Scaffolding in the classroom

ELL 2

Pragmatics

Scaffolding

Ms.356

Stella Maris Bortoni-Ricardo

Affiliation: University of Brasilia

The concept of scaffolding  is grounded in the classroom discourse tradition and draws on two scholarly perspectives, developed in the realms of psychology and sociolinguistics, namely, the sociocultural theory of language and learning, as put forward by the Russian psychologist Lev S.  Vygotsky and the sociolinguistic approach to human interaction according to John Gumperz and others.  These two strands of theory share a view of language as the foundation of learning and place emphasis on human actions as jointly constructed efforts.

Scaffolding is a metaphorical concept that refers to the visible or audible assistance that a more expert member of a culture can give to an apprentice.

Scaffold work is most often analysed as an instructional strategy in the school domain but it occurs in any social setting where socialization processes take place.

The term scaffolding was introduced by the American psychologist Jerome Bruner (1983) whose main interest is in the institutional forms by which culture is passed on. A basic concept underlying his work is Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (zpd) . This zone  lies in  between what learners can do without assistance and the maximum they can do with the help of a more experienced partner.

According to Vygotsky’s socio-historical theory, external speech affects internal thoughts: the intrapsychological apprehension of  knowledge is made possible  by the interpsychological  action.

Another concept underlying the rationale of scaffolds is    contextualization cues as advanced in Interactional Sociolinguistics i.e. “ any feature of  linguistic form that contributes to  signalling to the participants  whether communication is proceeding smoothly and how intentionality is being communicated and interpreted’ (Figueroa,1994:113. Contextualization cues are conveyed through multiple linguistic and paralinguistic channels, such as   prosodic features (pitch and tone, loudness, rhythm) and  kinesics (facial decoration, eye gaze, smiles, frowns and any other resources of the  body idiom), which  are important tools in the management  of scaffoldlike actions.  Hence the advantage of using a microethnographic  methodology to segment any scaffolding episode into smaller interaction units.

In the tradition of classroom discourse, scaffolding is associated with teacher initiating and evaluating on the students’ responses  within the IRE (‘Initiation-Response-Evaluation’)  framework of classroom interaction. This can take the form of  prefaces to questions, overlapping, backchanneling,  comments, rephrasing  and expansions of pupils’ answers that will provide  them with the opportunity for reconceptualizations (Cazden, 1988).

A basic feature of scaffolds is the establishment of a positive atmosphere between the participants whereby teachers support (‘scaffold’) the students’ enactment of a competent behaviour. This can be done through ordinary actions that ratify the learner as a legitimate participant, such as listening to them, as the late Brazilian educator Paulo Freire has pointed out (Freire,1997).  The scaffolding assistance in the classroom can come from the teacher as well as from peers.

Scaffolding strategies are culture-specific and can vary largely across social networks, ethnic and cultural groups and national communities.

Bruner, J. (1983) Child’s talk: Learning to use language. New York: W.W.Norton.

Cazden,  C.B.(1988) Classroom discourse. Portsmouth:Heinemann Educational Books.

Figueroa, E. (1994) Sociolinguistic metatheory. New York: Elsevier Science Ltd.

Freire,P.(1973) The practice of freedom. London:  Writers and  Readers Publishing Co-op

Abstract

Scaffolding is a metaphorical concept that refers to the visible or audible assistance that a more expert member of a culture can give to an apprentice in any social setting although it is more often analyzed in the classroom discourse. Two basic concepts underlying the notion of scaffolding are Lev Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development and John Gumperz’s contextualization cues. A basic feature of scaffolds is the establishment of a positive atmosphere between teacher and pupils.  Scaffoldlike actions are conveyed through multiple linguistic and kinesic features and are culture-specific.

Key words:

1.   Scaffolding

2.   Classroom discourse

3.   Teacherpupil interaction

4.   Peer interaction

5.    Bruner

6.   Vygotsky

7.    Freire

8.   Zone of proximal development

9.    Gumperz

10.  Contextualization cues

11.  IRE sequence of classroom discourse

12.  Reconceptualization

13.  Micoethnographic methodology