Scaffolding is a method that helps teachers provide students with individualized instruction. While engaged in scaffolding, teachers become facilitators of learning in an instructional dialogue based on flexibility. Scaffolding fosters student academic achievement, self-esteem, and social skills.
With scaffolding, a teacher concentrates on developing student competencies. In the classroom, the teacher explains, step-by-step, how a decision was made or a conclusion reached. This explanation often takes the form of group discussion. The discussion is a stream-of-consciousness interaction with students and teacher. Later, the instructor shifts from teacher to coach as the students take over the particular skill. The performance of the student is coached until the mastery of the skill develops. At this stage, the student role resembles that of the apprentice, working under the guidance of the instructor. Gradually, the instructor reduces support, a process known as fading. Ultimately, support is no longer needed. Scaffolding is a highly individualized approach to teaching: "Almost all classroom teachers believe that instructional approaches which are attentive to the differences among individual learners will be superior to those schemes which are oblivious of such differences" (Popham and Baker, 1973, p. 27).
The objective of scaffolding is to give the student just enough support to help him or her achieve their current goal. Too much support can be stifling while too little support can leave the student fumbling to catch up or merely pretending to have acquired the particular skill: "If the [teacher] intruded on [the student] constantly, giving too much guidance, they might become overly dependent . . . and lose ownership of the task on which they are working" (Acovelli and Gamble, 1997, p. 46). The scaffolding process can be visualized precisely as a scaffold used in the construction of a building. The scaffoldi...