http://condor.admin.ccny.cuny.edu/~group4/Lawson/Lawson%20Paper.doc Linda Lawson City College EDUC 0500 November 2002
http://condor.admin.ccny.cuny.edu/~group4/Lawson/Lawson%20Paper.doc
Linda Lawson City College EDUC 0500
November 2002
Scaffolding as a Teaching Strategy 2
How Scaffolding Works as a Teaching Strategy
When most of us hear the word “scaffolding” we think of new office buildings going up,
or else aging skyscrapers needing repair. Scaffolding is what gets erected outside a tall building
so that workers can climb up and hammer away. From the ground below scaffolding sometimes
looks like an external skeleton, yet any long gaze will reveal it has nothing to do with supporting
the actual weight of the building it surrounds. Instead, what is evident is the short-lived nature of
its framework, individual pieces of which are designed to disassemble quickly.
Frequent passersby spot regular changes in vertical and lateral movement. One
day the scaffolding spreads north or retreats east; the next, it stretches higher
or drops lower. Scaffolding in construction is a means to an end; as soon as it’s no longer
needed, it disappears.
Instructional scaffolding is similarly transient. Scaffolding in an
educational context is a process by which a teacher provides students with a
temporary framework for learning. Done correctly, such structuring encourages a student to
develop his or her own initiative, motivation and resourcefulness. Once students build
knowledge and develop skills on their own, elements of the framework are dismantled.
Eventually, the initial scaffolding is removed altogether; students no longer need it.
According to McKenzie (1999), the defining features of successful scaffolding include
clear direction, purpose, and expectation. Results include on-task activity; better student
direction; reduced uncertainty, surprise, and disappointment; increased
efficiency; and palpable momentum. “…Scaffolding requires continuous sorting and
sifting as part of a ‘puzzling’ process—the combining of new information with previous
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understandings to construct new ones. Students are adding on, extending, refining and
elaborating. It is almost as if they are building a bridge from their preconceptions to a deeper,
wiser, more astute view of whatever truth matters for the question or issue at hand,” McKenzie
says.
There are different ways to scaffold instruction for students. According to Bransford,
Brown and Cocking (2000), some educators favor an apprenticeship model whereby an expert
models an activity, provides the learner with advice and examples, guides the student
in practice and then tapers off support until the student can do the task alone; others
prefer methods that encourage ongoing use of tools and consultation with other people, arguing
that in real life few people ever work exclusively on their own. Most agree that scaffolding is
particularly effective in areas in which students need to be more self-reliant, such as technology-
based learning (Banaszynski, 2000).
An example of scaffolding through apprenticeship is the writing workshop
model used by Dorn and Soffos (2001), who explain that the nurturing activities of an
expert are critical to fostering children through different stages of writing ability, from
emergence (writing letters and single words; understanding that we write and read English from
left to right) to early writer status (recognizing such patterns as paragraphs and pages) to
transitional writer status (mastering the ability to edit and revise an original work).
“Writing is by nature a social process . . . Children learn how to become writers through
meaningful interactions with more knowledgeable people,” Dorn and Soffos write
(2001). Moreover, “Writing is a learned skill that is shaped through practice and constructive
feedback. It requires motivation, strategies, skills and knowledge.”
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Dorn and Soffos, who work primarily with elementary school children, suggest that in
order to successfully write, a student must master three interrelated skills: comprehension of
ideas, expressive language and facility with mechanics. “The ultimate goal of teaching,” they
say, “is to promote an orchestration process. It is important to note that orchestration occurs at
the point where old knowledge meets new knowledge: if the child has too many new things to
learn, this can interfere with the orchestration process” (Dorn & Soffos, 2001).
What, specifically, does a teacher do to orchestrate, or scaffold, student
learning in the area of writing? Dorn and Soffos (2001) suggest that teachers ask
four simple questions before they begin: What is easy for the writer to do? What is hard for the
writer to do? What does the teacher expect the writer to do? What does the teacher expect to do
for the writer? Constantly reevaluating allows a teacher to plan activities that will encourage
developing writers to attempt new skills; once mastery is underway, new goals can be set and
new support systems devised.
Banaszynski (2000) provides another example of instructional scaffolding in his article
about a project in which a group of eighth-grade history students in Wisconsin
examined the Revolutionary War from both two points of view—American and
British. Taking one lesson and using it to build another, and another, and another,
he directed his students as they undertook a series of sequential activities, the result of which was
a thorough investigation of opposing reactions to single causes of the war. Students, eventually
working in pairs, contributed to a class timeline that detailed causes, actions and reactions.
Banaszynski describes how work continued:
After the timeline was completed, the students were arranged in groups, and each group did a critical analysis of primary-source material, focusing on the efforts each side made to avoid the war. This started students thinking about what the issues were and how each side
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handled them. The next step was to ask a question: Did the colonists have
legitimate reasons for going to war against Great Britain? [I] asked each group to choose either the Patriot or Loyalist position and spend a day searching the Internet for primary sources and other materials to support their positions.
Students later compared research and wrote essays that were analyzed and evaluated by
fellow students; groups composed essays that included the strongest arguments from
individual works. The project, Banaszynski says, was an enormous success, as students
began the unit working as individuals reliant upon him for instruction; quickly the feedback
framework was altered so that students were guiding each other and, in the process, themselves.
As the project continued, and requirements got more complicated, Banaszynski’s direct role in
research and reporting activity continued to diminish. As a result, students were able to
appreciate their own mastery of both materials and skills.
While both of these above examples (Dorn & Soffos, Banaszynski) detail
activities in which scaffolding is/was provided by a teacher, Winnips (n.d.) points
out that computer and electronic technologies provide educators with a dizzying array of tools
and resources useful in encouraging students to explore ideas and skills they otherwise might not
attempt. He also notes the emerging field of educational media, which he characterizes as “a
complex and rapidly changing field with ill-defined quality measures and limited fixed rules,”
but one that has the potential to help students become self-reliant, self-regulating, and self-
evaluating.
Dodge (1998) specifically cites the Internet as a boon for educators interested in
scaffolding as a teaching method. “From an educational point of view, the Internet
seems more like the world's largest library, or at least the world's largest idiosyncratic
bookstore,” he says. “It brings into classrooms a huge amount of information, some of it fresher
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than this morning's newspaper... some of it biased, some of it just plain wrong. At the same time
(and somewhat related to the quality of the information), the web makes it possible for anyone
with access and skills to publish their thoughts for a world-wide audience.”
Examples of activities teachers can implement using technology include vocabulary
development by linking words on Web pages and creation of support documents to
help students master information processing and communication skills (Dodge).
Teachers model performance while thinking out loud, pair advanced learners with developing
ones, provide prompts, links, guides and structures, and then fade into the background when
appropriate (Dodge).
Research and Theory: Why Scaffolding is Considered Useful as a Teaching Strategy
Scaffolding’s usefulness as a teaching strategy is amply supported by research
and theory. Of particular relevance are Piaget’s cognitive constructivism theory and—more than
any other theory—the social constructivism ideas generated by Vygotsky. Bruner’s beliefs about
how students build upon prior knowledge might also be considered.
Before looking at various constructivist ideas, however, it is helpful to understand
constructivism as a whole. The gist of constructivism is that humans construct their
own learning by building new knowledge upon old (Hoover, 1996). “This view of
learning sharply contrasts with one in which learning is the passive transmission of
information from one individual to another, a view in which reception, not construction, is key.”
(Hoover, 1996)
According to Hoover, learners construct new understandings using what they already
know; learning is active rather than passive. “Learners confront their understanding in light of
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what they encounter in the new learning situation. If what learners encounter is inconsistent with
their current understanding, their understanding can change to accommodate new experience.
Learners remain active throughout this process: they apply current understandings,
note relevant elements in new learning experiences, judge the consistency of prior and
emerging knowledge, and based on that judgment, they can modify knowledge.” (Hoover,
1996)
“In constructivism,” Soloway et. al. (n.d.) says, “the central notion is that
understanding and learning are active, constructive, generative processes such as
assimilation, augmentation, and self-reorganization. For example, a teacher's words
do not simply become directly engraved in a student's mind, after passing through the ear, but
rather, those words are acted upon and interpreted by the student.”
Constructivism is comprised of two main schools of thought: cognitive
constructivism and social constructivism. “These two strands . . . are different in
emphasis, but they also share many common perspectives about teaching and learning,”
according to Chen (n.d.), citing eight general characteristics detailed by Jonassen in 1994:
1. “Constructivist learning environments provide multiple representations of reality.
2. Multiple representations avoid oversimplification and represent the complexity of the real world.
3. Constructivist learning environments emphasize knowledge construction inserted of knowledge reproduction.
4. Constructivist learning environments emphasize authentic tasks in a meaningful context rather than abstract instruction out of context.
5. Constructivist learning environments provide learning environments such as real-world settings or case-based learning instead of predetermined sequences of instruction.
6. Constructivist learning environments encourage thoughtful reflection on experience.
7. Constructivist learning environments enable context- and content- dependent knowledge construction.
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8. Constructivist learning environments support collaborative construction of knowledge through social negotiation, not competition among learners for recognition.”
One strand, cognitive constructivism, was developed by a Swiss psychologist
named Piaget, who theorized that children develop in a series of ordered, age-
dependent stages—sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, formal operations—until
they are able to reason logically, advancing through mechanisms of assimilation, accommodation
and equilibrium (Sandwell, n.d.). “Possibly the most important role for the teacher is to provide
an environment in which the child can experience spontaneous research. The classroom should
be filled with authentic opportunities to challenge the students. The students should be given the
freedom to understand and construct meaning at their own pace through personal experiences as
they develop through individual developmental processes” (Sandwell, n.d.).
Recent research has negated some of Piaget’s ideas; specifically, it is now
thought that not all children achieve the formal operations stage defined by
Piaget. Also, it is believed that the sequence in which children develop may
not be so rigid as the one Piaget first described (Sandwell, n.d.). Nevertheless, Piaget’s
contributions to the arena of learning theory (and to the arena of psychology) cannot be
understated, as his work engendered a set of educational implications that are key to
understanding how people learn.
As stated above, Piaget’s research emphasized active discovery over passive
reception and the importance of intrinsic motivation, practical learning
situations, and creative and critical thinking. Each of these echoes an element of
:
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• Active discovery when a teacher initiates and models an activity that students then
“take over;”
• Intrinsic motivation and practical learning situations when a “scaffolded” student
develops and nurtures his/her own learning momentum and applies new
knowledge/skills to everyday life; and
• Creative and critical thinking when instructional scaffolding falls
away and the student relies on his/her emerging ideas and direction.
This emphasis on active discovery over passive reception was shared by Vygotsky, a
Russian psychologist who developed the second strand of constructivism—social
constructivism—but whose ideas particularly stressed the role of social interaction. While some
scholars looking to distinguish Vygotsky’s theory from Piaget’s frequently focus on “their ideas
about the primacy of individual psychogenesis versus sociogenesis of mind”—“for Piaget,
individual children construct knowledge through their actions on the world: to understand is to
invent. By contrast, the Vygotskian claim is said to be that understanding is social in origin”—
others turn their attention to “the importance of culture, in particular, the role of mediation of
action through artifacts, on the development of mind” (Cole & Wertsch, n.d.).
According to Vygotsky, “social interaction plays a fundamental role in the
development of cognition,” and social activity—of which scaffolding is certainly an
example—is crucial to a child’s development as a learner (Kearsely, 2002).
Specifically, Kearsley notes, Vygotsky cited the importance of social interaction to development
of voluntary attention, logical memory and concept formation skills, and for full development of
what he called a child’s “zone of proximal development,” which can be defined as “the
difference between problem-solving the child is capable of performing independently and
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problem-solving he/she is capable of performing with guidance or collaboration. This defines the
area in which maturation/development is currently taking place and suggests the appropriate
target for instruction” (Perry, 2002).
“For example,” Perry (2002) writes, “suppose a particular 9-year old can
solve most arithmetic problems independently; can solve some simple algebraic
problems with guidance from a teacher; and cannot solve calculus problems no
matter how much help she is given. We would say that algebra problems are within her ZPD, and
that this is the level at which instruction will be most profitable. After all, it will be of little use to
continue to present problems that she can already solve, or to present problems that will only
frustrate her.”
If Vygotsky is correct, a child will learn more when given hints, provided
with guiding information such as prompts on index cards, and having task and/or required types
of thinking demonstrated or modeled (Lewin, 2001) than if left alone to explore new concepts
and knowledge. Vygotsky’s theory and research are instrumental in understanding how and why
scaffolding works.
Bruner, like Vygotsky, believes that socialization plays an integral role in
intellectual development. He says that “children as they grow must acquire a way of
representing the ‘recurrent regularities’ in their environment” (Perry, 2002). However, in
addition to developing the ability to make sense of the world invented by others, he suggests that
they must also invent “concepts, categories, and problem-solving procedures” of their own
(Perry, 2002). Like Piaget, Bruner believes that children learn in stages, but unlike Piaget, he
does not believe such stages are age-dependent or necessarily achieved in a distinct order (Perry,
2002). Educational implications of Bruner’s research include the supposition that material must
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be made ready for the child, and not that the child will intrinsically know how to interpret the
material (Perry, 2002). “The instructional challenge is to provide problems that both fit the
manner of the child's thinking and tempt him/her into more powerful modes of thinking. This is
similar to Vygotsky's notion that learning should lead development” (Perry, 2002).
Based on theory and research, and reiterating the hallmarks of successful scaffolding
(McKenzie, 1999) stated earlier in this paper (in “How Scaffolding Works as a Teaching
Strategy”, page 2), a teacher can expect the following outcomes when using scaffolding as an
instructional method:
• Students should be able to appreciate (if not articulate) directions and
expectations after those elements have been introduced by the teacher.
Provided that the purpose of the lesson has been made clear, this reflecting back
on the part of the student should not be regurgitation of information—recitation by
rote—but a sincere report of what he/she understands to be the scope of the work at
hand and the evaluation strategy of the teacher.
• As long as the lesson has been planned with students’ zones of proximal development
in mind, progress should be made with a minimum of non-constructive
frustration. In other words, students should be challenged but share enough
of an expectation of success to keep working on-task. Levels of uncertainty
and disappointment stand to be lower than those experienced by students with no
confident sense of mastery.
• Teachers and students should both recognize increased efficiency
and momentum because the two parties will be working
symbiotically—teachers introducing, demonstrating, guiding and pulling back; and
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students exploring, attempting, internalizing self-motivation and then understanding
(and perhaps initiating the next cycle of scaffolded activity).
Advantages and Disadvantages of Scaffolding
Like any approach in teaching, scaffolding has advantages and disadvantages. While in
my experience the former—listed accurately above—far outweigh the latter, disadvantages must
not be minimized. No teaching strategy is guaranteed to work every time, in every subject, with
every student, and when a scaffolded lesson fails, the demise can be sudden and spectacular.
Being a first-year teacher and somebody new to educational theory, I am only
now approaching lesson planning with the notion of scaffolding in mind. Even then my
attempts at employment are still rather tentative, as I’m still exploring what scaffolding is and is
not. Nevertheless, I can recognize now that some activities I planned before hearing of
scaffolding as a teaching strategy were still scaffolding. Also I can report that I’ve entered my
classroom intent on scaffolding only to discover, several periods later, that what I was doing was
not scaffolding at all—usually as a result of having misjudged my students’ individual or
collective zones of proximal development. Scaffolding only works in execution. As theory only,
it’s useless.
That potential for misjudging the zone of proximal development seems to me
the chief disadvantage of scaffolding as a teaching strategy. In scaffolding success
hinges on identifying that area that is just beyond but not too far beyond students. Intellectually
that makes perfect sense, but in the classroom it has been painfully difficult to ascertain what any
student’s zone of proximal development truly is, much less come up with an accurate sense of
what the collective zone of proximal development is for each one of my five classes each day.
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(One group alone includes three people who barely speak English, at least four special education
students and two kids with significant and chronic behavioral problems.) Also, I’ve learned that a
zone of proximal development in an English class—perhaps in any class—is not a fixed thing,
uniformly encompassing all reading and writing skills. Even though those facets of English are
highly interrelated, I nevertheless have students whose zone of proximal development in reading
is higher than it is in writing, or—inexplicably to my current level of knowledge about literacy—
the reverse. To assume they are the same is, I have learned, risky.
In addition to misjudging students’ individual and collective zones of proximal
development, I’ve also botched the modeling phases of my scaffolding lessons.
Scaffolding requires that a teacher model the learning activity and/or its result, but knowing that
one needs to do this is not the same as being able to do it successfully. One can know a subject
inside and out and still not be able to teach. As already mentioned, I’ve had lessons fell apart
early and hard upon realizing that my students weren’t getting my lead-in not because they
weren’t ready, willing and able to explore the topic or skill but because I wasn’t using the right
approach or (more commonly) the right language. Such moments have been invaluable in
retrospect; at the time they were frustrating for everyone involved.
Fortunately, I’ve experienced more success than failure with scaffolding,
which is a teaching approach I plan to practice and incorporate more frequently
as I finish my first full semester of teaching and head into the second. I have had
(happily) days when I’ve followed the scaffolding model in a lesson plan and seen students
respond with enthusiasm, take risks, recognize success (in their own work and in that of their
peers) and then express curiosity about what’s next in terms of knowledge or skill. Such
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moments make all the preparation and facilitation that scaffolding requires of teachers
worthwhile.
References
Banaszynski, Joe, (2000). Teaching the American Revolution: Scaffolding to Success. Education World: The Educator’s Best Friend. Retrieved November 1, 2002, from http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr218.shtml. Bransford, John D., Brown, Ann L., & Cocking, Rodney R., ed., (2000). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press. Chen, Irene (n.d.). Constructivism. Retrieved November 16, 2002, from http://pdts.uh.edu/~ichen/ebook/ET-IT/constr.htm. Cole, Michael, & Wertsch, James V. (n.d.) Beyond the Individual—Social Antimony in Discussions of Piaget and Vygotsky. Retrieved October 29, 2002, from http://www.massey.ac.nz/~alock//virtual/colevyg.htm. Dodge, Bernie, (December 2, 1998). Schools, Skills and Scaffolding on the Web. Retrieved November 1, 2002, from http://edweb.sdsu.edu/people/bdodge/scaffolding.html. Dorn, Linda J., & Soffos, Carla, (2001). Scaffolding Young Writers: A Writers’ Workshop Approach. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishing. Hoover, Wesley A. (1996). The Practice Implications of Constructivism. SEDLetter, Vol 9, No. 3. Retrieved November 16, 2002, from http://www.sedl.org/pubs/sedletter/v09n03/practice.html. Kearsley, Greg (2002). Social Development Theory. Retrieved October 29, 2002, from http://tip.psychology.org/vygotsky.html. Lewin, Gary, (2001). Teacher Question of the Week. Retrieved November 1, 2002, from http://www.west.net/~ger/vygotsky.html.
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McKenzie, Jamie, (1999). Scaffolding for Success. From Now On: The Educational Journal, Vol. 9, No. 4. Retrieved November 1, 2002, from http://www.fno.org/dec99/scaffold.html. Perry, J. David (2002). Unit 5: Cognitive Development Theories. Retrieved November 16, 2002, from http://www.education.indiana.edu/~p540/webcourse/develop.html. Soloway, Elliot, Jackson, Shari L., Klein, Jonathan, Quintana, Chris, Reed, James, Spitulnik, Jeff, Stratford, Steven J., Studer, Scott, Jul, Susanne, Eng, Jim & Scala, Nancy (n.d.). Learning Theory in Practice: Case Studies of Learner-Centered Design. Retrieved November 16, 2002, from http://www.acm.org/sigchi/chi96/proceedings/papers/Soloway/es_txt.htm. Sandwell, J. (n.d.). Piaget’s Stage Theory of Development. University of Alberta, Department of Psychology. Retrieved November 16, 2002, from http://web.psych.ualberta.ca/~mike/Pearl_Street/Dictionary/contents/P/piaget's_stages.html. Winnips, Koos. Scaffolding the Development of Skills in the Design Process of Educational Media through Hyperlinked Units of Learning Material (ULMs). Retrieved November 1, 2002, from http://scaffolding.edte.utwente.nl.
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