Vygotsky defined the Zone of Proximal Development as the actual gap between what problems the child is able to solve independently and what the child could solve with assistance.
Importance
Vygotsky’s primary focus was on how a child’s social and cultural
environment played a role in developing cognitive growth (Ormrod, 2012). For Vygotsky (1978) cultural
development appears twice in a learner: first between people and second inside the
learner. Ballard and Butler (2011) noted how Vygotsky’s most essential element
of instructed learning was to awaken a variety of internal processes that only
operate during social interaction.