Focused Teaching

Promoting Accelerated Learning

Questions to Guide our Thinking

• What is the Zone of Proximal Development?

• How does it help learners?

• What does ZPD look like in an NISD classroom?

Principles of Learning

• Effort produces achievement.

• Learning is about making connections.

• We learn with and through others.

• Learning takes time.

• Motivation matters.

The Principles of Teaching

• The teacher matters.• Focused teaching promotes accelerated

learning.• Clear expectations and continuous

feedback activate learning.• Good teaching builds on student’s

strengths and respects individuals’ differences.

• Good teaching involves modeling what students should learn.

Principles of Curriculum

• The curriculum should focus on powerful knowledge.

• All students should experience a “thinking curriculum.”

• The best results come from having an aligned instructional system.

Focused Teaching Promotes Accelerated Learning

• What type of feedback is given – descriptive or evaluative?

• Is the learning goal communicated clearly? How does the feedback move the student toward mastery of the learning goal?

• What opportunities are provided for students to reflect and self-assess regarding learning difficult concepts?

• How are the other students engaged in learning when the teacher is providing specific feedback to an individual or small group?

• Do the student responses demonstrate deep understanding?

Theorists

Lev Semoyonovich Vygotsky (1896-1934)

Jean Piaget 1896-1980

Piaget’s Theory • A focus on the process of children’s thinking, not

just its products.

• Recognition of the crucial role of children’s self-initiated, active involvement in learning activities.

• A de-emphasis on practices aimed at making children adultlike in their thinking.

• Acceptance of individual differences in developmental progress.

Educational Psychology: Theory and Practice by Robert E. Slavin

Piaget’s Work (con’t)Self efficacy:• People are more likely to engage in certain behaviors

when they believe they are capable of executing those behaviors successfully. This means that they will have high self-efficacy. In layman's terms self-efficacy could be looked as self confidence towards learning.

How self-efficacy affects behavior:• Joy of activities: individuals typically choose activities

they feel they will be successful in doing.• Effort and persistence: individuals will tend to put more

effort end activities and behaviors they consider to be successful in achieving.

• Learning and achievement: students with high self-efficacy tend to be better students and achieve more.

Zone of Proximal Development

• Vygotsky maintained the child follows the adult's example and gradually develops the ability to do certain tasks without help or assistance. He called the difference between what a child can do with help and what he or she can do without guidance the "zone of proximal development" (ZPD).

www.ncrel.org

Zone of Proximal Development

The distance between the individual’s actual and potential level

Source: Vygotsky, 1978

Level of challenge

Level of competence

Zone of p

roxim

al develo

pment

actual developmental level

Scaffolding occurs through the support

of the ‘more knowing other’

potential developmental level

Where learning occurs

Zone of Proximal Developoment

• When you assign a task and the students successfully complete it without help, they could already do it. They have been taught nothing.

• Teaching is leading development instead of responding to it, if teaching is in the Zone of Proximal Development.

• Learning always proceeds from the known to the new. Good teaching will recognize and build on this connection. (Scaffolding)

• Students have a need to develop and exhibit competence. Teachers must assist them to develop competence as they engage in challenging tasks in which they can be successful.

• A meaningful learning context is crucial. Learning is purposeful and situated.

• Learners can only begin to learn within their individual zones of proximal development, current interests, and present state of being. But humane teaching can develop new interests, new ways of doing things, and new states of being.

Stages of the ZPD

Source: Adapted from Tharp and Gallimore, 1988, p.35

Assistance provided by

more capable others

Assistance provided by

the self

Zone of Proximal Development

Internalization and

automatization

Capacity begins

Capacity developed

Capacity internalized

Zon

e of

Act

ual D

evel

opm

ent

Assistance provided by

more capable others:

teacher or peer or some other type of

model

Social Speech:

- Adult uses language to

model process

- Adult and student share

language and activity

Private Speech:

Student uses for himself/

herself language that adults use to

regulate behavior

(self-control)

Inner Speech:The student’s

silent, abbreviated

dialogue that he/she carries

on with self that is the essence of conscious

mental activity

Hill Video - A Continuum of

Strategies

Teacher Student

Read To

Shared Reading

Guided Reading

Partner Reading

Independent Reading

Capacity begins Capacity developed

Zon

e of

Act

ual D

evel

opm

ent Z

one of Actual D

evelopment

Assistance provided by

more capable others:

teacher or peer or some other type of

model

Social Speech:

- Adult uses language to

model process

- Adult and student share

language and activity

Private Speech:

Student uses for himself/

herself language that adults use to

regulate behavior

(self-control)

Inner Speech:The student’s

silent, abbreviated

dialogue that he/she carries

on with self that is the essence of conscious

mental activity

ZPD in the ELA Classroom

Level of competence

actual developmental level

potential developmental levelL

evel

of

chal

len

ge

Zone of pro

ximal d

evelopmentInferencing

The teacher is working with this child to build their background knowledge and knowing how to activate it.

The teacher is working with this child to make predictions based on what they infer.

ZPD in the ELA Classroom

Level of competence

actual developmental level

potential developmental levelL

evel

of

chal

len

ge

Zone of pro

ximal d

evelopmentMultiplication

The teacher is working with this child to show the relationship between repeated addition and multiplication.

The teacher is working with this child to make connections between multiplication and division.

What NCREL Says About Scaffolding

• Gradual Shift of Action

• Build upon what you know they know, or what they may have just said

• Appropriately Worded Guided Practice

• Metacognition

What is teaching?• Teaching is effective only when it “awakens

and rouses to life those functions which… lie in the zone of proximal development”. (Vygotsky,1956, p.278)

• Teaching may be defined as “assisting performance through the ZPD. Teaching can be said to occur when assistance is offered at points in the ZPD at which performance requires assistance.” (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988, p.31)

Forms of Assistance• Modeling

• Contingency Management

• Feedback

• Questioning

• Instruction

• Cognitive Structuring

ZPD in our classrooms

• Planning for Capability and Possibility (Expectation)

• Plan for building

• Ways to Plan

Educational Psychology: Theory and Practice by Robert E. Slavin

Questions to Guide our Thinking

• What is the Zone of Proximal Development?

• How does it help learners?

• What does ZPD look like in an NISD classroom?