Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development
Vygotsky, unlike Piaget, did not believe in specific stages, but instead he theorized that there was a zone of proximal development. When students are in the zone of proximal development, they are in an in between stage where they still need a little guidance to solve problems (Vygotsky, 1962). There is a lower limit, which is the level that the child has reached working on his or her own. The upper level is what the child can solve with the help of a teacher. Vygotsky believed that students needed the right amount of assistance from a teacher to help them complete a problem (Vygotsky, 1962). This is called scaffolding. The idea of scaffolding comes from construction, in which scaffold is needed to build at the beginning, but then it is removed at the end once the building can stand on its own. Children follow the steps that adults take to solve problems, which gradually increases their abilities until they can solve the problems on their own. Once a student has mastered a problem with scaffolding, the student will be able to solve the problem independently.
The role of a teacher is to give children the assistance they need to advance their skills. Some students need more guidance than others, so it is important to evaluate their skills to give them the right amount of support. In the classroom this idea of scaffolding can be seen in providing students with help solving problems before they can solve them independently. When students are confused about how to begin a problem, teachers can give them the necessary assistance to get them started. Algebraic story problems, which require the students to interpret the information into systems of equations, are an example of a time where scaffolding may be utilized. Students may not understand at first how to derive equations out of written words, but once they are shown a few examples, they should be able to do more problems of this nature on their own. In this case a little guidance will help the students to understand and interpret problems, but it is not too much guidance because the students will still have to finish the problems themselves.