Theory of scaffolding 2
To be continued:
Children use oral language as a vehicle for discovering and negotiating emergent written language and understandings for getting meaning on paper (Cox, 1994; Dyson, 1983, 1991). Writing and speech as tools can lead to discovery of new thinking. The teacher offers levels of verbal and non-verbal demonstrations and directions as the child observes, mimics, or shares the writing task. With increased understanding and control, the child needs less assistance. The teacher's level and type of support change over time from directive, to suggestion, to encouragement, to observation. Optimum scaffolds adapt to the childs tempo moving from other-regulation to self-regulation. The child eventually provides self-scaffolding through internal thought (Wertsch, 1985). Within these scaffolding events, teaching and learning, inseparable components, emphasize both the childs personal construction of literacy and the adults contributions to the childs developing understandings of print. The child contributes what she can and the adult contributes so as to sustain the task (Teale & Sulzby, 1986).
Using a Vygotskian theoretical framework, Wertsch and Stone (1984) examine scaffolded instruction in a one-to-one remedial clinic setting with a learning disabled child. The researchers show how adult language directs the child to strategically monitor actions. Analysis of communicative patterns show a transition and progression in the source of strategic responsibility from teacher or other-regulated to child or self-regulated behaviors. In Vygotskys words, "what the child is able to do in collaboration today he will be able to do independently tomorrow" (Vygotsky, 1987, p. 211).
Some ingredients of scaffolding are predictability, playfulness, focus on meaning, role reversal, modeling, and nomenclature. Daniels, H. (1994). Literature Circles: Voice and choice in the student-centered classroom. Markham: Pembroke Publishers Ltd.