LEARNING BY CHALLENGES IN YAE

FOR A TEACHING THAT BETS IN THE BALANCE PROCESSES AND IN PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT ZONE

Abstract

During the school trajectory of students of Youth and Adult Education, it is not uncommon the experience of scholar failure, as well as contact restrictions with stimulations facilitating their development. This dissertation essay presents reflections about this type of teaching, considering the challenges of learning that can be mobilizers of the cognitive development and triggers of the potential level of students. Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s concepts of balance and proximal development zone, respectively, are articulated in a proposition for teaching pedagogical practice. Although from different approaches, these two concepts complement each other, since, in both, the main goal is to promote, through adequately planned challenging situations, significant advances in the students’ cognitive level and, therefore, in their development. Through the utilization of these two concepts, a pre-assessment of students’ knowledge and cognitive level is proposed as a necessary condition for planning school activities, as well as the construction of situations of mediation and cooperation in the learning process, both on the part of teacher and among the students. In addition, it is imperative to review the factors that make the pedagogical process unfeasible and to promote challenging tasks that bet on balancing and on what is in the area of potential development of the subjects. For this, the master class model, still valid today, needs to be gradually supplanted by teaching led by challenges. This one, otherwise, in order to be successful, requires improvements in the teaching work, implementation of pedagogical support and adequate infrastructure.