Interactive Designer's Cookbook
Tags: Vygotsky, Obduction, The Stanley Parable, Journey

Who Was Vygotsky?

Lev Vygotsky was a psychologist, born in 1896 in Russia. He was home schooled and went to University by “mere ballot through a ‘Jewish Lottery’” (more info on Wikipedia).

Although his interests ranged more towards the humanities and social sciences, he was in medical school for a semester before transferring to law school. Similar to his schooling, Vygotsky’s theories and opinions changed over time, but his most well-known theory in modern education is the Zone of Proximal Development.

The Zone of Proximal Development, or ZPD, is one circle in an entirely circular Venn diagram of development. It’s often explained using a picture similar to this one:

Diagram of Lev Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, made by author.

There are essentially three “zones” for development. The first “zone” is the smallest and is what learners can already do in the area they’re developing in. The second is larger and is what learners can do when helped or aided by a “more knowledgeable other”, or someone who already has experience in the field — this is the “Zone of Proximal Development”. The ZPD is finally surrounded by the largest circle, a moat considered to be what learners cannot do. In its most simple form, this common diagram aims to visualize the “brick wall” students hit when learning something new and why more knowledgeable others are necessary to show them the way.

If this seems far too simplified, that’s because it is.

Vygotsky’s theories have been taught over and over again for so many years that they’ve become one of the staple theories in educational education, meaning they get taught and taught and taught even more. The diagram above does not do enough to illustrate the nuances embedded in Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development. Seth Chaiklin’s paper, “The zone of proximal development in Vygotsky’s analysis of learning and instruction” (see here) goes into more depth about Vygotsky’s theories, specifically ZPD. Chaiklin’s paper is well paraphrased by David Didau (see here), but basically there are a few things to consider when looking at the simplified version of Vygotsky’s theory.

First of all, there’s a distinction between development and learning. It’s too semantic to get into here, but for more reading please see Didau’s post and suggested readings. Basically, Vygotsky named it the zone of proximal development, not the zone of proximal learning. This goes against the common misconception that a more knowledgeable other can bring a student from point A to point B in a lesson; instead, the theory seems to suggest that it instead helps students develop in a certain area, which could then help them get from point A to B. But the zone itself is not where students do that kind of A to B learning.

The second thing to consider when looking at Vygotsky’s simplified ZPD is tat there are 3 main assumptions that come with it. Those assumptions are well described by Didau as follows:

1. The generality assumption: that there is a ZPD for learning every different kind of subject matter 2. The assistance assumption: that learning is dependent on support from an expert 2. The potential assumption: that teaching in the ZPD will result in easy or effortless learning.

The first major assumption is that there’s a zone of learning for every subject. Evidently the ZPD is appealing because it makes sense — but it’s not always relevant or possible. This leads into the second assumption, that students always depend on a teacher or expert in the room to learn. If we’ve learned anything from all these Zoom Universities in quarantine, it’s that students don’t absolutely need an expert in the room to learn something new. And the final assumption brings it all together — the ZPD isn’t some kind of magical zone where students suddenly come to understand a topic. Instead, it’s a zone where they have the potential to advance their knowledge, and advancing knowledge is never easy or effortless.

Looking at each of these assumptions and the choice of “development” as opposed to “learning”, it’s easy to see how the ZPD gets boiled down and misconstrued. However, by comparing and contrasting games and their execution of the ZPD, we can see which designs are more effective.

The simplest part of a game that reflects Vygotsky’s ZPD is the beginning tutorial that almost every game has. The irony in simplifying the ZPD to just the tutorials when I just explained how simplifying ZPD is a detriment to the theory is not lost on me. But, for the sake of brevity and discussion, let’s consider the tutorial aspects of games to be operating similar to Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development.

Let’s look at these games, specifically their use of a More Knowledgeable Other, considering of development vs. learning, and if they go with or against and of the assumptions.

The games we’ll consider here are: thatgamecompany’s Journey, Bethesda’s Fallout 4, Cyan Inc.’s Obduction, and finally Galactic Cafe’s The Stanley Parable.If you are unfamiliar with any of the games, there are full, no-commentary walkthroughs of each game at the end of their section (both the walkthrough videos and my post contain spoilers).

Terms

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) — The “middle circle” of learning; in between what a learner can already do and what they cannot do; the area for potential in a subject matter. Once they pass through one zone of proximal development, they can enter another to continue to develop.

More Knowledgeable / Capable Other — An expert to help a learner through their zone of proximal development, usually seen as a teacher in a classroom or a tutorial in a video game.

Assumptions about the theory of ZPD (from David Didau (see here))