Distributed scaffolding

Distributed scaffolding is a concept developed by Puntambekar and Kolodner (1998) that describes an ongoing system of student support through multiple tools, activities, technologies and environments that increase student learning and performance.

Originally introduced by Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976), the learning tool of scaffolding is rooted in individualized support and tutoring. Through scaffolded or tutored instruction, a teacher was able to guide the student through a complex set of building block tasks in order to achieve a final pyramid product that the child may not have been able to complete without this active support. The term was conceptualized presuming instruction by an adult expert with a single student, however, the reality of classrooms with 20 or more students do not necessarily lend themselves to this specific structure. With many students and multiple different levels of skill or Zones of Proximal Development (defined below), there is a need to create many support structures that can properly address each student’s developmental level (Tabak, 2004; Puntambekar and Hübscher, 2005).

Similar to the term instructional scaffolding, distributed scaffolding addresses the need to provide multiple types, sources, methods, and amounts of supports to help increase a student’s ability to perform a skill.

This instructional tool is rooted in Vygotsky’s socioconstructivist model of the Zone of Proximal Development(ZPD) which states that the ZPD is:

Scaffolding is not solely support or help and a support can be designated as scaffolding only when the support is adapted to changing ability and this support is temporary. Because the term scaffolding is accessible, there have been many uses of this construct that are atheoretical, and therefore cloud the way the tool is used and applied in a classroom (Palinscar, 1998). Scaffolding is guided by the theory of task and theory of tutee, which requires a combination of assessing task performance and learner ability (Puntambekar & Hübscher, 2005). Through the dialogic nature of scaffolding, the student and teacher interact in order to establish the optimal amount of assistance and titration of this assistance.

At the heart of the creation of the scaffolding extension to distributed scaffolding, was the need to address the many different ways a scaffold could be provided. Scaffolding need not be limited solely to a teacher student or parent-student situation (Stone, 1998); in fact scaffolding can be extended to include peers (Stone, 1998; Rogoff, 1990)

Moreover, scaffolds need not be restricted to people as effective means of support could include computer programs, resources, environments, and other objects as long as the tool aids a students ability or ZPD to achieve a goal that he or she would not be able to achieve without the guidance of that scaffold (Puntambekar & Kolodner, 2005; Puntambekar & Hübscher, 2005).

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