Understanding ZPD and Scaffolding

Wood, Bruner and Ross present a compelling argument about the capacity of humans to teach, and the role of instruction in helping us interiorize knowledge. Scaffolding to them, involves moderating aspects associated with the task that are beyond the learner's capacity. However, the Zone of Proximal Development requires learners to understand both scientific and everyday concepts, and be on the cusp between uniting them. Thus, a child must be on the verge of seeing possible solution for the moderation of elements to work in his or her favor towards solving a particular problem to be inside the ZPD. Knowledge, here becomes a social process that requires the presence of an adult, accompanied by meaningful social interactions as opposed to merely " direct instruction" about a task. A child can totally be scaffolded by an adult, but he or she may even reach the ZPD independent of instruction then, right?

We need to understand how to make social interactions meaningful in our classrooms.

Comprehension is something that needs to precede the production of a task in the visual field. However, the serendipity of unexpected understandings developed from social processes is something that direct instruction that trivializes social interactions. Serendipity allows children to unite scientific and everyday concepts and understand by chance, the ways in which a solution to a problem can be manifested. However, this often requires the social support of a more experienced person. The experiment discussed that shows children poking around with blocks to build something clearly shows how a teacher or a more experienced other needs to make room for the idiosyncrasies of social interactions that could be subjective for every individual. This is only possible when knowledge in a classroom is constructed socially, rather than delivered as a product to be consumed by many.
Even simple things like building blocks show us how knowledge is best acquired socially.

Therefore, relating this to my previous posts about mass-production, market share values and the ways in which we compromise education today, it is clear that there needs to be some change in the way we do things. It is easy to call those who ask for change crazy radicals. However, what is much harder is to see the other side of things, which is something even I myself have some difficulty doing. However, once we are all able to understand how the present context needs to show incremental change, I believe that we can finally reach the Golden Age for education we have been trying to manifest for so long.

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