![]() Rather, most of us tend to do things without any clear, well-thought-out plan of action. The concept of a zone of proximal development and scaffolding can, in my view, be adapted to the context of an adult self-learner who has enough self-awareness to recognize his/her current capacities and, as a consequence, who is capable of tailoring (language) learning activities to those capacities. Perhaps because it’s rarely thought of as a strategy to use as part of one’s toolkit, the above-mentioned concepts rarely seem to be adhered to by language learners. The teacher then helps the student attain the skill the student is trying to master, in hopes that the teacher will no longer be needed for that task. Scaffolding is a process through which a teacher or a more competent peer helps the student in his or her zone of proximal development as necessary and tapers off this aid as it becomes unnecessary, much as a scaffold is removed from a building after construction is completed. The student learning the skill set cannot complete it without the assistance of the teacher or peer. This adaptive strategy in fact applies to teachers and educators the zone of proximal development is typically defined as an area of learning that occurs when a person is assisted by a teacher or peer with a skill set higher than that of the subject, a concept widely used to study children’s mental development as it relates to education. Activities are tailored to the individual learner’s current ability – it must be neither too hard nor too easy – in order to keep them in the “ zone of proximal development,” the level of difficulty at which the learner can learn the most. In his short essay, Heckman underlines that the development of skills takes place within a vital “scaffolding.” Scaffolding, he points out, consists of an adaptive strategy that recognizes the current capacities of the learner and guides him or her to further learning without too much frustration. While Heckman’s essay explores the development of skills during childhood and its relation to character building, his insights apply equally well to learners or students of any age, which means you and me. It turns out, one of the essays, written by Nobel Laureate in Economics James Heckman, struck a particular chord. Does character matter as much as cognitive (IQ) skills? Can skills or capacities be both acquired and developed, or are a few lucky ones just born with the right genes? These are the kinds of big questions that these academics were (and still are) trying to answer. The short essays, written by distinguished academics from leading universities and research centres, explore views on the issues raised by a policy focus on the formation of character, and its relationship to questions of opportunity. Not so long ago, on a bright Sunday afternoon, I was browsing the website of one of the United States’ leading public policy organizations, Brookings Institution, and I stumbled across a series of Essays on Character and Opportunity.
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