This article argues that the instructional scaffolding metaphor may be reconceived as distributed scaffolding when multiple means of influence are provided in a service-learning setting. In the service-learning course described here, the professor's role is largely as designer of activity settings for preservice teacher candidates, through which the students construct their own conceptions of teaching culturally diverse populations. The course involves a set of interrelated settings: a tutoring experience at the city's alternative high school; the reading of books from a menu of texts that cover a range of diversity topics; the discussion of these books in book club meetings independent of the professor's direct influence; and the whole-class discussion of these texts, led by each student book club. The distributed nature of the course scaffolding is illustrated with an excerpt from one book club's discussion.
The COVID-19 global pandemic presented unprecedented challenges to K-16 educators, including the closing of educational agencies and the abrupt transition to online teaching and learning. Educators sought to adapt in-person learning activities to teach in remote and hybrid online settings. This study explores how a partnership between middle and high school teachers in an urban school district and undergraduate STEM mentors of color leveraged digital tools and collaborative pedagogies to teach science, technology, and engineering during a global pandemic. We used a qualitative multi-case study to describe three cases of teachers and undergraduate mentors. We then offer a cross-case analysis to interpret the diverse ways in which partners used technologies, pedagogy, and content to promote equitable outcomes for students, both in remote and hybrid settings. We found that the partnership and technologies led to rigorous and connected learning for students. Teachers and undergraduates carefully scaffolded technology use and content applications while providing ongoing opportunities for students to receive feedback and reflect on their learning. Findings provide implications for community partnerships and digital tools to promote collaborative and culturally relevant STEM learning opportunities in the post-pandemic era.
This qualitative multiple case study explores the collaborations between three STEM middle school teachers and three STEM undergraduate mentors of color in an urban school district. Drawing on sociocultural theories and literature on culturally relevant education, we used a comparative thematic approach to explore how mentors contributed to culturally relevant opportunities in STEM curriculum and pedagogy. We found that the partners’ STEM identities, how the teacher positioned the mentor in the learners’ experience, and the teachers’ philosophy of the purpose of engineering influenced the contribution undergraduate mentors could make to rigorous and equitable engineering instruction.
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