How to Learn Scaffolding Techniques

Educational scaffolding is similar to physical scaffolding in that it provides structure and support to the learner.

Since the 1950s scaffolding techniques have been used in classrooms worldwide to help students develop an understanding of new concepts and ideas. Scaffolding involves building upon what a student already knows and expanding that knowledge base in familiar ways to incorporate unknown and unfamiliar material. Learning scaffolding techniques requires active study and participation in the processes of designing, implementing and evaluating scaffolded exercises, lessons and units.

Instructions

1. Identify a teacher's training program at a college or university in your area that offer continuing education courses for educators. Search their list of offered courses for a course on educational or curriculum design. Most major college and university education programs utilize and teach scaffolding methods in their classrooms. For example, the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh emphasizes the scaffolding approach in their creation, implementation and teaching of conceptual-based educational and curricula designing.

2. Locate the seminal primary works that detail and explain the concepts of educational scaffolding. These include the works of Jerome Bruner, Lev Vygotsky and CB Cazden, among others. Analysis of these primary documents will enable you to understand the theory behind the practice of educational scaffolding.

3. Examine curricula that incorporate scaffolding techniques into classroom activities. School curricula are works for public consumption and so are legally required to be readily available to anyone interested in examining them.

4. Request to observe an expert teacher. Be sure to state your reason for wishing to observe. Follow up your observation with a discussion about what you saw and its effectiveness as well as how the teacher incorporated scaffolding into her planning and execution of the lesson.

5. Practice scaffolding techniques as both a teacher and a student. You can design a lesson with a group of your colleagues and then deliver the lesson to them or have one of them deliver the lesson to you. Be sure to engage in metacognitive analysis of what you experienced as both the teacher and the student before, during and after both the designing and implementation of the lesson.

References

• Soviet Psychology: The Collected Works of LS Vygotsky
• Toward a Theory of Instruction; Jerome Bruner; 1966
• University of Pittsburgh: Institute for Learning: What We Know