Scaffolding Complex Learning: The Mechanisms of Structuring and Problematizing Student Work
Synergy: A Complement to Emerging Patterns of Distributed Scaffolding
A Scaffolding Design Framework for Software to Support Science Inquiry
Scaffolding Analysis: Extending the Scaffolding Metaphor to Learning Artifacts
There has been much interest in using software tools to scaffold learners in complex tasks, that is, to provide supports that enable students to deal with more complex content and skill demands than they could otherwise handle. Many different approaches to scaffolding techniques have been presented in a broad range of software tools. I argue that two complementary mechanisms can explain how a diversity of scaffolding approaches in software act to support learners. Software tools can help structure the learning task, guiding learners through key components and supporting their planning and performance. In addition, tools can shape students� performance and understanding of the task in terms of key disciplinary content and strategies, and thus problematize this important content. While making the task more difficult in the short term, by forcing learners to engage with this complexity, such scaffolded tools make this work more productive opportunities for learning. I present arguments for these mechanisms in terms of the obstacles learners face, and present several brief examples to illustrate their use in design guidelines. Finally, I examine how the mechanisms of structuring and problematizing are sometimes complementary and sometimes in tension in design, discuss design tradeoffs in developing scaffolded investigation tools for learners, and consider the reliance of scaffolding on a classroom system of supports.
In this paper, I examine distributed scaffolding, an emerging approach in the design of supports for rich learning environments intended to help students develop disciplinary ways of knowing, doing and communicating. Distributed scaffolding incorporates multiple forms of support that are provided through different means to address the complex and diverse learning needs that arise in such settings. I synthesize research to date in order to articulate three patterns of distributed scaffolding and the pedagogical considerations that they target. I introduce synergy as a pattern that has not received much attention in the past. Synergy refers to the characteristic that different components of distributed scaffolding, such as software supports and teacher coaching, address the same learning need and interact with each other to produce a robust form of support. I illustrate this pattern through classroom examples, and discuss the scaffolding functions that it can fulfill. I conclude with implications for the principled design of distributed scaffolding..
The notion of scaffolding learners to help them succeed in solving problems otherwise too difficult for them is an important idea that has extended into the design of scaffolded software tools for learners. But while there is a growing body of work on scaffolded tools, scaffold design, and the impact of scaffolding, the field has not yet converged on a common theoretical framework that defines rationales and approaches to guide the design of scaffolded tools. In this paper, we present a scaffolding design framework addressing scaffolded software tools for science inquiry. Developed through iterative cycles of inductive and theory-based analysis, the framework synthesizes the work of prior design efforts, theoretical arguments, and empirical work in a set of guidelines that are organized around science inquiry practices and the challenges learners face in those practices. The framework can provide a basis for developing a theory of pedagogical support and a mechanism to describe successful scaffolding approaches. It can also guide design, not in a prescriptive manner, but by providing designers with heuristics and examples of possible ways to address the challenges learners face.
The scaffolding metaphor was originally developed to describe the support given by a more expert individual in a one-on-one interaction. Since then the notion of scaffolding has been applied more broadly, and it has been transformed and generalized. Most recently, it has been used by researchers in the learning sciences to describe features and functions of technological artifacts, especially those of educational software. In this article, we present an analytic framework that we believe can guide and systematize these new uses of the scaffolding metaphor. In this new framework, �scaffolds� are not features of artifacts or situations, nor is �scaffolding� something that may be occurring (or not) in a given situation that we observe. Rather, a scaffolding analysis is a kind of comparative analysis that we perform on learning interactions. Because this analysis is comparative, it always produces results that are relative to specific choices that we make in framing the comparative analysis. This article presents a theoretical argument for our proposed framework, and illustrates the definition by applying it to two software environments.