Instructional scaffolding

Instructional scaffolding is the provision of sufficient supports to promote learning when concepts and skills are being first introduced to students. These supports may include:
*Resources
*A compelling task
*Templates and guides
*Guidance on the development of cognitive and social skills

These supports are gradually removed as students develop learning strategies, thus promoting their own cognitive, affective and psychomotor learning skills and knowledge. Teachers help the students master a task or a concept by providing support. The support can take many forms such as outlines, recommended documents, storyboards, or key questions.

History

"Scaffolding Theory" was first introduced in the late 1950s by Jerome Bruner, a cognitive psychologist. He used the term to describe young children's oral language acquisition. Helped by their parents when they first start learning to speak, young children are provided with instinctive structures to learn a language. Bed-time stories and read alouds are classic examples (Daniels, 1994). Wood, Bruner, and Ross’ (1976) idea of scaffolding also parallels Vygotsky’s work. Though the term was never used by Vygotsky, interactional support and the process by which adults mediate a child’s attempts to take on new learning has come to be termed “scaffolding.” Scaffolding represents the helpful interactions between adult and child that enable the child to do something beyond his or her independent efforts. A scaffold is a temporary framework that is put up for support and access to meaning and taken away as needed when the child secures control of success with a task. Cazden (1983) defined a scaffold as “a temporary framework for construction in progress” (p. 6). For example, parents seem to know intuitively how to scaffold their children’s attempts at negotiating meaning through oral language. The construction of a scaffold occurs at a time where the child may not be able to articulate or explore learning independently. The scaffolds provided by the tutor do not change the nature or difficulty level of the task; instead, the scaffolds provided allow the student to successfully complete the task. In writing instruction, typically support is presented in verbal form (discourse). The writing tutor engages the learner’s attention, calibrates the task, motivates the student, identifies relevant task feature, controls for frustration, and demonstrates as needed (Rodgers, 2004). Through joint activities, the teacher scaffolds conversation to maximize the development of a child’s intrapsychological functioning. In this process, the adult controls the elements of the task that are beyond the child’s ability all the while increasing the expectations of what the child is able to do. Speech, a critical tool to scaffold thinking and responding, plays a crucial role in the development of higher psychological processes (Luria, 1979) because it enables thinking to be more abstract, flexible, and independent (Bodrova & Leong, 1996). From a Vygotskian perspective, talk and action work together with the sociocultural fabric of the writing event to shape a child’s construction of awareness and performance (Dorn, 1996). Dialogue may range from casual talk to deliberate explanations about features of written language. The talk embedded in the actions of the literacy event shapes the child’s learning as the tutor regulates her language to conform to the child’s degrees of understanding. Clay (2005) shows that what may seem like casual conversational exchanges between tutor and student actually offer many opportunities for fostering cognitive development, language learning, story composition for writing, and reading comprehension. Conversations facilitate generative, constructive, experimental, and developmental speech and writing in the development of new ideas (Smagorinsky, 2007).

Children use oral language as a vehicle for discovering and negotiating emergent written language and understandings for getting meaning on paper (Cox, 1994; Dyson, 1983, 1991). Writing and speech as tools can lead to discovery of new thinking. The teacher offers levels of verbal and non-verbal demonstrations and directions as the child observes, mimics, or shares the writing task. With increased understanding and control, the child needs less assistance. The teacher’s level and type of support change over time from directive, to suggestion, to encouragement, to observation. Optimum scaffolds adapt to the child’s tempo moving from other-regulation to self-regulation. The child eventually provides self-scaffolding through internal thought (Wertsch, 1985). Within these scaffolding events, teaching and learning, inseparable components, emphasize both the child’s personal construction of literacy and the adult’s contributions to the child’s developing understandings of print. The child contributes what she can and the adult contributes so as to sustain the task (Teale & Sulzby, 1986).

Using a Vygotskian theoretical framework, Wertsch and Stone (1984) examine scaffolded instruction in a one-to-one remedial clinic setting with a learning disabled child. The researchers show how adult language directs the child to strategically monitor actions. Analysis of communicative patterns show a transition and progression in the source of strategic responsibility from teacher or other-regulated to child or self-regulated behaviors. In Vygotsky’s words, “what the child is able to do in collaboration today he will be able to do independently tomorrow” (Vygotsky, 1987, p. 211).

Some ingredients of scaffolding are predictability, playfulness, focus on meaning, role reversal, modeling, and nomenclature [Daniels, H. (1994). Literature Circles: Voice and choice in the student-centered classroom. Markham: Pembroke Publishers Ltd.] .

ee also

* Educational psychology
* Jerome Bruner
* Jim Cummins
* Lev Vygotsky
* Stephen Krashen

References

Bodrova, E., & Leong, D. J. (1998). Scaffolding emergent writing in the zone of proximal development. Literacy Teaching and Learning, 3(2), 1-18.

Cazden, C. B. (1983). Adult assistance to language development: Scaffolds, models, and direct instruction. In R. P. Parker & F. A. Davis (Eds.), Developing literacy:Young children's use of language (pp. 3-17). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Clay, M. M. (2005). Literacy lessons designed for individuals: Teaching procedures. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Cox, B. E. (1994). Young children’s regulatory talk: Evidence of emerging metacognitive control over literary products and processes. In R. B. Ruddell, M. R. Ruddell, & H. Singer (Eds.), Theoretical models and process of reading (pp. 733-756). Newark, DE: IRA.

Dorn, L. (1996). A Vygotskian perspective on literacy acquisition: Talk and action in the child's construction of literate awareness. Literacy Teaching and Learning: An International Journal of Early Reading and Writing, 2(2), 15-40.

Dyson, A. H. (1983). The role of oral language in early writing process. Research in the Teaching of English, 17(1), 1-30.

Dyson, A. H. (1991). Viewpoints: The word and the world - reconceptualizing written language development or do rainbows mean a lot to little girls? Research in the Teaching of English, 25, 97-123.

Luria, A. R. (1983). The development of writing in the child. In M. Martlew (Ed.), The psychology of written language: Developmental and educational perspectives (pp.237-277). New York: Wiley.

Rodgers, E. M. (2004). Interactions that scaffold reading performance. Journal of Literacy Research, 36(4), 501-532.

Smagorinsky, P. (2007). Vygotsky and the social dynamic of classrooms. English Journal, 97(2), 61-66.

Teale, W. H. & Sulzby, E. (Eds.). (1986). Emergent literacy: Writing and reading.Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech. In L. S. Vygotsky, Collected works (vol. 1, pp. 39-285) (R. Rieber & A. Carton, Eds; N. Minick, Trans.). New York:Plenum. (Original works published in 1934, 1960).

Wertsch, J. V. (1985). Vygotsky and the social formation of mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wertsch, J. V. & Stone, C. (1984). A social interactional analysis of learning disabilities remediation. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 17(4), 194-199.

Wood, D. J., Bruner, J. S., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving.Journal of Child Psychiatry and Psychology, 17(2), 89-100.

External links

* [http://www.coe.uga.edu/epltt/scaffolding.htm Scaffolding] - an e-book