Approximating the ZPD? Young children's judgements of appropriate task level for learning

This research examined how 3-6-year-olds judge appropriate levels of counting games based on a person's ability, desire for learning and degree of difficulty. Study 1 found that 3-year-olds did not consider a character's ability or desire, whereas older children gave high ability characters large number games and low ability characters small number games when the characters wanted to play a manageable game. However, older children gave large number games to characters who wanted to learn counting, regardless of their ability. In Study 2, in addition to a similar developmental change of jointly considering a character's ability and desire, it was found that 5-and 6-year-olds were more sensitive to the degree of difficulty. They were more careful than younger children to choose exceedingly large number games given the character's ability and desire. Implications for children's understanding of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and goal orientation are discussed.