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Key Takeaways The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is the gap between what someone can do on their own and what they can achieve with guidance. Identifying this “sweet spot” is the key to effective growth and learning.
Use the Think Aloud Protocol to test ZPD. Give employees new tasks and have them verbalize their thought process in real-time. This allows you to pinpoint where they struggle and where they might benefit from coaching.
By understanding each team member’s ZPD, you can strategically invest in each of them. It will also tell you when to stop investing.
Most people think that babies sit, crawl, stand, walk, then run, in that order. I agree that the path has a certain logic. But those who have experience with children have seen babies who crawl before they can sit, and some who skip crawling altogether. In this most basic sense, each baby has their own Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).
ZPD is the gap between what someone can do on their own and what you can help them do with support (i.e., through coaching, training and so forth). Research shows that you can bring about learning in the ZPD — it’s the “sweet spot” in someone’s capacity for growth.
The watchful and thinking baby manager can see the signs and direction of their charges’ progress and help them along. Those who aspire to walk can be given a push toy to practice on. Those who want to stand before they can even sit (my youngest exhibited this at four months, much to our alarm) can be given opportunities to practice that, too.
The key is to give support to people within their ZPD, and not, say, try to teach a sitter how to run.
Related: Workplace Learning Is Broken. These 5 Steps Tell You How to Fix It.
Professional ZPD
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