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All learners can develop their understanding of concepts and apply those concepts to a range of contexts by keeping the initial knowledge to a minimum and acquiring new knowledge as it is required (Just-In-Time). A key strategy for improving learning outcomes is ensuring that educators and learners work collaboratively to discern the capability of the learner to understand a specific concept, and to what level of complexity of context, they can apply that concept.
Understanding this strategy is achieved by personalising the learning so that the learning tasks are designed to sit within the learner’s ‘proximal (next) zone’.176 This seminal idea from Lev Vygotsky encourages a developmental approach to learning so that the next learning steps are scaffolded appropriately. This idea allows the learner to build on the previous learning experiences using the ‘connect and reflect’ competency.
The zone of proximal development (ZPD) has been defined as ‘the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem-solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers’.177 Lev Vygotsky
The proximal zone approach to learning requires a curriculum where each concept framework is unpacked into its constituent concepts in an order that is developmentally appropriate for the learner. The learner is initially exposed to safe contexts where they have existing language and experience, then the complexity of context is increased for each concept as they increase their vocabulary, understanding and experience. The science curriculum, presented in chapter 28, highlights this sequencing using five conceptual levels of development for each scientific concept framework within the science curriculum.
Each learner has a different level of capability when it comes to understanding any concept. Investigating additional contexts for a concept requires the learner to learn additional language and knowledge so they can build new ideas and eventually concepts. The increasing sophistication of the resulting concept or concept framework, allows the learner to make more accurate predictions.
All learners are unique, harbouring a set of capabilities that allow us to manage and extend our ability to learn new knowledge, ideas and concepts. It has hopefully become apparent by now, that once we start to assess an individual’s capabilities there is no such thing as ‘a quotient that can even remotely describe the intelligence’ of any human being.
The notion of a number representing our intelligence becomes meaningless, as the uniqueness of each person and their associated capacity to develop concepts and then combine those elements to form conceptual frameworks is counterintuitive to the concept of comparative intelligence based on an IQ score. The notion of a numerical value can represent the complexity of intelligence is simply ridiculous!
176 Learn NC; (2011) Zone of proximal development; Retrieved from http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/5075
177 Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 88, 89–90, 86. Retrieved from http://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-8/vygotsky-on-the-zone-of-proximal- development