Tackle New Challenges with Learning Theory
Jess Ingrassellino, EdD, is the Director of Quality Assurance for Salesforce’s Non-Profit and Education Clouds
What do learning theories have to do with developing software for the best non-profit and educational CRM management tools in the world? Absolutely everything. Or at least, that’s what I’ve learned since becoming a software tester.
I started my career as a music teacher, working in underserved school districts. My doctoral studies focused on how teachers made meaningful assessments of children’s learning. Becoming a software tester felt natural because I spent years observing, experimenting, learning, and engaging with people in the classroom. Today, I do this work with software and software teams.
The core of the work that I do, and that I coach others to do, comes from a variety of learning theories I encountered during my years as a classroom teacher. Learning theories explore the “how” and “why” of learning to help enhance the educational experience. There are many different learning theories, useful in every discipline. This post will briefly introduce how the Zone of Proximal Development, scaffolding, and metacognition apply to any learning challenge.
Zone of Proximal Development
Lev Vygotsky defined the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) as the space between that which a learner can do on their own, and that which they cannot do at all. This space between is considered the optimal space for new learning to occur.
Understanding our own ZPD for any given area helps us establish our learning baseline and identify the assistance we need to achieve our goals. Understanding somebody else’s ZPD helps us ensure that they are set up for learning success whenever they are given a new challenge.
Scaffolding
Just like the scaffolding used in construction, mental scaffolding supports new learning. “Self to Self,” “Self to Text,” and “Self to World” strategies can be used to identify our own scaffolding, helping us leverage what we already know to enhance our growth and understanding of new information.
“Self to self” connections may include our past experiences. Those experiences shape our current knowledge base and outlook. “Self to Text” connections are made between ourselves and the literal or figurative “texts” that we have interacted with throughout our lives. Some of these “texts” include books, art exhibits, musical performances, software, classes, textbooks, and even social groups. “Self to World” scaffolding encompasses all the ways that we can relate ourselves to our broader world, including reflecting on our lived experiences.
Metacognition
Initially observed in children by John Flavell, metacognitive strategies were later observed in experts across multiple fields. Metacognitive practice involves thinking about your thinking, and can be used as a technique to work through learning challenges. Children and experts alike act as agents in their world: children explore freely, while experts use metacognition to pinpoint areas for improvement and experiment with solutions. Mindfulness and intentionality are helpful tools to become more active, strategic, and experimental in your learning approach.
Conclusion
Many people use ZPD, scaffolding, and metacognition without naming the theories or being aware of their impact. When actively used, these learning theories can help anyone embrace challenges more effectively, with better results.
In the following video, I’ll put these learning strategies to work on a new section of Mozart’s 4th violin concerto.
Jess Ingrassellino presented a version of this blog post as the talk “My Love Affair with Testing (and you can have one too!)” at CAST 2019, the Association for Software Testing’s annual conference.
