal Development

Exploring the impact of integrating AI tools in higher education using the Zone of Proximal Development

PHƯƠNG PHÁP DẠY HỌC “BẮC GIÀN GIÁO” VÀ VIỆC ỨNG DỤNG VÀO GIẢNG DẠY MÔN KHẨU NGỮ TIẾNG TRUNG QUỐC Ở TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SƯ PHẠM HÀ NỘI

The “scaffolding” teaching method is a teaching model originating from Constructivist Theory and the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) developed by Vygotsky. It offers new insights into dealing with the relationship between “teaching” and “learning”. The changing roles of teachers and students, promoting students' collaborative learning and exploration abilities, and cultivating students' independent problem-solving abilities of this teaching model have helped teachers improve their skills and enhance their educational and teaching abilities. In the process of implementing “scaffolding” teaching, we need to grasp the following key points: teachers need to clarify their roles, arrange a reasonable conceptual framework according to students’ levels, and check control interactive teaching in the student's “ZPD” and gradually reduce the role of the “scaffolder”. In this article, we would like to analyze the birth of the concept of “scaffolding”, its basic characteristics, and teaching steps. Finally, we applied it to teaching Chinese oral courses for students majoring in Chinese language at HNUE.

Contribution of Children's Literature in the Formation of Character of Elementary School Children

This study aims to describe the contribution of children's literature in character education and the selection of children's literature according to the developmental stage of elementary school children. This study is a qualitative-descriptive study of the library research type. Data collection techniques are by searching for sources and constructing from books on children's literature and accredited journals, then analyzing critically and in-depth. Based on the results of data analysis, it can be explained that the contribution of children's literature to the emotional aspect is obtained from demonstrations of life as demonstrated by the characters in the story so that children will learn how to manage their emotions so as not to harm themselves and others. In the intellectual aspect, children's literature contains sequencing and plot logic to support children's use of their minds to think, understand and criticize the stories they get. In the aspect of imagination, literature in its stories can attract the child's entire self. With this, the child gains an extraordinary experience that is significantly correlated with creativity and will provoke the growth and development of creativity. In the social aspect, children's literature demonstrates character interactions so that it supports children in maximizing their development in their proximal development zone. In addition, from an educational aspect, children's literature is connected to aspects of exploration and discovery, language, beauty, multicultural insight, and children's reading habits that influence reading habits and literacy culture, which are very necessary in facing the progress of science and technology in this era.

A concept fringe-based concept-cognitive learning method in skill context

Concept-cognitive learning has achieved remarkable results in simulating the learning of concepts. However, the existing concept-cognitive learning models mainly focus on how knowledge is acquired, but ignore the fact that knowledge transfer and knowledge forgetting may occur during the process of learning skills and solving items. This limits the application of concept-cognitive learning in predicting knowledge states and assessing competence states in skill contexts. To overcome this limitation, this paper provides a new concept-cognitive learning method for property-oriented concepts and object-oriented concepts in skill context. Corresponding to the conjunctive model and the disjunctive model, the inner and outer fringes of property-oriented concept and object-oriented concept are first defined, respectively. In this way, items or skills that are easily forgotten and those that are in the zone of proximal development can be found under both models. Furthermore, the Jaccard similarity coefficient is used to diversify the learning outcomes by finding items and skills that are most likely to occur knowledge forgetting or knowledge transfer. Thus, based on the fringes of concepts, the algorithms to learn property-oriented concepts and object-oriented concepts are provided, respectively. Finally, the case study on a real world example and the experimental evaluation on six data sets from UCI demonstrate that the proposed method is of practical significance and effective in terms of running time.