Scaffolding
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On Board Online • June 30 2014
By Cathy Woodruff
Senior Writer
If you’ve read a report or attended a briefing about teaching in the Common Core era, you’ve probably heard someone mention “scaffolding.”
References to scaffolding are so pervasive on the State Education Department’s EngageNY website, in fact, that a reader might envision an educational landscape dominated by a virtual construction zone.
The word appears in dozens of places in a dizzying array of grammatical variations – noun, verb or whatever. In the world of EngageNY, lessons are scaffolded, curriculum is scaffolded, and sometimes, even students are scaffolded.
The written description of an EngageNY video showing a fourth grade English language arts lesson says the teacher “deftly models inferencing and scaffolds for individual students as needed so that all of the pairs master the learning target.” (It’s hard to tell whether scaffold is a noun or a verb here. Don’t get me started on the troubling use of inference as a verb.)
So, just what is scaffolding (noun), and what does it mean to scaffold (verb) a curriculum or a student?
An alternative phrase used occasionally on the EngageNY site is “staircase of complexity,” and that seems like a far clearer way to get at the idea of scaffolding, whether it’s a noun or a verb. Lessons and ideas can occupy steps on the staircase, and students and teachers can climb that staircase together.
The “Glossary of Education Reform,” an online resource produced by the Education Writers Association and the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, defines scaffolding as “a variety of instructional techniques used to move students progressively toward stronger understanding and, ultimately, greater independence in the learning process.”
Educational scaffolding is a series of temporary measures. And, according to the Glossary, “like physical scaffolding, the supportive strategies are incrementally removed when they are no longer needed, and the teacher gradually shifts more responsibility over the learning process to the student.”
That description seems to suggest that scaffolding functions a bit like training wheels on a bicycle. It also might help to envision the long planks that prop up the frame during an Amish barn-raising.
Teachers can scaffold their instruction by breaking up an activity, concept or skill into parts and giving students the assistance or “instructional support” they need to master each part. Common scaffolding strategies include periodically asking students questions to check on their understanding and simply giving them time to practice.
In one example from the “Glossary of Education Reform,” an English teacher might have her students read an excerpt from a longer text and then lead a discussion to improve their understanding. The teacher also might cover vocabulary words that students will need to know to understand the text before assigning the full reading.
Another example suggests that an algebra problem can be broken up into mini-lessons. Between the lessons, a math teacher would check on student understanding of the concept, allow time for students to practice the equations, and explain how the math skills students are learning will help them solve the more challenging problem.
In another version of scaffolding, a science teacher might demonstrate a multi-step chemistry experiment so students can see how it is done before they try to do it themselves, the Glossary suggests.
My office at NYSSBA is just down the hall from a scaffolding fan. Research Analyst Gayle Simidian, whose summaries of educational research frequently appear in On Board, holds a doctorate in human development and psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She’s downright enthusiastic about how scaffolding can help kids learn.
But the technique really is nothing new, she said. “This is what a good teacher does, anyway,” she told me. “It’s reinforcement. It’s a little bit of guidance. When teachers do it really well, it can be virtually invisible to their students.”
Simidian cited some everyday examples of scaffolding outside of school classrooms. Think about learning to play the piano, she suggested. Your teacher won’t start by assigning you Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. You’d probably start with something on par with Chopsticks, and you might work your way up to a simple arrangement of the great composer’s Fur Elise. Depending on your talent and dedication to practicing along with deft guidance from your piano teacher, you eventually might conquer the sonata.
A complex recipe from celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis would be an ill-advised choice for your first dinner party without great assistance, Simidian pointed out, and a good teacher wouldn’t just throw you out of the plane during your first sky-diving lesson.
Simidian mentioned the work of psychologist Lev Vygotsky. He first used the word scaffolding to describe a strategy to help students work on ideas or skills that are within a range that they can accomplish, with help, but that they can’t yet accomplish independently. Vygotsky suggested applying this principle when teachers form teams of students, pairing one with another who is slightly more advanced.
Vygotsky’s technical term for scaffolding is “zone of proximal development.” Video game developers use this concept to build games that engage players by leading them through increasingly challenging tasks that, once mastered, allow them to move on to the next level, Simidian explained.
The goal is to challenge a student or a game player, she said, but “not to the level that he is frustrated or can’t do it because the level of difficulty is too high.”
I was starting to get the idea that Simidian was using a scaffolding strategy in order to help me grasp the meaning of the word.
But, while Simidian was able to demystify scaffolding for me, a metaphor should be self-explanatory.
“The Goldilocks Zone” comes to mind. It’s a delightful term used by astronomers and astrobiologists to describe the area around a star, such as our sun, that offers the proper atmospheric pressure, temperature and other conditions to support liquid water, and perhaps life, at the surface. The technical term is “circumstellar habitable zone,” but “Goldilocks Zone” says it all; things are “just right!”
Unfortunately, in my view, scaffolding is no Goldilocks Zone.