Instruction Week 9 | Scaffolding

Duration: 40 minutes

Mr Jones is increasingly confident at using the I-We-You model to lead sequences of instruction. But he finds that some of his pupils become overwhelmed by new content and many pupils struggle when the ideas are abstract or complex. How can his instruction support pupils to be successful when tackling challenging material?

2. Key Idea

Effective scaffolding gives pupils the knowledge and guidance to access challenging content but should be removed once pupils are experiencing high rates of success.

3. Knowledge, new content and the role of scaffolding

Mr Jones now understands that to learn new content pupils need to be able to process it in their working memory, but that working memory capacity is limited and varies between pupils (Gathercole et al., 2006). Related knowledge helps pupils make sense of new content (Willingham, 2009). For example, pupil vocabulary knowledge allows them to process strings of letters as sentences when reading and knowledge of phonics helps them when they encounter an unfamiliar word, reducing the demands on working memory. Prior knowledge reduces the burden on working memory and frees it up to think about more challenging concepts. Where prior knowledge is lacking, further support through scaffolding can help, for example by providing a definition and pronunciation of an unfamiliar key word. But where pupils already have this knowledge, scaffolding can get in the way of pupils using their prior knowledge (Pashler et al., 2007).

Prior knowledge helps us to grasp related new ideas more easily, particularly if the new ideas are concrete, as most of the things we know are concrete. However, many of the ideas encountered at school are abstract, and distant from pupils’ everyday experiences (Willingham, 2009). When introducing abstract ideas, teachers can provide related scaffolds that make the ideas more concrete. This reduces the chances of working memory becoming overloaded, increasing the chances of pupil success. For example, the idea of adding fractions can be abstract, but we can make it more concrete by using objects or diagrams (Pashler et al., 2007).

4. Introducing scaffolding

5. Removing scaffolding

Scaffolds need to be temporary to successfully support learning. As pupil knowledge develops, using fewer examples and more problem solving appears to improve learning, rather than continuing to provide high levels of guidance (Pashler et al., 2007). As pupils develop more knowledge, trying to process the scaffolding at the same time as drawing on their existing knowledge can overload working memory. As a result, scaffolding is best removed as pupils’ knowledge grows. Rather than removing all the scaffolds at once, however, Mr Jones can gradually ‘fade’ them out by removing support gradually, as pupils begin to experience higher success rates (Rosenshine, 2012).

Effective scaffolding increases the chances of pupils experiencing success and improves pupil motivation (Coe et al., 2014). Success should be a central guiding principle when deciding whether and when to remove scaffolding as pupil expertise increases.

6. Nuances and Caveats