Distinguished teachers design instruction that surpasses simple student understanding. Students need to be engaged in learning it, challenged to be cognitively active, and experience appropriate challenge. When instructing to student ability, the level of difficulty of skills taught should be slightly above a student’s present level of mastery. Soviet psychologist Vygotsky (1978) suggested that with adult help, children can frequently perform tasks that they are unable to complete on their own. Vygotsky adopted the term zone of proximal development to indicate the distance between what children can do alone and what they can achieve with competent assistance. Scaffolding instruction is an instructional strategy derived from sociocultural theory and Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development.

According to Vygotsky, social interaction as provided in scaffolding is essential in the children’s cognitive development. The teacher’s responsibility is to nudge students into their zones of proximal development, nurture success using tasks slightly more advanced than the students can handle alone, and thereby wean them toward independence (Tomlinson et al., 2003). Bender (2008) and Tomlinson (2001) suggested teachers can differentiate instruction for advanced learners in numerous ways (e.g., assigning more complex reading or research matter, challenging them to think at a higher level, and requiring them to use more sophisticated skills).

Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) helps us understand how and why we can adjust instruction to meet various student ability levels. The basis of this theory is that instruction should be designed to reach a developmental level just above the student’s current developmental level because that is where learning takes place.

Bender, S. L. (2006, December). Tri-sphere of influence: The people in our private, professional, and public arenas. Retrieved February 21, 2012, from http://www.sharonbender.com/Tri-Sphere.htm 

Tomlinson, C. A. (2001). How to differentiate instruction in mixed-ability classrooms (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Tomlinson, C. A., Brighton, C., Hertberg, H., Callahan, C. M., Moon, T. R., Brimijoin, K., Conover, L. A., & Reynolds, T. (2003). Differentiating instruction in response to student readiness, interest, and learning profile in academically diverse classrooms: A review of literature. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 27 (2–3), 119–145.