Scaffolding
Lev Vygotsky
In education, scaffolding as a term
and notion was first introduced by Wood, Bruner, and Ross in 1976 (Deng, Chan,
& Zhang, 2014). However, it is an approach and practice widely associated
with the Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky (Gibbons, 2015; Hyland, 2006; Langford,
2005).
Vygotsky’s theories about the psychology of learning are primarily concerned with how children learn and develop. He was a social progressivist, and as such, asserted that learning is social. This perspective on learning and development, 'broadly termed sociocultural,' is a departure from 'earlier Western psychological theories'. In essence, sociocultural theory as it relates to human development, emphasises social interaction over the purely individualistic, taking into account an individual’s 'social, historical, and cultural experiences,' (Gibbons, 2015, p. 13).
Pure social progressivism asserts that
the child’s development is a self-guiding process. Vygotsky, however, later
stressed the need to guide and not merely accept the child’s
interests. He was not a proponent of 'an extreme reliance on discovery
learning' and advised that the teacher 'scaffold the learning of individual
students…to help them progress,' (Langford, 2005, p. 126). When learning as part
of a group, assistance will come from the other members as well as the teacher.
However, teacher intervention should only come 'at the points where the group
is stuck,' (Langford, 2005, p. 125). This view that teachers need to teach
has also been quite influential in the West. In particular, in the 1980s,
Western educationalists replaced the Piaget slogan, for the child to
discover, with Vygotsky’s, for the teacher to teach, (Langford,
2005). Vygotsky advised that this teaching, for the most part, should be a
dialogue between teacher and student. Dialogism is based on the premise
that 'education is dialogue,' and, principally, proposes teaching a foreign
language in the same way that a child acquires their first language, i.e.,
through dialogue. Although this argument is not developed anywhere in
Vygotsky’s writings, seeing that 'learning through dialogue is a form of
scaffolding, he advocates it indirectly,' (Langford, 2005, p. 140).
The zone of proximal development
Vygotsky argued that if teaching is to
be most effective, it needs to take place in the learner’s zone of proximal
development (ZPD), (Langford, 2005). By the ZPD, Vygotsky 'refers to the
distance or cognitive gap between what a child can do unaided and what the
child can do jointly and in coordination with a more skilled expert,' (Gibbons,
2005, p. 13). In other words, teaching should be aimed at helping students get
from where they are to where they could or need to be. Hyland’s definition of
scaffolding takes the ZPD into account, stressing that it is an 'interaction
with experienced others in moving learners from their existing level of
performance…to a level of potential performance,' (2006, p. 91). The point of
scaffolding, therefore, is to ensure progression.
Increasing challenge
Another fundamental aspect of
scaffolding is that tasks must offer learners a progressively-increasing
challenge. Hyland (2006, pp. 296-297) states that scaffolding 'involves providing
input and instruction which both support and challenge students,' and asserts
that 'learning situations that are cognitively and interactionally demanding
for learners,' can possibly push them to reach 'higher levels of performance' than if they were to work alone. A further critical aspect is that scaffolding
should be reduced as students progress. Stoller (2016, p. 581) citing Mishan,
refers to task approximating: 'Through carefully constructed task
sequences, students gradually move towards being able to handle more
challenging texts and tasks independently.' She emphasises that through
scaffolding 'a built-in progression of materials and tasks becomes integral to
EAP instruction'. In short, scaffolding should ensure that tasks are
progressively challenging, interactive, and ultimately lead to learner
independence.
Easification, simplification and scaffolding
In her discussion on textbooks, Bondi (2016, p. 327) citing Jones, distinguishes between 'Easyfication, simplification, and scaffolding'. Examples of easyfication include 'providing introductory paragraph(s), advance organizers,' and 'schematic representations of the text'. Simplification 'may be realized by explaining new terms as they arise'. For instance, materials could have a sidebar with definitions. Scaffolding, according to Jones, provides tasks that 'allow students to familiarize themselves with concepts of increasing complexity,' (Jones, 2005, p. 746, cited in Bondi, 2016, pp. 327-328). These distinctions are useful as perhaps too often scaffolding might be understood to be any help given to students, a view that could lead to creating tasks and materials that do not challenge students in a progressive and interactive manner. Gibbons (2015, p. 16) reminds us that scaffolding is not simply a synonym for help, and defines it as
'a special kind of help that assists learners in moving toward new skills, concepts, or levels of understanding.'
References
Deng, L., Chen, Q.,
& Zhang, Y. (2014). Developing Chinese EFL learners’ generic competence: A genre-based & process genre approach. Heidelberg: Springer.
Gibbons, P. (2015).
Scaffolding language scaffolding learning: Teaching English language learners
in the mainstream classroom (2nd Ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Hyland, K. (2006). English for academic purposes: An advanced resource book. Abingdon, England: Routledge.
Langford, P. E. (2005). Vygotsky’s developmental and educational psychology. Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Press.
Stoller, F. L. (2016). EAP materials and tasks. In K. Hyland & P. Shaw (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English for academic purposes (pp. 577-591). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
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