ZPD & Equity
Okay, let me first say that I truly buy in to Vygotsky’s theory of the zone of proximal development. It was one of the theories that really stuck with me after college, if nothing else, because it felt intuitively correct. In my opinion, ZPD can be very mysterious, and often hard to determine. I think in most instances, teachers make a guess-timate, and through observation and experience, determine if they were correct or not. Good teachers will make adjustments as necessary. However, what I’ve had the most trouble working out in my head is that I link ZPD with differentiation (would a class of 32 students have the same ZPD?), and with differentiation comes the issue of grade equity, etc.
For example, last year I taught a senior English class. It was a collaborative class, and I had seven students with special needs mainstreamed in the room. In addition, there were eight students who defected from an AP class; senioritis set in early. The rest of the class was composed of what I would consider a general academic population. I was fairly familiar with the group as a whole, as most of them I’d had at one time or another as an underclassmen. At any rate, no matter how hard I tried with this class, there were times at the end of the day when I felt exhausted from keeping all the balls in the air. I wanted to work in the zones of all of their proximal developments. 
I wanted to create lessons that were differentiated and engaging for all of them. However, the first time a student observed a slightly different assignment in the hands of one of their peers, they objected. They asked lots of questions concerning the equity of their grades, and never really accepted that I wasn’t asking them to work harder, just differently. I’m not sure how to solve this issue, but I do know it’s an issue worth solving.
I applaud you for being brave enough to try differentiated assignments. I have been too chicken to do so myself even though I thoroughly believe in it. Even if the grades were not equivalent because one student’s assignment WAS easier, I think we should be able to do it if that is meeting the student where they are. Unfortunately, I don’t want to try to defend that position to parents, school boards, etc.
Although, we all know that in most schools students who take teacher A will all get easier assignments than those who take teacher B even though they are teaching the same subject. If those grades are not equivalent (and I argue that they are not) then what does it matter if all the students in your class do not have equivalent grades. But once again, I feel like I already have to defend too many of the things I do in the classroom (groupwork, homework) to add one more to the list.
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ZPD & Equity « Kim Dearing’s Blog « Lpowell’s Weblog said this on October 7, 2007 at 10:44 am |