This past year, I watched Adam Lenz (SI Coordinator) facilitate training for new Supplemental Instruction (SI) leaders. As he talked through Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) construct from Vygotsky’s learning theory it unlocked an insight for me – I heard a connection to belonging that I hadn’t heard before. What if attending to the Zone of Proximal Development contributes to a learner’s sense of belonging?
A quick side bar on the theories themselves: The Zone of Proximal Development is the space between where someone is with their current understanding and knowledge and where they are capable of getting with support from instructors and peers. This graphic simplifies it a bit to demonstrate that between what a student can already do and what they can’t do, there lives a developmental area of what they can do when given support for their learning. Strayhorn (2012) frames belonging as the ability to feel connected to, included by and cared for by other people – respected and valued as a part of a community or system larger than you. Framed in an academic domain, belonging can be a part of learning settings if (a) students feel like a part of a community within a classroom, (b) they feel a sense of connection to the course, classmates, the instructor, the discipline, or the academic environment, and/or (c) they feel accepted, valued, included, and encouraged by others within the class and related to the course. There is far more research on this. I’m also going to use Nevitt Sanford’s (1967) theory of challenge and support to help me tie these thoughts together.
The connection I heard was this: perhaps in attending to ZPD through designing learning exercises and training within students’ zone of proximal development, we have the opportunity to also support students’ sense that they belong in that learning environment.
If a learning environment (new job, coursework) is constantly beyond the zone of proximal development (or for Sanford – too much challenge, not enough support), I imagine if it can inadvertently send messages to learners that they don’t belong: you should already know this, other people already know this, and you’re behind. Or perhaps you should be able to do this and if you can’t, you’re not cut out for this job/class/degree. Those messages can exacerbate imposter syndrome and lead to folks leaving the position/class/group, or perhaps they persist, but the experience impacts their sense of self-efficacy and therefore the way they engage in new challenges and opportunities.
On the other hand, if tasks are consistently on the other side of the zone of proximal development (too easy, not enough challenge) it can convey a different message: I don’t think you’re capable of doing hard things. If there is zero challenge, it can still make folks feel like they don’t fit and should be somewhere else – the result of which can cause folks to divest energy and taper off motivation and investment.
Balancing challenge/support and working within the zone of proximal development can convey that learning and growth are part of their experience, that you believe they can do it, and that you’ll offer support until they can do it on their own. I’m painting with a broad brush here because there are elements of either of these theories that don’t align with belonging as a primary goal (situating a “more knowledgeable other” as a key part of ZPD). But there is enough that piqued my curiosity to draw this connection.
As I’m designing and facilitating a supportive and effective learning setting, here are a few ways I can consider this connection and apply it when supporting students:
- Recognize, honor, and create space for them to bring in their existing knowledge and skills
- Normalize that there is a learning curve for this new environment and the skills associated with this role (“you haven’t done this before” or “I remember when I learned this for the first time”)
- Bring in language of growth over time (“you haven’t learned that yet, and that’s okay; you will”)
- Build positions and work environments that help students learn new skills
- Offer opportunities to practice new skills with support or scaffolded over time
- Be aware and attuned to where they are and what they (an individual or a group) already know/what they don’t know, and then build trainings, activities, feedback, and other opportunities that challenge and support them in a space of new learning,
Citations
Strayhorn, Terrell. (2012). College Students’ Sense of Belonging: A Key to Educational Success for All Students. College Students’ Sense of Belonging: A Key to Educational Success for All Students. 1-141. 10.4324/9780203118924.
Academic belonging. (n.d.) Retrieved October 2, 2023 from https://tll.mit.edu/teaching-resources/inclusive-classroom/academic-belonging.
Sanford, N. (1967) Where colleges fail: A study of the student as a person. San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass
