Sociocultural theory
The ZPD draws attention to three important issues. First, it focuses attention on children's mental functions that are currently going on, but are not yet complete. Second, it recognized help from peers or adults as a method of learning. Third, it helped to separate between actual and potential learning ability. The actual ability of a child is what they can do without any help from others, while potential learning ability is when a child needs help in order to complete a task. Three assumptions are often discussed in relation to the ZPD. They include generality assumption, assistance assumption and potential assumption.