(crosspost)

[pilfered_words]

 (Responding to this post about the “Learning Zone Model”)

This is also (usually?) known as the zone of proximal development, or ZPD, first developed by Vygotsky in the 30s. If you undershoot it, you won’t learn anything. If you overshoot it, you’ll get confused and overwhelmed and also won’t learn anything. 

 

I saw this all the time when I was teaching. There was a band, sometimes very narrow, where my students would visibly, obviously be thinking and learning. If I twitched wrong, at that point, if I gave them a problem very slightly harder than what they were prepared for, their eyes would glaze over and they would freeze like a deer in the headlights. 

 

(And then I would backpedal and give them something halfway there, that didn’t push them over that line.)

 

I think people know this instinctively when teaching someone else, but magically forget it when they’re the person in question. And even with someone else, it works best if it’s an academic subject. There are plenty of things that aren’t seen as something you need to learn to do, just as something you need to start doing, even though learning is clearly the thing happening.