ABSTRACT
Group work is a familiar part of school activity where students work together to help each other, share and develop ideas, and learn the importance of being able to trust others and take responsibility. Vygotsky (a Russian psychologist working in the 1920s and 1930s) viewed learning as a social construction. He argued that learning takes place in the gap between what students can do on their own and what they can do with the help of an adult or more capable peer. He called this gap the ‘Zone of Proximal Development’ and saw it as a fertile ground for learning. An adult or more capable peer can help the learner learn by acting as a ‘scaffold’ (Wood, Bruner and Ross 1976). Just like a scaffold helps for a while during building construction and is then taken away and the building can stand on its own, so students and teachers can help other students in this process until those students no longer need their help. The implication of this theory is that learning is not a process that you do on your own, but something that happens within a social context, using language to communicate, and is therefore culture specific. One of the ways that this theory is implemented in the classroom is through group work.
