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Scaffolding critical thinking in the zone of proximal

development

Rob Wass , Tony Harland & Alison Mercer

To cite this article: Rob Wass , Tony Harland & Alison Mercer (2011) Scaffolding critical thinking
in the zone of proximal development, Higher Education Research & Development, 30:3, 317-328,
DOI: 10.1080/07294360.2010.489237

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Higher Education Research & Development
Vol. 30, No. 3, June 2011, 317–328

Scaffolding critical thinking in the zone of proximal development

Rob Wassa*, Tony Harlandb and Alison Mercera
a
Department of Zoology, University of Otago, New Zealand; bHigher Education Development
Centre, University of Otago, New Zealand
(Received 15 December 2009; final version received 17 April 2010)
Taylor and Francis
CHER_A_489237.sgm

Higher
10.1080/07294360.2010.489237
0729-4360
Taylor
2011
30Article
30
Mr
rob.wass@otago.ac.nz
000002011
RobWass
&
Education
Francis
(print)/1469-8366
Research &(online)
Development

This paper explores student experiences of learning to think critically. Twenty-six

zoology undergraduates took part in the study for three years of their degree at the
University of Otago, New Zealand. Vygotsky’s developmental model of the Zone
of Proximal Development (ZPD) provided a framework as we examined how
critical thinking was developed. There was very little evidence of critical thinking
at first year as students experienced a high-level of material scaffold in the form
of course documents, textbooks, problem solving-exercises and discussions that
were primarily aimed at the acquisition of factual knowledge. In large classes
students were anonymous to lecturers and they relied on each other for support. In
years 2 and 3, learning to do research became the main scaffold for critical
thinking and students gradually changed their views about the nature of
knowledge. Verbal scaffolding and conversation with lecturers and peers allowed
students to extend their ZPD for critical thinking. They began to accept
responsibility for their own and their peers’ learning as they practiced being a
zoology researcher. These findings are discussed in relation to two approaches to
scaffolding in the ZPD and it is suggested that research should be an integral part
of the first year if critical thinking remains a key aim for higher education.
Keywords: critical thinking; scaffold; Vygotsky; zone of proximal development

Introduction
According to Ramsden (1992) the aim of higher education has remained relatively
unchanged over the years and he cites A.N. Whitehead, who wrote in 1929 that
students in higher education should develop the ability to ‘think critically’. This abil-
ity is still considered integral to reasoning within a discipline and essential for advanc-
ing knowledge. However, thinking critically can also be seen as context-independent
(Winch, 2006) and, as such, a lifelong learning skill. This conception addresses
concerns that much of the factual material taught at university is soon forgotten or
becomes outdated and that the ability to think critically is a longer-lasting legacy of
higher education (Terenzini, Springer, Pascarella, & Nora, 1995). Critical thinking has
also been rationalised in political terms, with the ability seen as an important response
to the economic needs of students, national governments, employers and other stake-
holders who have argued for all educational sectors to prepare individuals who are
able to contribute to a successful economy (Harland, 2009). Critical thinkers who can
reason well and make good judgments should also be able to contribute to a more
rational, civilized society (Barnett, 1997).

*Corresponding author. Email: rob.wass@otago.ac.nz

ISSN 0729-4360 print/ISSN 1469-8366 online

© 2011 HERDSA
DOI: 10.1080/07294360.2010.489237
http://www.informaworld.com
318 R. Wass et al.

Although the idea of critical thinking is notoriously difficult to specify with preci-
sion (Kuhn, 1999) a definition is needed if we wish to avoid uncritical acceptance of
the concept. Pascarella and Terenzini (1991) define critical thinking as the ability to
do some or all of the following:

… identify central issues and assumptions in an argument, recognise important relation-

ships, make correct inferences from data, deduce conclusions from information or data
provided, interpret whether conclusions are warranted on the basis of the data given, and
evaluate evidence or authority. (p. 118)

These are the same skills a research academic would be expected to have as they deter-
mine the accuracy and worth of a knowledge claim (Beyer, 1985). Critical thinking
also aims to improve the quality of thought by developing the capacity for evaluating
one’s own thinking in reading, writing, listening and speaking (Scriven & Paul, 2007).
In addition, it has been argued that critical thinking also requires certain attitudes or
dispositions such as empathy, humility, integrity, perseverance and fairness (Reed,
1998). These attributes enable the critical thinker to apply rational criteria (Pithers,
2000; Browne & Freeman, 2000). According to Facione (1990):

… the ideal critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, well-informed, trustful of reason,

open-minded, flexible, fair minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases,
prudent in making judgements, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in
complex manners, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of
criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the
subject and the circumstances of inquiry permit. (p. 3)

However, Barnett (1997) re-conceptualised critical thinking by merging thinking

skills with social action to shape the idea of ‘critical being’. The critical being is seen
as the integration of three forms of criticality: critical reason, critical self-reflection
and critical action. In this view, critical thinkers not only reflect critically as they
evaluate knowledge, but they also develop powers of critical self-reflection and are
then prepared to take critical action. An important characteristic of Barnett’s critical
being is that thinking is collaborative in character and must be sustained through
shared activity and discourse around collective standards within a community.
The work of Vygotsky anticipated such a social construction of critical thinking
(Schunk, 2004). Vygotsky believed that development is not simply facilitated by
social interaction but that social interactions fundamentally shape and transform the
way we think (Cole & Wertsch, 1996). A key theoretical model devised by Vygotsky
to explain this was the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The ZPD is defined by
Vygotsky (1978) as:

the distance between the actual developmental level, as determined by independent

problem solving, and the level of potential development, as determined through problem
solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. (p. 86)

In the ZPD, the more capable peer and the learner work on a task that the learner could
not perform independently because of the difficulty level. At a later stage, the learner
will be able to perform this same task without assistance (Doolittle, 1997). Vygotsky
never thoroughly defined what constitutes a ‘more capable peer’ but it is likely to refer
to more than someone from a ‘peer group’ and, in a university context, must include
direct and indirect assistance from other students, teachers, lecturers and researchers.
 Higher Education Research & Development 319

Figure 1. Movement through the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) from the Zone of
Current Development (ZCD) after successful scaffolding (source Harland, 2003)

If the ZPD is the potential distance the learner could reach with the help of a more
capable peer, then the Zone of Current Development (ZCD) represents the level that
the learner can reach through independent problem solving. In order to help a teacher
provide for the optimal ZPD, the metaphor of scaffolding has been proposed as a
guide to thinking through this practice (Bruner, 1975). Scaffolding represents the
support a learner is given to attain a goal or engage in a task otherwise out of reach
(Davis & Miyake, 2004). For example, as the learner masters each element of the task,
the teacher may ‘remove’ the scaffold support and gradually pass more control to the
learner. After successful scaffolding, the outer edge of the ZPD defines the limits of
the new ZCD (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Movement through the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) from the Zone of Current Development (ZCD) after successful scaffolding (source Harland, 2003)

Aim of study
As a defining concept of a university education, critical thinking needs to be under-
stood so it can be better supported (Barnett, 1997). Although much research has
been done to this end, critical thinking remains a difficult concept to define and
outside the fields of education, psychology and cognitive development we lack stud-
ies on the developmental nature of this concept (Kuhn, 1999). The present paper
provides an account of the development of critical thinking from the student’s
perspective. The research examines the educational experiences of zoology students
over three years and it adopts a theoretical position that knowledge is socially
constructed and that the ZPD model has value for enhancing our understanding of
learning development. At the same time it was recognised that students’ reported
experiences would allow us insight into the utility of the model. In particular we
were interested in how students developed critical thinking in the ZPD, how this
changed over time and the decisions teachers, students and others made to scaffold
this process.

Methods
The study took place in the Department of Zoology, University of Otago between 2006
and 2008. The Zoology programme consists of lectures, tutorials, laboratory-work and
320 R. Wass et al.

field courses. At first year, the laboratory sessions are hands-on with numerous dissec-
tions, experimental work and computer simulations. The students often work in pairs
during these sessions, but groups of up to four are common. Although lecturers teach
from their own research experience they also teach basic biological concepts from a
core textbook and PowerPoint slides for lectures are provided on the course manage-
ment system. At second year, students experience field-work and there is a focus on
writing laboratory reports. There is a textbook but students are also required to review
original research articles. In third year, group project work features strongly. A super-
visor is assigned to each group but there is a great deal of ownership of projects by
students. They may, for example, come up with original research questions, gather data,
write-up and interpret results. All the project groups report their findings in seminars
and class discussions are encouraged.
The first-year cohort has an enrolment of around 300. About 80% enter University
directly from high school and the majority of these will not go on to study Zoology.
As a consequence, only those majoring in Zoology were selected for this research and
26 volunteered to take part in the three-year study. They were interviewed in each year
using a semi-structured technique that aimed to discover what had scaffolded their
learning over the previous 12 months and how this had supported the development of
critical thinking. The open interview framework enabled students to explore their
thoughts and carefully reflect on issues that they determined as important. In addition,
one third-year tutorial was video-taped for the purposes of allowing students to take
part in an in-depth exploration of their experiences using the technique of Interper-
sonal Process Recall (IPR) (Kagan, Schauble, Resnikoff, Danish, & Krathwohl,
1969).
Transcripts were analysed using Thomas’s general inductive approach (Thomas,
2006), which seeks to develop a framework of the underlying experiences evident in
the raw data while recognising that interpretation is also shaped by theory and the
experiences, knowledge and beliefs of the researchers. With regard to scaffolding,
we recognised that it is a difficult concept to define (Granott, 2005). For the
purpose of this study we examined all of the support structures students identified as
helping them develop as critical thinkers. It should be noted that these supports
(material or social) all had a social origin. For instance, a textbook was considered a
scaffold when set as a prescribed or recommended reading by a lecturer to help a
student learn. Critical thinking was viewed as an evaluative process that involved an
interdependent array of abilities and dispositions. These included (but were not
limited to): judging the quality of evidence and the credibility of sources; asking
appropriate questions; being open minded; being aware of assumptions; and seeing
things from others’ points of view (Ennis, 1993). We were particularly alert to
evidence that showed students developing as Barnett’s ‘critical being’ (Barnett,
1997).

Results and discussion

The data showed a clear critical thinking development pattern over the three years of
the study. Students attributed changes to both curriculum experiences and interper-
sonal factors, such as their relationships with teachers or peers. The key themes that
emerged were how engaging with research activities altered student perceptions of
knowledge as a key determinant of critical thinking and how relationships were
crucial to this process.
 Higher Education Research & Development 321

1. Scaffolding critical thinking through research

This theme examines the way in which the curriculum provided scaffolding in each of
the three years of the degree programme. The overarching concept was that learning
to become a zoology researcher would develop the required critical attributes of
higher education. It was organised around the idea that factual knowledge needed to
be acquired before critical thinking was achievable. First-year students concentrated
on learning facts and theories and were then expected to apply these as they gradually
developed their critical capacities through research training that culminated in an inde-
pendent project in year 3 (Willison & O’Regan, 2007).
When students were first interviewed most compared their experiences with high
school and reported that while they had expected something different at University, it
seemed to be an extension of school, although the context for learning was radically
different because of the freedom to choose whether or not to study. Learning,
however, was still described as memorising information to satisfy course requirements
and pass exams:

The grades that you get in university are quite different to what I’m used to getting. You
don’t get any feedback and you can’t discuss it. … You may need to just have to go, well,
I’ll just work as hard I can and learn as much as I can about the topic and then hopefully,
whatever grade I get will reflect that. (Angela, first-year student)

All students found it hard to define critical thinking at this stage and there was very
little evidence from the way in which they described their learning, that what they were
doing required much in the way of reasoning or evaluation of knowledge. Their learning
was highly scaffolded through written or digital artefacts, such as textbooks, handouts,
laboratory workbooks and computer simulations. Students commented that support
materials, especially the laboratory workbook and simulations, provided alternative
ways to understand lecture content and served to structure their thinking. In addition,
students felt that they were learning material for themselves, which increased motivation.
The sheer volume of information they were asked to assimilate and master seemed
to preclude spaces for other types of learning. Most felt little ownership of either the
process or outcomes of learning. Combined with a high level of material scaffold, this
may have made students over-reliant on declarative and procedural forms of knowledge
that are unlikely to be appropriate as a foundation for critical thinking (Pithers, 2000).
Furthermore, the data also showed that a student’s ZCD, in terms of their prior expe-
riences, knowledge and cognitive abilities, was not taken as a genuine starting point
for teaching in the large first-year classes.
Learning through research appeared to scaffold a change in second year. All
students who took part in the study moved from a view of knowledge as something
incontestable, to a position where epistemological uncertainty became an important
part of their emerging identity as inquirers:
Just because they are the teacher, they don’t know everything. They’re not always right
which is a really mean thing to say, but just because you are taught it, it doesn’t mean
that it’s right because science is always subject to change. That’s why they can’t give us
textbooks anymore. They just give us these scientific articles and that’s a great way to
learn. (Mel, third-year student)

They began to see a new purpose in developing skills to challenge knowledge, in

particular knowledge represented in textbooks and journal articles. Critical thinking
was described as ‘critiquing things’, ‘independent thinking’ and ‘developing their own
322 R. Wass et al.

ideas’. Some recognised that their thinking changed because of the increased
confidence that came from success in research tasks and the insight that their own
ideas could be valued by others. This important development was clearly seen as part
of professional formation and students reported that they needed to ‘think like a
zoologist’ to be successful. Most recognized that such thinking could also be trans-
ferred to other inquiry situations. In second year, students were reviewing primary
literature to learn evaluative skills:

It’s almost like, I’ve slowly, I can imagine slowly picking up a sense of criticism towards
the experiment. So I’m sort of developing a, a critical eye on how they’ve, they’ve gone
through the experiment and if they’ve kept it all constant. I mean, you assume they will
because they’re usually produced through an academic institution, but I’d like to, I feel
like I’m sort of getting more critical of the experiments. (Tom, second-year student)

Here Tom is developing inferences about methods and feeling more confident to
challenge scientific authority. Yet there was also an indication that some students still
saw themselves as novices and that knowledge was created by and belonged to others:

… you kind of get an impression that you’re just meant to not think for yourself yet and
still have to just look at everyone else’s research and see what they’re doing and just say
what everyone else has come up with rather than actually putting your own ideas in there
and I think, in a way, that’s true because we haven’t actually done any research into our
own areas yet. (Angela, second-year student)

Angela seems to accept that original research creates new knowledge but that this
exists outside of her, as opposed to something related to her own learning experiences
and emerging desire to create her own ideas. Yet the data suggested that research
activity was central to knowledge-making and the primary scaffold for a student’s
journey through their ZPD for critical thinking. If we accept the logic of Vygotsky’s
social learning theory, doing research will always start with a student’s ZCD and when
the learner takes part in authentic inquiry activities, the ZPD is maximised (Harland,
2003).
A key dimension of all research exercises was writing. Students wrote research-
based essays, critiques of papers and research reports. Writing was viewed as an act
of critical thought and knowledge construction, rather than an outcome of these
processes (Emig, 1977). There was little mention of how teachers contributed to this
experience but any writing-intervention is likely to affect the outcomes for the ZPD.
As such, any teacher-scaffold for writing needs to be carefully thought out because of
writing’s potential as a tool for supporting the process of learning to think critically
(Allen, Bowers, & Diekelmann, 1989; Hobson & Schafermeyer, 1994).
When the second- and third-year students were asked to reflect on their first-year
experiences they suggested that a foundation of factual information had been neces-
sary and they supported the status quo that ‘facts’ must come before ‘thinking’ and
that it was the teacher’s role to provide this knowledge. At the same time they also
believed that what was important for them to take away from university was the ability
to evaluate, make judgements and create their own factual knowledge:

Caroline, third-year st.: It was hard to go through that rote learning stage … I don’t
think I’d be where I am now and as confident in doing research
and … my own project if I didn’t have that base knowledge.
Interviewer: Perhaps it does not have to be separated out as much?
 Higher Education Research & Development 323

Caroline, third-year st.: The knowledge is very important but the fact is that it was
knowledge without thinking for yourself or any kind of critique.

In this example, the student supports the first-year experience while recognising the
difficulty associated with it. If learning through being actively engaged in research
was used more in first year, dispositions necessary for critical thinking development
might be formed earlier. However, there would inevitably be less space for subject
knowledge and there is a widely held assumption that without a sufficient store of
factual knowledge, critical thinking becomes difficult (Kuhn, 1999). Yet ‘knowledge
in the context of discovery and knowledge in the context of transmission are entirely
different enterprises’ (Barnett, 1992, p. 623). If this idea is accepted, teachers could
seek a new equilibrium with more research inquiry and less factual information and
then test the new enterprise to see what difference it makes to student learning and
critical thinking. However, it is hard to see how such a change could be resourced with
large first-year classes that are ever increasing in size because of the continued shift
to mass-higher education and concurrent rationalisation of courses. It may be much
easier for academics to provide a ‘facts first, inquiry later’ curriculum and believe that
this is the correct educational philosophy, even when there is evidence that potential
for critical thinking is lost. Figure 2 illustrates this tension by showing alternative ZPD
outcomes.
Figure 2 originates in the work of Reiser (2004), who identified two distinct
Figure 2. Structured (ZPD 1) and problematised (ZPD 2) scaffold strategies and their impacts on critical thinking.

approaches to scaffolding in science education. With respect to critical thinking, ZPD

1 shows the outcome of structured support in which the aim is to simplify the task for
the learner and reduce complexity. In our study, scaffolding in large first-year classes
included using guided textbooks, course materials and supported problem-solving
exercises, with a move from high to low teacher-dependence. The second approach
focuses on problematising the learning experience, which is seen to be more produc-
tive in terms of developing evaluation, thinking and reasoning skills, extending the
zone for critical thinking (ZPD 2). Learning through research provides an example of
a problematised ZPD because it requires students to take responsibility for their own
thinking and maintain engagement with complex issues. Both are seen as an essential

Figure 2. Structured (ZPD 1) and problematised (ZPD 2) scaffold strategies and their impacts
on critical thinking.
324 R. Wass et al.

part of developing higher thought processes through inquiry (Dewey, 1938). The ZPD
2 requires teachers to stand back from interventions to allow student-struggle and thus
foster the development of ‘thinking for oneself’ and a disposition towards education
as a process rather than an outcome. However, Reiser (2004) cautions that in a curric-
ulum we need balance in our scaffolding approaches. Learners will not be served well
by overwhelming complexity without suitable structure or a structured approach that
strips away complexity altogether. The question remains of what difference would it
make to critical thinking in both the short- and long-term if a ZPD 2 strategy was
adopted more often at first-year?
A key difficulty with the ZPD 2 model is that it requires students to be pro-active
in their quest for learning and not all will feel comfortable with this approach. In the
modular system found at Otago, students have choice in which courses they take and
we have anecdotal evidence that some programmes with a reputation for self-directed
learning and inquiry are avoided. Not all first-year students seem to want control of
their learning, which would negate certain forms of scaffolding for critical thinking
and therefore result in a different potential for their ZPD.

2. Conventional and informal scaffolds

Although curriculum planning and course activities scaffolded the development of
critical thinking over the three years, data showed that less formal or unplanned social
experiences were also essential. These included peer support, peer and teacher conver-
sation, teachers acting as role models and changing perceptions of the programme
culture. Most students started off by viewing knowledge as a personal construction but
by third year all but one had changed their ideas about the social nature of learning.
Teachers and student-peers became more important to each other and there was
evidence that both groups became a necessary part of an individual’s ZPD and
essential for the development of critical thinking.
In first year there was no culture of student-lecturer interactions, in part because
of the large class size, but mainly because students were reluctant to engage with
lecturers. By year three, this situation had changed:

We’ve just been three years in the same class and we know all the lecturers now and been
through them all but they’ve been a bit more sociable, you know, recognise you and talk
to you and the funny thing is that that is such an important part of the learning process
because if you didn’t know any of these people, it means it’s more difficult to talk about
what you’re doing academically. (Tom, third-year student)

Tom recognises the consequence of the informal interpersonal role of the lecturer.
Some may have been more receptive to getting to know students or this change may
simply have been a function of smaller class sizes and prolonged contact time.
Nevertheless, students reported that their changing relationship with lecturers was
both subtle and central to higher-order thinking. Improved access to teaching staff
allowed them to explore their understanding of the course material at a much deeper
level and some reported that their questions gradually became more sophisticated as
confidence in their relationship with the lecturer increased. It was also quite common
for lecturers to scaffold students through student-led conversations rather than
teacher-led assumptions. These conversations often included careful questioning and
then direction by the teacher and data showed that students could be keen observers
of this process:
 Higher Education Research & Development 325

It’s like he’s getting at something and I knew because he started directing the question
and I had forgotten that that was what the study was all heading towards. You know, you
get tied up with doing a study; you forget that you asked a question and that’s why you’re
doing it in the first place. So the whole time I think he kept going back to what was the
question. (IPR tutorial transcript)

Lecturers were clearly seen as role models at third year as students undertook their
research inquiries with support coming mainly from conversations with supervisors:

I think that it is funny learning from someone like [the supervisor] because you can sit
there and look quite passive but at the same time, I have written two pages because he is
structuring my thoughts. He isn’t necessarily giving out the answers but he is helping us
lead up the process of getting somewhere. (IPR tutorial transcript)

Teachers who supervised student research needed a different set of scaffolding skills.
They diagnosed student learning and developmental needs in the ZCD before taking
appropriate action and this contrasted markedly with the support provided at first
year, in which a highly structured pre-determined curriculum regarded student knowl-
edge, skills, abilities and dispositions as similar across a large cohort. Students
commented that after a conversation with a lecturer (or sometimes a peer) it was
much easier to recall knowledge and they also talked to lecturers about other things
that were important to them, such as careers and qualifications. Relationships with
laboratory demonstrators were also valuable, especially at first year, when they were
more accessible than lecturing staff. Demonstrators would talk about how to study
and typically sort out a student’s problem when they were stuck. However, they
tended to go no further in their teaching than providing basic support or help with
study skills and this situation was recognised by one student as inadequate to their
learning needs.
Similarly, students as ‘more-capable peers’ tended to provide only factual help in
the early stages but in later years talking to peers became an active way of rehearsing
ideas and reinforcing new knowledge. Friends were generally more willing to put in
effort to help and students perceived that peers would not judge them in the same way
as a lecturer. Comparing knowledge to that of one’s peers was also important and such
comparative evaluation could have unexpected outcomes for critical thinking. For
example, one student observed that several individuals writing-up a group research
project had produced ‘completely different’ accounts from the same data and from this
experience they became aware that the principle of researcher interpretation must also
hold for papers published in science journals.
However, peer interaction tended to be limited to affirmation or simple compro-
mise rather than a situation where ideas were subject to robust challenge. In this sense
the ZPD is likely to be attenuated, as ‘challenge’ must be an important scaffold for the
development of critical thinking. Furthermore, peers were not always suitable scaf-
folders as data showed that those who seemed more knowledgeable could irritate
those who were not ‘up to their level’ and also that peer-knowledge might not be
trusted, especially in the early years:

I’m always suspicious of my friends when they tell me stuff in regards to a course
because I’ve known them to be wrong. I’m always thinking, well that might be true but
it might not be. I’m always very suspicious of people my own age that are telling me
things about biological systems or whatever and saying this is what it is. I don’t trust that
sort of information. (Tom, first-year student)
326 R. Wass et al.

Of course, Tom’s suspicion also shows a critical mind that would presumably be
applied later to the critique of journal articles, a lecturer’s knowledge claims or his own
work. Overall, these social interactions changed students as learners and from second
year there was a notable shift in focus from ‘self’ to a more collaborative environment:

So just being in university, you [learn that you] can rely on other people to do what they
say they’ll do and to turn up for group meetings and stuff and you learn that other people
do care about their education which I think is pretty important because it changes your
attitude towards working with people. (Anna, third-year student)

In the wider group there was evidence that some students were prepared to make time
to support their peers and this change could be interpreted as an example of ‘critical
action’ (Barnett, 1997). These formal and informal conversations helped students
towards what one described as ‘thinking like a researcher’. Curriculum components
that provided conversational space included fieldwork, research training exercises and
group research projects. These supported changing dispositions as students matured
and formed new attitudes towards their own learning and that of their peer group.
‘Attitude’ has been seen as a form of self-scaffolding (Bickhard, 2005) when it leads
the student to use self-evaluation or a skill, such as breaking a task down into more
manageable components, in order to extend their ZCD.
Willingness to take responsibility for others was a key dimension of both learning
and critical thinking at second and third year because students were required to collab-
orate in research. It has been suggested that scaffolding in the ZPD is dependent on an
individual’s history and cultural circumstances (Duffy & Cunningham, 1996) and
there is concern that if students take forward the individualistic culture observed in
first year, then the collaborative dimension of critical thinking (Barnett, 1997) typical
of later years becomes more difficult to accomplish.

Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to explore the student perspective of learning to be crit-
ical thinkers and the different ways in which this was scaffolded in the ZPD. The logic
of the curriculum was to treat students as academics in training and in this context
research development, culminating in authentic research experience, was part of the
educational process. Research inquiries provided students with evaluative skills and
the opportunity to develop new attitudes to knowledge congruent with the broad aims
of critical thinking. A summary of the research outcomes that capture the key changes
in student experiences of critical thinking is provided in Table 1.
At first year the key scaffolds were formal laboratory problem-solving exercises
that aimed primarily at testing theory and knowledge. Students in large classes tended
to be relatively anonymous to teachers and most other students and, in this context,
any peer relationship was valued for learning, even if this only served to confirm or
validate factual knowledge. In second and third year, research activities and easier
access to teachers changed the student experience radically. Teacher conversations
were crucial to scaffolding and maximising the ZPD for evaluation and critical reflec-
tion. Peer conversation altered in focus during this period and some began to take
more responsibility for others with respect to consciously trying to develop higher-
order learning. These students were able to integrate ideas, apply critical thinking to
new contexts and take critical action when scaffolding others, although such actions
 Higher Education Research & Development 327

Table 1. Key developmental stages and scaffolding support for critical thinking in the zoology
programme and the possible impact on Vygotsky’s ZPD.
Conventional Informal Impact on ZPD Student conceptions
scaffolding of scaffolding of for critical – critical thinking as:
critical thinking critical thinking thinking
First year Textbooks; Rare lecturer and Assumptions Applying formal
computer demonstrator about student knowledge to
simulations; conversation. ZCD and unlikely problems.
problem-solving to maximise ZPD.
exercises; lectures.
Second year Research training Lecturer and peer Learning to Evaluating evidence;
exercises; lectures.conversation; diagnose ZCD and embedded in subject.
some self- maximising ZPD.
scaffolding.
Third year Original research; Lecturer and peer Diagnosing ZCD Evaluation of
research in teams; conversation; is necessary and evidence; embedded
lectures. peers take more maximising ZPD. in subject; used in
responsibility for different contexts;
others; self- taking action.
scaffolding.

often seemed limited in their impact on other’s critical thinking development.

However, such actions provide some evidence to support Barnett’s (1997) idea of
‘critical being’. We question what impact there would be on critical thinking if
students, rather than focusing exclusively on obtaining core-factual knowledge,
started doing research on the day they entered university, so that knowledge is
produced in the context of discovery rather than transmission.

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