Fading distributed scaffolds: the importance of complementarity between teacher and material scaffolds

Abstract

Designing learning environments with distributed scaffolding —support distributed across different instructional tools, activities, and the teacher—can help support students’ different needs, but a critical question is how the design incorporates the hallmark feature of responsive support. While most material scaffolds in instructional tools are inherently static, teachers can complement support provided in material scaffolds by providing responsive assistance and mediating students’ interactions within their environment to both support and challenge students. Our study explores the interplay between support embedded in instructional materials and scaffolding provided by teachers. We focused on how teachers’ scaffolding complemented the fading material scaffolds in a paper-and-pencil tool and how this combination of support impacted students’ learning of science practices and content. Differences in teachers’ responsive versus static scaffolding moves corresponded with differences in students’ performance as material scaffolds faded in support. One teacher complemented support provided by the material scaffolds by frequently monitoring students’ understanding and providing additional support as needed, even when material scaffolds faded; her students maintained a high level of performance throughout the unit. In contrast, the other teacher tended to extend the static kind of scaffolding found in the instructional materials rather than adapt support to his students’ needs as material scaffolds faded; his students showed a significant decrease in performance over time. Our findings show that the complementarity between responsive scaffolding moves from the teacher and scaffolding embedded in instructional materials is important for effectively supporting the wide range of students’ needs in the classroom.

Coordinating scaffolds for collaborative inquiry in a game‐based learning environment

“…Similarly, the verbal counts of the chat data indicated that soft scaffolds provided by facilitators often included attending to accountable talk and the regulation of the inquiry process. These results support prior work that highlight that scaffolds can work together in synergy to support similar functions (Martin, Tissenbaum, Gnesdilow, & Puntambekar, 2019; Reiser & Tabak, 2014). Interaction analysis indicated that hard scaffolds were a good starting point to uncover gaps in students' understanding, be it in terms of their conceptualization of the issue or support engagement in desired practices.…”

“…A virtual collaborative space allowed us to collect rich data to understand how groups supported one another. Future work exploring the integration of hard and soft scaffolds in these workspaces is needed, particularly in exploring other forms of distributed scaffolds (Martin et al, 2019; Reiser & Tabak, 2014).…”

The Impact of a Construction Play on 5- to 6-Year-Old Children’s Reasoning About Stability

“…Researchers have frequently framed guidance in inquiry-based science teaching within the scaffolding construct (Hmelo-Silver et al, 2007). In the scaffolding literature, both material scaffolds and an adult's verbal scaffolds are considered effective in guiding children's learning (van de Pol et al, 2010;Martin et al, 2019). Accordingly, guided play can take at least two different forms (Weisberg et al, 2016), guided play with material scaffolds only, and guided play with additional verbal scaffolds.…”

“…In guided play with additional verbal scaffolds, the adult not only provides materials but additionally plays along with the children, supports the children's play verbally and encourages higher order thinking (Chin, 2007;Haden, 2010;Kleickmann et al, 2016;Weisberg et al, 2016;Martin et al, 2019). The adult can use a set of verbal scaffolding techniques to aid children's cognitive activities (for an overview cf.…”

Escape from the Skinner Box: The case for contemporary intelligent learning environments

“…A recent study has illustrated the importance of the teacher complementing the scaffolding available in the system with further scaffolding that better respects the needs of the individual learner, rather than simply extending the kind of scaffolding already provided by the system (Martin, Tissenbaum, Gnesdilow, & Puntambekar, ). Note the finding from (Ma et al , ), described in the Introduction, that “Significant, positive mean effect sizes were found regardless of whether the ILE was used as the principal means of instruction, a supplement to teacher‐led instruction, an integral component of teacher‐led instruction … [my emphasis].”…”