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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