Vygotsky's notions of Zone of Proximal Development and Dynamic Assessment emphasize the importance of personalized learning that adapts to the needs and abilities of the learners and enables more efficient learning. In this work we introduce a novel adaptive learning engine called E-gostky that builds on these concepts to personalize the learning path within an e-learning system. E-gostky uses machine learning techniques to select the next content item that will challenge the student but will not be overwhelming, keeping students in their Zone of Proximal Development. To evaluate the system, we conducted an experiment where hundreds of students from several different elementary schools used our engine to learn fractions for five months. Our results show that using E-gostky can significantly reduce the time required to reach similar mastery. Specifically, in our experiment, it took students who were using the adaptive learning engine @math less time to reach a similar level of mastery as of those who didn't. Moreover, students made greater efforts to find the correct answer rather than guessing and class teachers reported that even students with learning disabilities showed higher engagement.
The ZPD in Vygotsky's theory is used to identify which psychological functions (and related social interactions) are needed for transitioning to the next age period, and to assess the current status of the child's maturing functions @cite_33 . Since performance in these psychological functions depends on social interactions, the assessment procedures should have dynamic, interactive nature. Hence, the ZPD provides a framework to evaluate learner's abilities, which is known as Dynamic Assessment (DA) @cite_33 @cite_13 . While in traditional approaches to assessment the main concern is current existing skills, DA is focused on measuring the learning potential for future development @cite_24 . A dynamic test is based on teacher assistance, where guidance, feedback and adaptive delivery of assistance are embedded in the evaluation procedure itself @cite_33 . Rather than information about past functioning and existing skills, dynamic approaches tend to be equally interested in estimating the learner's cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies, their responsiveness to assistance, and their ability to transfer skills that were learned with assistance to subsequent unassisted situations @cite_28 .
@cite_24 @cite_28 @cite_13 @cite_33
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This article reports the efforts of an elementary school teacher of Spanish as a second language to implement principles of dynamic assessment (DA) in her daily interactions with learners. DA is neither an assessment instrument nor a method of assessing but a framework for conceptualizing teaching and assessment as an integrated activity of understanding learner abilities by actively supporting their development (Poehner, 2008). DA is based on Vygotsky’s (1987) proposal of the zone of proximal development (ZPD), which underscores the developmental importance of providing appropriate support to learners to help them stretch beyond their independent performance. The particular approach to DA that the teacher followed reflected her interpretation of the ZPD as well as her knowledge of her instructional context and was arrived at through consultation with the present authors. In other words, her use of DA represents a unification of theory and practice, as advocated by Vygotsky, whereby theory offers a basis to guide practice but at the same time practice functions to refine and extend theory. Examples of the teacher’s interactions with learners in her classroom are discussed with regard to the opportunities for development they create. This article discusses the application of dynamic assessment with gifted students. We define dynamic assessment in terms of its inclusion of intervention and feedback during the course of assessment, as well as the focus of the model on the students' use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies and responsiveness to the interventions provided during the course of the assessment. Dynamic approaches vary on a continuum of flexible clinical applications to more rigorous psychometric approaches. They also differ in relation to the nature and timing of the interventions, as well as the content domains tapped. Finally, we review the history of the use of dynamic assessment with gifted students. This use demonstrates the utility of this approach for the purpose of determination of eligibility for gifted programs, which has been particularly relevant for students from culturally diverse backgrounds. Dynamic assessment has been usefully applied for classification purposes in the cases of both students with mental... What kind of instruction is optimal for a particular child? Without doubt, this question is immediately comprehensible to any committed teacher in virtually any country in the world, and most teachers are likely to want concrete answers to the question, not only as a theoretical puzzle, but in relation to their immediate practices. If one were to look to scientific psychology and educational research for advice in relation to this practical problem, what would the answer(s) look like? This simple question raises several profound problems. Normative and political issues about the goals of instruction and the resources available for realizing these goals must be resolved. A theory of learning that can explain how intellectual capabilities are developed is needed. If instruction is not viewed as an end in itself, then a theory about the relationship between specific subject matter instruction and its consequences for psychological development is also needed. This last problem was the main tension against which Vygotsky developed his well-known concept of zone of proximal development , so that the zone focused on the relation between instruction and development, while being relevant to many of these other problems. Vygotsky's concept of zone of proximal development is more precise and elaborated than its common reception or interpretation. The main purpose of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive introduction to and interpretation of this concept, along with comments about predominant contemporary interpretations. The chapter concludes with some perspectives and implications derived from the interpretation presented here.