Dynamic Assessment and the Zone of Proximal Development
Education is inherently related to learning potential in that its essential function is to bring about a child’s greatest possible intellectual, aesthetic, moral, and physical development. And pedagogy seeks to find appropriate methods of intervention that will ensure such development. It is clear, therefore, that educators are concerned with the effects of intervention on a child’s potential for learning and development,and they recognize that the effectiveness of pedagogy must be assessed in terms of its ability to achieve the desired results.
Classroom teachers faced with a group of new students at the beginning of a school year must develop a plan of action that will take each individual child along an appropriate path of learning. Each student has already achieved a certain level of development and will continue to learn in two ways - through his or her own intellectual and experiential resources and through pedagogical intervention introduced by the teacher. This gap between what children can learn through their own resources and what they can learn through appropriate adult or peer intervention is referred to as the zone of proximal development (ZPD). This zone represents, in effect, a child’s potential for intellectual development.
While educators need to understand a child’s potential for intellectual development, a simple assessment of current abilities cannot in itself provide the necessary information. Such a test will merely indicate the extent of learning to that point, not the expected level of future learning. Understanding of the ZPD can only be acquired through comparative evaluation conducted in a dynamic assessment which combines ordinary testing procedures with an on-going teaching format.
Dynamic assessments can include a wide variety of content domains and procedural variations. Psycho-educational testing professionals rely on this interactive approach to measure learning potential as well as intellectual development, and educators consider the results of such tests to be indispensable for program development, especially for children with special needs. Typically, the dynamic testing format includes a pre-test to determine current levels of development, followed by an appropriate process of pedagogical intervention, and finally a post-test that will indicate actual growth. By comparing results of the two tests, assessors can determine actual response to intervention.
The notion of ZPD is a reflection of how some psychologists and educators view learning and development. Social interaction and the influence of cultural media are seen as the driving force behind human development, and the nature of development itself is understood in terms of a progressive acceptance of social conventions. Words, signs, and symbols, for example, are gradually internalized by children as they progress through a learning process, until these things are no longer a mere collection of social phenomena but individual psychological tools that can be used independently to continue the process of intellectual development.
Education in North America has traditionally considered adult guidance and influence to be integral to a child’s learning and development. Not surprisingly then, the idea of ZPD has led to the development of several instructional programs like the so-called Reciprocal Teaching Method and programs based on the concept of community learning. Dynamic assessment is an integral part of these programs. Many psychologists and educators feel that new, innovative pedagogy will be most successful when it is based on a full understanding of a child’s individual zone of proximal development.