Although scaffolding is an important and frequently studied concept, much discussion exists with regard to its conceptualizations, appearances, and effectiveness. Departing from the last decade's scaffolding literature, this review scrutinizes these three areas of scaffolding. First, contingency, fading, and transfer of responsibility are discerned in this review as the three key characteristics of scaffolding. Second, an overview is presented of the numerous descriptive studies that provided narratives on the appearances of scaffolding and classifications of scaffolding strategies. These strategies are synthesized into a framework for analysis, distinguishing between scaffolding means and intentions. Third, the small number of effectiveness studies available is discussed and the results suggest that scaffolding is effective. However, more research is needed. The main challenge in scaffolding research appears to be its measurement. Based on the encountered and described measurement problems, suggestions for future research are made.Keywords Scaffolding . Teacher-student interaction . Review . Primary and secondary educationThe concept of scaffolding has received a great deal of attention in educational research over the past few decades. An abundance of research on scaffolding in different contexts is thus the result. Scaffolding highlights one of the key aspects of children's learning, namely that it is often "guided by others" (Stone 1998a, p. 351).Scaffolding is typically associated with the socio-cultural theory of Vygotsky. Wood et al. (1976) adopted the scaffolding metaphor to explain the role that adults can play in joint problem-solving activities with children. Borrowed from the field of construction, where a scaffold is a temporary structure erected to help with the building or modification of another structure, the use of scaffolding as a metaphor within the domain of learning refers to the Educ Psychol Rev (2010) 22:271-296 DOI 10.1007 J. van temporary support provided for the completion of a task that learners otherwise might not be able to complete. This support can be provided in a variety of manners that for example includes modeling and the posing of questions for different subjects (e.g., science, social studies) at different ages. Stone (1993) described a Vygotskian-inspired analysis of scaffolding. According to Vygotsky, learning first takes place on a social (intermental) level before it takes place on an individual (intramental) level. In Stone's view, the student is not a passive participant in teacher-student interaction but scaffolding is seen as a fluid, interpersonal process in which both participants are active participants. Both participants actively build common understanding or intersubjectivity through communicative exchanges in which the student learns from the perspective of the more knowledgeable other.Because scaffolding is such a dynamic intervention finely tuned to the learner's ongoing progress, the support given by the teacher during scaffolding strongly depend...

Teacher scaffolding, in which teachers support students adaptively or contingently, is assumed to be effective. Yet, hardly any evidence from classroom studies exists. With the current experimental classroom study we investigated whether scaffolding affects students' achievement, task effort, and appreciation of teacher support, when students work in small groups. We investigated both the effects of support quality (i.e., contingency) and the duration of the independent working time of the groups. Thirty social studies teachers of pre-vocational education and 768 students (age 12-15) participated. All teachers taught a five-lesson project on the European Union and the teachers in the scaffolding condition additionally took part in a scaffolding intervention. Low contingent support was more effective in promoting students' achievement and task effort than high contingent support in situations where independent working time was low (i.e. help was frequent). In situations where independent working time was high (i.e., help was less frequent), high contingent support was more effective than low contingent support in fostering students' achievement (when correcting for students' task effort). In addition, higher levels of contingent support resulted in a higher appreciation of support. Scaffolding, thus, is not 123Instr Sci (2015) 43:615-641 DOI 10.1007/s11251-015-9351-z unequivocally effective; its effectiveness depends, among other things, on the independent working time of the groups and students' task effort. The present study is one of the first experimental study on scaffolding in an authentic classroom context, including factors that appear to matter in such an authentic context.

Providing contingent or adaptive support (i.e., scaffolding) is effective. Yet it is unclear how it promotes students' learning. In this mixed-methods study, we investigated to what extent the effect of contingent support for students' learning is mediated by the extent to which students take up teachers' support in subsequent small-group work. We define contingent support as support that contains adapted levels of teacher control or regulation based on the learner's level of understanding. To explore the research question, we analyzed all interactions from 35 lessons of 7 secondary social studies teachers and 7

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