More about Scaffolding Learning

Just as builders use a scaffold to support and shape a building, educators use "scaffolding" to support and give structure to the learners' thinking.

Scaffold
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In order to successfully scaffold learning you must know what the learning levels of your students are. Scaffolding is effective if it is supporting weaknesses, providing guidance where it is most needed. You are leading the learners from what they know to what you want them to learn. In other words, you are helping learners to grasp something that would have otherwise been out of their reach. Because effective learning is social and relies on interaction, you need to create classroom interactions which "scaffold" learning. These interactions could be part of your role as facilitator, in you reaction with individuals and groups. This would typically include:

  • the use of leading questions to guide thinking
  • facilitating a discussion to give it direction
  • referring to resources that assist processes
  • modelling thinking or processes
  • giving hints and examples
  • giving formative feedback
  • encouraging group interaction and peer support
  • making the learners ressponsible for their own thinking

Scafffolding for learning can take many forms. Here are some examples:

  • a storyboard for a powerpoint presentation or website about the project
  • a study guide that structures a complex task for you
  • a checklist of steps to follow
  • a worksheet
  • a template for a mind map, organisational chart, Venn diagram
  • a project planning template
  • or it could be any other aid that is specifically designed by you, the educator, to assist learners to achieve tasks for which they would otherwise be unprepared.

There is more need for scaffolding when learners are faced with new ways of learning. Younger and weaker learners benefit from more detailed scaffolding. Many learners have not had to work on long-term activities before. They have been used to having the teacher do the work, the talking and the thinking for them. They will be unfamiliar with working with information, the components of a project and the stages of the process of a project, how to pace themselves and how to plan their objectives. They need a scaffold. It is expected that you will provide the scaffold for learners when they start doing project work. Learners may then start to modify the scaffold you provide and eventually become independent enough to create their own scaffolding. A scaffold is therefore also a way in which you model thinking and planning for the learners. In the information process learners gather, process and produce information.