Scaffolding definition

Scaffolding is a teaching strategy that originates from Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and his concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD): that area between what a learner can do independently and what can be accomplished with instructional support.

This strategy aims to facilitate a student’s ability to build on prior knowledge and internalize new information.

So, scaffolding is all about supporting students’ development by creating conditions where meaningful learning is fostered.

But, what distinguishes scaffolding from other forms of instructional support?

Here are 4 main features that clarify the process of scaffolding in education.

1. Appropriateness

In scaffolding instruction, students are asked to do tasks beyond the level of what they can do alone. This means that your selection of tasks has to be intentional, targeting a specific learning goal that a student is not yet able to attain.

So, providing the scaffolds is meant to help your students accomplish the tasks, thus getting to that next stage or level.

However, before involving them in such tasks, it was suggested that teachers should begin by introducing students to tasks they can perform with little or no assistance.

This can help lower frustration levels and ensure that students remain motivated to do those challenges in scaffolding.

But, how to select appropriate tasks for instructional scaffolding?

To select appropriate tasks, you need to consider curriculum goals and your students’ needs.

Indeed, in scaffolding, it is important to collect information about our students’ level of competence. This helps us to determine whether to increase or decrease the amount of support provided.

You can gather such information by incorporating dynamic assessment where you can assess continuously what your students know and understand.

Such an assessment can help you to determine the level of support that is needed and then provide support accordingly.

Examples of dynamic assessment include:

• having students perform a task of similar type to the target task. Then, noting their difficulties, designing tailored assistance, providing that, and assessing their abilities ;
• providing a series of prompts with different levels of support to determine the student’s current ability level based on what level of support was needed for adequate performance;
• eliciting the metacognitive processes or how students go about doing the task and comparing those to the type of metacognition that is desired;
• drawing students’ attention (working in groups) to particular concepts in questions or instructions in tests to assess their abilities to conduct the tasks embedded in the test.

Dynamic assessment can also help you adjust the scaffolding you already provided. So, you can determine in this case the extent to which student skill is improving to lead to success without scaffolding, or with less scaffolding.

2. Structure

Not any support we provide to help students accomplish those selected tasks is scaffolding.

Giving instruction to students; and then having them engage in practice problems is not scaffolding. Because teachers should use it as students are engaging with problems.‘Not before or after that!

Besides, in scaffolding, we must provide a framework of support within which the student can be successful by relying on this structured support.

The latter includes :

• defining expectations and clarifying directions to reduce students’ confusion. This is by using exemplary work and rubrics.
• helping students understand why they are doing the work and why it is important for their learning ;
• Keeping them on task – By providing structure. This involves alerting them to the prerequisite knowledge or skills that are needed to undertake the new learning. Then, helping them not only brings these to mind but also organises them in the most productive way to support new learning;
• providing worthy resources for students to choose from to help them with the task;
• knowing when to intervene within a task. And how to help them overcome any gap in knowledge and skills. So, support has to be adjusted to the student’s level of understanding.

In scaffolding, you can use techniques such as modelling, questioning, explaining, giving hints, and providing feedback.

Yet, use a variety of techniques to tap different learning styles and strategies, because not all students respond to scaffolded help in the same way.

Research has found that varying support provided the teacher with information about new learning and needed intervention.

3. Collaboration

Interaction in scaffolding must be collaborative. That is your response to your students’ work needs to recast and expand upon their efforts without rejecting what they have accomplished on their own.

So, your primary role is collaborative rather than evaluative.

This also implies that you need to provide your students with opportunities to make errors. Because errors tell a lot about how they are learning. So, they can provide you with an opportunity to prompt, cue, or explain and model.

While collaborating with your students, it is also necessary to maintain the pursuit of the goal. This is through asking consistent questions, requesting clarification, and offering praise and encouragement to help them remain focused on their goals.

Besides, to allow for more interaction and make effective use of your scaffolds you need to incorporate different forms of scaffolding: for instance one-to-one, and peer scaffolding.

In one-to-one scaffolding, you’re working with one student to dynamically assess his current level, and provide just the right amount of support for him to perform and gain skill at the target task. Also, customize this support as needed until the scaffolding can be entirely removed and the student can take ownership.

However, it may not be always possible to provide one-to-one scaffolding support to all students (due to class size and time).

Still, it is not necessary to do it with all of them at the same time.

You can think of differentiating your instruction where students don’t perceive the task’s difficulty in the same way.

So, some students will need more scaffolding than others and you need to have one-to-one interaction with them. While others can work on their own (no intervention should be made). These students can support those who may need little help with the task at hand.

Besides, don’t limit scaffolding to the classroom setting. You can extend it beyond that.

So, why not use scaffolding techniques online? This is via emails, Skype, Zoom, and Class Blog to support your students in completing your assignments.

You can also engage them in cooperative learning online. They can share their ideas, reflect on them, and on the process of achieving the task and provide peer feedback.

Incorporating peer feedback from time to time can also help share in the burden of scaffolding. Yet, be sure to provide a framework that can guide scaffolding providers with strategies to use and when to use them.

4. Internalization

Another important feature of the scaffolding strategy is that the scaffolds are temporary. As the students’ knowledge and learning competency increase, the teacher gradually reduces the support provided and withdraws them.

In case your support continues, you won’t be providing instructional scaffolding for your students. Simply because you are not helping them gain the skill to be able to perform the target task independently and assume responsibility for it.

So, without fading your support (removing or lessening the intensity of scaffolding) internalization cannot happen as students become “prompt-dependent,” not independent.

This means your goal when using the scaffolding teaching strategy is to develop knowledge and skills which support your students to become more responsible for their learning, and more motivated to pursue their own learning goals.

But, when should fading occur?

The scaffold should “fade”. That is, you should gradually reduce or withdraw it over time as the student becomes more competent.

Fading is thus based on your assessment that indicates improved performance and the potential to perform well independently.

For example, you have introduced the target task and helped students to complete it by activating their background knowledge and offering tips. This is your scaffolding strategy or technique.

To know about their understanding and performance you decided to ask them to think aloud or verbalize their thinking processes when completing this task. This is your dynamic assessment.

If performance characteristics indicate that your student is on the path to being able to perform the target skill independently, you can reduce or remove your scaffolding strategy. However, you need to add more scaffolding in case the student is not making sufficient progress.

An important point to make :

The student’s responsibility for the performance of a task increases as his skills and confidence increase.

To this end, creating a positive learning environment is crucial to boosting student confidence and motivation to perform complex tasks independently.

This is what scaffolding means in education. It is the engine that drives your students towards becoming more independent and successful. So, plan for effective scaffolding strategies to use with your students. It is worth your time and effort.