The Empirical Study of the Zone of Proximal Development: Operational, Technical and Motivational Components of the Action
The article discusses the possibility of an empirical research of the child's zone of proximal development (ZPD). We used works of D.B. Elkonin on the meaningful action as our base. The pilot study consisted of two parts. Its aim was to study how formation of motivational and operational components of the action takes place in the ZPD space of a meaningful action. The appearance conditions of productive action's different meanings (motives) in children of elder preschool age were discussed in the first part. The results indicate that different meanings affect the action performance productivity differently. In the second part the problem of selection of the best sample, depending on the complexity of the performed action was discussed based on the example of tying the tourist knots by children of primary school age. The article concludes that the creation of the object action's ZPD space is related to intervention on operational-technical and motive-need aspects of the action.