Learning and development is a social, collaborative activity. and The Zone of Proximal Development can serve as a guide for curricular and lesson planning.

Learning and Development is a Social and Collaborative activity

People can learn by observing the behaviours of others and the outcomes of those behaviours. The theory connotes that an individual learn by observing and also through collaborative activity. Most teachers use the strategy of Brainstorming that helps their interpersonal and cognitive abilities as well. According to the principle of student diversity, the classroom is “a market place of ideas”, which concludes that collaborative works can help augment the higher order thinking of the students.

Social learning explains human behaviour in terms of continuous reciprocal interaction between cognitive, behavioural, and environmental influences. There is also what we call Latent learning whereas an individual sees a model and learns thoughts and ideas by imitating the characteristics that help the individual develop his metacognition. The social cognition learning model asserts that culture is the prime determinant of individual development. Humans are the only species to have created culture, and every human child develops in the context of a culture. Therefore, a child’s learning development is affected in ways large and small by the culture–including the culture of family environment–in which he or she is enmeshed.

The Zone of Proximal Development can serve as a guide for curricular and lesson planning

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ZPD, is the difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do with help. The term "zone" is that at a certain stage in development, children can solve a certain range of problems only when they are interacting with people and in cooperation with peers. Once the problem solving activities have been internalized, the problems initially solved under guidance and in cooperation with others will be tackled independently. The notion here seems to be that one's latent or unexpressed ability could be measured by the extent to which one profits from guided instruction. This can be interaction with peers as an effective way of developing skills and strategies; it suggests that teachers use cooperative learning exercises where less competent children develop with help from more skilful peers - within the zone of proximal development. Vygotsky believed that when a student is at the ZPD for a particular task, providing the appropriate assistance (scaffolding) will give the student enough of a "boost" to achieve the task. Once the student, with the benefit of scaffolding, masters the task, the scaffolding can then be removed and the student will then be able to complete the task again on his own.