Keywords

1 Introduction

The zone of proximal development (ZPD), also known as scaffolding, is a concept that is frequently utilized in schools to assist children learn skills. As the student gains proficiency, the expert gradually withdraws assistance until the student can complete the task on his or her own. ZPD as defined by Vygotsky, was designed with the development of children in mind. It depicts how children's cognitive development progresses. Vygotsky stated that rather than utilizing a static measure such as an IQ score to determine a student’s educational aptitude, a developmental measure was required.

Many research find that scaffolding is a good way to assist children learn new abilities and solve issues on their own, through providing a short-term help that will be eliminated after the students have mastered the new skills.

However, there are competing motives to give more or less assistance to students when determining the appropriate quantity of assistance to provide. Children who receive more scaffolding may struggle when it is removed, while students who do not receive enough scaffolding may not be able to gain the abilities at all.

And this in turn, will affect their learning outcomes and their problem-solving abilities.

The purpose of this systematic literature review is to study the impact of ZPD and scaffolding on the learning outcomes of students and how they affect the development of their problem-solving skills.

My scholarly study tackles three primary research concerns through a collection of relevant articles that are thoroughly reviewed:

  • 1. How does the assigning content based on the zone of proximal development of a student affect his/her mastering of the material?

  • 2. How efficient is scaffolding by adults as a technique when it comes to boosting problem-solving outcomes?

  • 3. Do we need to re-conceptualize the concepts of ZPD and scaffolding and to achieve better learning outcomes for students and promote their skills of problem-solving?

The paper elaborates on the findings displaying the different arguments of many studies on the implications of the ZPD and scaffolding in teaching and learning, as well as on the efficiency of scaffolding by adults in boosting problem-solving outcomes.

Furthermore, it discusses if there is a need to reconsider the associations of these concepts in the teaching process.

2 Conceptual Framework

The zone of proximal development (ZPD or Zoped) is described as the difference between a child's “actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving” and the child's “potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (Vygotsky, 1978).

The ZPD refers to a learner's capacity to do tasks successfully with the assistance of more skilled others, and it's often used in conjunction with aided or “scaffolded” learning. The creation of ZPDs necessitates assistance with cognitive task structuring as well as sensitivity to the learner's current skills.

Scaffolded learning, often known as ZPD, is a two-fold concept. To begin with, it represents a new approach to intelligence testing: analyzing children's intellectual potential in optimal conditions, that is, circumstances that are tailored to the child's specific learning needs and build on his or her current talents. Second, the ZPD is a model for determining how social engagement with more experienced partners affects children's intellectual development. As a result, it establishes connections between the mind of the particular child and the minds of others. According to Obikwelu et al. (2013), scaffolding is a method of instruction which can help a youngster bridge the gap between what he or she currently knows and what they are expected to learn.

The controversy over the implications of the ZPD and scaffolding concepts in teaching relates to their positive and negative impacts on learners’ learning outcomes and their problem-solving abilities. Some educators find the concept of ZPD and scaffolded learning is ambiguous and lacks a detailed picture of a child's preferred learning method, current level of competence, or intrinsic motivation. According to Lee (2011), actual learning does not occur when adults just give detailed instructions and demonstrate the work to youngsters.

3 Literature Review

The literature review is organized according to the questions’ topical order:

Q1- How Does the Assigning Content Based on the Zone of Proximal Development of a Student Affect His/her Mastering of the Material?

In China, Learnta TAD which stands for “Teacher + Artificial Intelligence + Data,” A learning platform for K-12 kids is a system that gives teachers information on their learners’ progress in school and uses AI algorithms to recommend the best learning path, allowing teachers to choose the topic students should focus on.

In 2019, Learnta TAD data was obtained from 7913 students in middle and elementary school who completed 250,783 task cards with different skills assigned with each task.

Zou et al. (2019), who were the researchers of the study, used computerized student achievement assessments via a curriculum based on a knowledge graph to compare “Ready-to-Learn” (RtL) information within the ZPD against “Unready-to-Learn” (UtL) content by the students. During the class, students under the supervision of their teacher perform the required tasks. According to the homework contract, students should finish independently their assignments at home.

According to the research, students’ participation rates vary based on their overall academic accomplishment. In-class assignments were completed at a rate of 75.7% and 74.7% for Math and English respectively, while activities to be done at home were completed at a rate of 65.3% for Math and 70.3% for English. This revealed the more likely completion of activities during the class than at home.

In the light of their study, results indicated that students would grasp more skills if they were given activities within their ZPD (Ready-to-Learn content) rather than (Unready-to-Learn content), which means not aligned with their ZPD. In addition, according to their findings, learners were more likely to understand mathematics in their classes than at home.

Q2- How Efficient is Scaffolding by Adults as a Technique When It Comes to Boosting Problem-Solving Outcomes?

Scaffolding research, which started in the 70s, typically focused on the relationship between scaffolding provided by the parents their children's problem-solving abilities.

In 2003, Conner and Cross conducted a study to look at the impact of maternal scaffolding on kids’ abilities to solve problems. A total of 45 mother-child dyads were included in the study (children aged 16, 26, 44 and 54 months). Every mother was asked to help her child in constructing a tower in the correct order by utilizing all the essential blocks. From no parent interaction through parent demonstration, there were seven levels of maternal scaffolding. According to the research, mothers with contextual scaffolding had a positive impact on the immediate and subsequent results of their children during problem-solving interactions.

These findings back up a study by Bates (2005) in which scaffolding was assessed using six types of response (corrective feedback, give answer, accept child's response, reinforces, allows child to continue, and asks child to demonstrate knowledge) and six types of feedback (questioning, directing, guiding, pointing, specific pointing and nonverbal pointing) provided by mothers to their kids during play sessions, depending on the children's needs. In a game setting, Bates looked at the role of maternal scaffolding on kids’ attempts to solve comparison problems in quantities. This study included 36 mothers, each with a child aged between three to five years old).

According to Wittwer and Renkl (2008), before giving scaffolding, the adult must determine the children's current comprehension levels. The above studies have made a substantial contribution to the understanding of children's problem-solving abilities by offering scaffolding focusing on the demands of children with their capability. However, more research into various types of scaffolding is needed to establish if there are any relationships between scaffolding and problem-solving abilities of children.

Q3- Do We Need to Re-conceptualize the Concepts of ZPD and Scaffolding and to Achieve Better Learning Outcomes for Students and Promote Their Skills of Problem-Solving?

Although the concepts of scaffolding and the Zone of Proximal Development are used frequently in teaching and learning, educators nowadays start to consider the re-conceptualization of these concepts to achieve better problem-solving and learning outcomes.

When Vygotsky mentioned peer collaboration, it's worth noting that he only referred to “more able peers,” meaning that there must be an intellectual asymmetry between participants in any collaborative endeavor.

Several researchers have noted (Cowie and van der Aalsvort, 2000) that learning can also happen via interaction among students having similar levels of cognitive ability, and as that is, ‘symmetrical’ interactions may also result in learning and development. Analyzing the participants’ communication in this specific setting can allow us to have a deeper grasp of the learning process.in general.

A new notion can be useful, according to Mercer (2000a) and Mercer (2000b), for understanding how interpersonal communication might contribute to the education and conceptual growth. This he called the Intermental Development Zone (IDZ). This idea reflects how the interactive process of teaching and learning is founded on communication and cooperative activity, of a dynamic specific context for shared knowledge. In contrast to the original ZPD, the IDZ is not an individual aptitude, but a dialogic process generated and sustained by people. This coherent textual framework promotes a shared focus of participants and is adapted to the level of changing knowledge as the activity progresses in a professor's and student's successful interaction.

For the re-conception of both ZPD and ‘scaffolding,’ in order to take into account collaborative learning, they discovered that a concept based on the conscious intentions of a teacher outside of dialogue should be shifted into concepts based on dynamic process characterization, which reciprocally and responsively employ language in dialogue between learners. Furthermore, some educators find that scaffolding must go beyond the providing of leading questions in the instillation of systematic and creative thinking. They think that actual learning happens when assisting students in thinking systemically and creatively by learning from examples and generating their own thoughts, without substituting the examples they have acquired mechanically; guiding them to develop their ideas meaningfully; and leading them to consider other alternatives while maintaining associations between these alternatives (parts) to the goal (whole).

4 Methodology

In the planning stage of my literature review, I started to formulate my study questions of the topic that I chose, which later has directed my search and selection of studies to be included in the review.

My proposed research question was: (How does the concepts of ZPD and scaffolding affect the students’ learning outcomes and their problem-solving skills?). After doing an initial search on the topic, I did a quick mapping to identify the types of research linked to the research question.

Only English articles and studies from the last 2 decades (the year of 2000 till 2020/2021) were included in the SLR. The studies focused the results of implementing the ZPD on learning outcomes and the role of scaffolding in developing children problem-solving abilities. Articles in the domains of education and social psychology were incorporated in the literature search. On the other hand, studies in the areas of public health, economy, and politics were omitted in the search process. In addition, articles and research conducted before the year of 2000 were not included.

The keywords used in the search were: ‘zone of proximal development’, ‘learning outcomes’, ‘problem solving skills’, ‘forms of scaffolding’, ‘re-conceptualize’ and ‘sociocultural theory’. Most of the articles and the research were collected from ResearchGate, an online scholarly professional network for shared scholar articles and research papers. Moreover, some articles were obtained from the British University in Dubai online library, EBSCO, Web of Science; few were accessed from Google scholar search engine.

The relevance of each journal article was determined using SCIMAGOJR, an online tool that reviews and evaluates journals and scientific topics. In addition, articles labeled as peer-reviewed were considered. Then, articles and research collected and accessed were evaluated based on their relevance to the SLR title. Abstracts and parts of the introductions were examined to evaluate their value to the SLR topic. Each study's data was compiled and organized into a table for the systematic literature review, to facilitate being assessed for its relevance to the research questions.

5 Discussion

Teaching and learning have evolved dramatically in recent years because of the introduction of educational concepts based on information technology (IT) (Whitaker, New, & Ireland, 2016). Given the outcome-oriented application in teaching with an emphasis on higher-order learning, technology-enhanced scaffolding for individual problem solving in an innovative learning environment is critical. (Raes et al., 2012). On highlighting the necessity of tying students’ problem-solving work to content, skills, and tactics, it's crucial to raise difficulties with them, from non-reflective work and compelling them to engage fundamental disciplinary ideas in their tasks. The engagement of users in work is shaped by the tools they utilize. As a result, technologies can be built to impact users’ perspectives, learner-to-learner and learner-to-teacher discourse, and the ways they express themselves in work products.

To conclude, deep cognitive learning cannot take place if a student's level of comprehension is too low (i.e., the support is not within the child’s ZPD since too little help is supplied). In other words, the child is unable to connect his or her prior knowledge and the cognitive effort associated with processing the data is excessive (Wittwer et al., 2010). If the learner's level of control matches his or her comprehension, the learner has enough mental skills to actively process the information and make connections between it and previously learned material in long-term memory. However, there are many other elements that affect the impact of the use of scaffolding within the ZPD on the learning outcomes and problem-solving skills, as well as help to determine the amount of support to be provided and methods of providing it, such as the use of technology, the nature of the task, if it is a group work task or individual task, the ability to communicate, teachers’ quality reflected on their teaching strategies and the usage of the platform's learning support which requires different pedagogies than in typical classrooms.

6 Limitations, Recommendations and Implications for Future Research

Most of the limitations in the study came from the fact that there is few experimental research on the impacts scaffolding provided by teachers during classes. Only tutoring studies on one student interacting with a highly skilled peer to perform organized and/or hands-on activities, use an experimental design for face-to-face, non-parental scaffolding.

However, in contrast to instructor scaffolding, most of the studies focused on parental scaffolding. Parental scaffolding differs from teacher scaffolding in that the parent knows his or her child better than a teacher knows his or her students, making the support more customizable. Furthermore, the parental scaffolding studies noted above were conducted in one-on-one scenarios, which are not analogous to classroom scenarios where one teacher is responsible for approximately 30 students at a time.

It is suggested that in future systematic literature studies, different types of scaffolding learning to be chosen to compare the benefits and drawbacks of each style on students learning outcomes and problem-solving abilities. Future research should focus on the circumstances in which these styles are implemented, like whether it is an online classroom, or a regular class. It's also a good idea to reduce the search area, especially the sample, by selecting certain material or subject categories like effect of scaffolding on problem solving abilities in mathematics, or the impact of the ZPD on teaching Science or Chemistry.

For a greater significance of the findings, it would be beneficial to limit the sample by focusing on a certain group age of students, such as in students in foundation stage or in senior grades.

7 Conclusion

Undoubtedly, incorporating the concepts of scaffolding and the ZPD in classrooms, in the same way introduced by Vygotsky has shown a great effect on the development of students’ skills, especially in the aspects of solving problems and untangle challenges.

However, a re-defining of these concepts along with modifications and amendments on how to apply these new redefined ones, using more advanced teaching methodology with incorporating technology to help students in exploring new ideas using critical thinking techniques and providing constructive feedback, are needed in order to achieve a high level of independency of learning for the students and the ability to adapt with new situations resulting in more advanced skills in problem-solving and better learning outcomes.