What can I do to scaffold learning?

Much of what we do as educators can be characterized as scaffolding learning: we introduce students to new concepts or practices with a lot of guidance, and then ask them to practice their skills and knowledge, acting more and more independently as they go. It is a tried and true approach to teaching, and thinking in those terms as you plan your class or course can help you to develop a robust, supported structure for learning even the most challenging content.

In this guide, you will find a short introduction to the principles of scaffolding and how to structure its gradual withdrawal, followed by some examples of scaffolded structures used by Pacific faculty.

Table of contents
Basics of scaffolding
Examples of scaffolded tasks and assignments
I do, we do, you do
Scaffolded structures used by Pacific faculty
Modeling problem formulation
Scaffolding across semesters

Basics of scaffolding

The basic principle of scaffolded learning is to break up learning into chunks, and provide some structure or guidance to help students to gain competence with each part of the learning until they are able to go on without assistance. This is distinct from differentiated learning, in which you might develop adapted versions of particular tasks for students who may benefit from targeted support; in scaffolded learning you have all students work through the structured, supported task first, and gradually encourage them to work more and more independently as their confidence grows.

An underlying principle of scaffolded learning structures is to focus on the zone of proximal development (ZPD) of your learners at a given time. This is a concept from Lev Vygotsky’s theory of learning and development, which is defined as the space between the level of current development–the tasks that a learner can capably do without assistance–and the level of potential development, the set of tasks that a learner would be able to do with guidance and support from an educator or peers.

To scaffold a particular task, you might control some elements of the task that are initially beyond the students’ capabilities, such that they can focus on completing the elements that are within their abilities at that time. As students gain competence, you can hand over more and more of that control to the students and invite them to practice the more challenging parts of the task. It can also be helpful to make use of peer collaboration, such that students can work together to complete a task.

One particularly helpful scaffolding tool across assignment types is the grading rubric, which offers students an explicit structure to work to as they complete assignments. CETCI has run a number of workshops about working with rubrics, and you can access a range of resources on our Teaching & Grading with Rubrics Resource Site. The slideshow at the top provides a helpful introduction.

Examples of scaffolded tasks and assignments

Below are some examples of tasks and assignments that build in strategic support to help students to complete a task, which can then be gradually withdrawn.

Guide students as they create an anchor chart: an organized, visual resource that captures the most important information, strategies and content that students need to learn. From this activity, students will cement the most important points in a lesson, and create for themselves a valuable resource for learning and revision that is strongly associated with your initial, guided presentation of the material.
Read together as a class, pausing to discuss and unpack concepts as you go. This can be a fantastic way to introduce challenging new texts, because students are not alone as they first encounter any specialist language and challenging concepts, and you can call upon members of the class as and when they have observations to offer, which serves to both lessen the pressure on any individual student and to build confidence by validating those contributions.
Ask students to complete worksheets and templates that give them the first part of an activity completed, and ask them to fill out the rest. For example, the worksheet could give students a set of sentence stems (the first part of a sentence, which students are then expected to complete), a partially labeled diagram, or a partially completed table or chart. Once students have become more familiar with the process and content, they can then be asked to complete the entire activity from scratch.
When starting a new topic, begin with a vocabulary primer to get students used to some of the words you will be using before you start working on the concepts. Have students fill out a glossary with definitions of key terms with your guidance, such that when you start introducing the main content any specialist terms are already a little familiar, and students can easily look up definitions later if they are feeling unsure.
Work through examples before asking students to complete a task. A classic example of this might be the educator working through an example calculation on the board while narrating the process, but it can also look other ways: like the whole class making suggestions to put together an essay structure, or the class analyzing an example of a past student’s work to understand how it meets the criteria and what the strengths of the work are.
If you have students who are nervous about public speaking, it can be helpful to set up structures that have them speaking in progressively larger groups. The Pairs and Pods method is a variant of think-pair-share in which students are asked to first share their responses to some topic in a pair with another student, and then in a pod of four students (two pairs put together). Students maintain the same pair and pod across a few classes, so that they build community within their group; students have time to prepare and then share their thoughts with iteratively larger groups, which provides a scaffold toward speaking in bigger discussions.

I do, we do, you do

When it comes to structuring the progression from more to less scaffolded tasks, the ‘I do, we do, you do’ model is a great starting point. This structure can be used to shape the progression of learning at dramatically different scales: over the course of a lesson, the course of a degree, and anything in between.

In the first section, the educator guides students through a task, with plenty of discussion of the process as they go. Particular areas to focus on here are referring to relevant materials that students are already familiar with, talking through the process of analyzing a problem and deciding next steps to model the critical engagement students need to develop, and reflecting on the success or failure of the process as you go to help students to develop important metacognitive abilities.

In the second, the students begin to take over more of the task. This section is also sometimes subdivided into the sections ‘I do, you help’ and ‘You do, I help,’ to further articulate the roles taken by student and instructor as practice progresses: at first, an educator might model the process and ask students to suggest next steps, and then have students take more control with close instructor guidance.

The final stage is for students to carry out independent practice, with a clear focus on the particular skills to be developed and the particular criteria to fulfill (which can be effectively communicated using a rubric).

Scaffolded structures used by Pacific faculty

Modeling problem formulation

Physics professor Todd Duncan asks students in Physics 202/204 to create their own problem for their final exam, derived from a real-world question that they have been feeling curious about. Doing this means selecting an appropriate kind of question, and simplifying and abstracting key elements of the problem to make it solvable using the methods taught in the class. The task is challenging, but it is carefully scaffolded throughout the semester to give students all the equipment they need to meet the challenge.

Throughout the semester, Duncan tells students about a variety of real-world questions that are suitable to be analyzed from a physics perspective, and shows them the process of refining and adapting those questions to be tractable using the tools they are learning. In this way, students get to see the process modeled and to work through the resulting problems with expert guidance, and they are equipped with a range of example questions that show them what kinds of problems to look out for. Students have the entire semester to come up with a suitable problem, and are then given individual guidance as they turn it into a solvable problem–and solve it!

To learn more about Duncan’s approach, get in touch with him at tduncan@pacificu.edu.

Scaffolding across semesters

Pacific’s School of Pharmacy uses a skills curriculum that builds from semester to semester to help students to attain the most complex of skill sets. Early on, students are allowed to complete a task with the help of a variety of supports, which are gradually withdrawn as the students’ competence increases.

For example, in order to recommend over-the-counter drugs, students will need to learn how to work with a patient presenting with a set of symptoms to gather information and give advice–and they will need a complex skill set in information-gathering, verbal communication and product knowledge in order to be able to do this, so different sections of the skill set are addressed at different moments in the process. In the first semester, students are asked to answer a set of questions about a particular medication, in order to learn how to extract key information from the packaging. In the second semester, students are asked to role-play with a patient, asking questions about symptoms and possible contraindications, but they are told in advance which product they are going to recommend, so that the students’ focus can be on verbal communication. Over the intervening summer students take an in-depth class about over-the-counter products themselves, such that in the third semester they are ready to role-play with patients, ask appropriate clarifying questions, and make their own recommendations for product selection using a virtual pharmacy setup.

In order for this scaffolded structure to work, the faculty in Pharmacy work together to ensure that they are using consistent scoring guides, nomenclature and so forth, such that the continuity is clear and students feel oriented throughout. If you would like to know more about the skills curriculum, you can reach out to Jessica Merlo at jmerlo@pacificu.edu.

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Interested in thinking more about ways to scaffold learning? Reach out to us at edtech@pacificu.edu, and we can suggest more resources or schedule a one-on-one.

We are also always looking for more answers to this question, so if you have one that’s worked for you, please let us know!

What can I do to scaffold learning?