Scaffolding for Reasoning

Scaffolding in the Flipped Classroom

8/6/2011 Published by Michael D. King http://digitalsandbox.weebly.com/

SCAFFOLDING FOR REASONING

by Michael D. King

"Today's child is bewildered when he enters the 19th century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects, and schedules." -Marshall McLuhan, 1967

Introduction
The "Flipped Classroom" provides avenues for teachers to become facilitators of learning and move away from the sage on a stage approach to teaching. One of the greatest differences of the flipped classroom to traditional practices is how scaffolding techniques are use to support reasoning and the development of problem solving skills. In this first part of a two part article on scaffolding, author Mike King will explain the differences in meta-cognitive scaffolding and student support scaffolding in traditional classrooms.

Scaffolding in the Flipped Classroom

Instructional content support plays an important role in designing and delivering developmental schemas within the flipped classroom. Through a technique known as scaffolding the flipped classroom teacher can provide the necessary strategies to ensure exactness of knowledge for content development. Scaffolding instruction within the flipped the facilitator of knowledge scaffolds or supports the learners development. The activities

designed within the flipped classroom ( group work, questioning, or synchronous instruction) should provide the scaffolding of instruction that is set for the learner at the correct level of complexity and difficulty. The facilitator provides the scaffolds (learning structures needed) so that the learner can accomplish (with assistance) the tasks that he or she could otherwise not complete, thus helping the learner through the Zone of Proximal Development.

Zone of Proximal Development

The Zone of Proximal Development is the distance between what the learner understands within an assigned task (can do by themselves without assistance) and the next level of learning that they can complete independently through a higher conceptual level of understanding . The term "Zone of Proximal Development" was originally created by Vygotsky who defined scaffolding instruction as the role of teachers and others in supporting the learners development and providing support structures to get to that next stage or level. This type of learning strategy implies that the role of the facilitator in the flipped classroom must ensure both the exactness of learning and provide support for the student to become an independent and self-regulating learner and problem solver.

The key to a successful learning experience is not at the stand alone knowledge level which in many cases classrooms of today formulate through mastery of concepts and to a lesser degree on the idea of scaffolding for reasoning. In accordance to Vygotsky the external supporting scaffolds can be removed once the learner has developed a more sophisticated cognitive system. Related to fields of learning (levels of knowledge) Vygotsky definition of scaffolding may not have equated the conceptual levels needed by the learner in becoming an independent problem solver. This may mean that scaffolding within the flipped classroom will always exist in some form of questioning to check for student understanding or levels of reasoning.

Scaffolding for ePub Generation

This becomes our first paradigm shift in comparison of today's classrooms to that of the flipped classroom. Conceptual levels of understanding content or knowledge level assessment in today's classrooms may totally rely on the students ability to master chunked levels of content. These chunked levels of learner expectations known as standards of learning may not facilitate the learners ability to reason within the content. This method of learning becomes problematic in the 21st Century since content can be generated instantaneously.

With content so readily available, being published by the ePub generation may not in some cases be exact. What is needed is the reasoning processes that helps the learner to determine the exactness of knowledge as it is filtered through multiple resources. In other words what skills will the student have to ensure that the knowledge they are obtaining through multiple resources is true and factual. This is where scaffolding becomes essential within the 21 Century learning environment.

Vygotsky Model
In Vygotsky model of ZPD "scaffolding of knowledge" the learner is linked to old information or familiar situations with new knowledge through verbal and nonverbal prompts as well as modeled structural behaviors. In early childhood developmental models such as constructivism theory of knowledge obtainment that argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning from an interaction between their experiences and their ideas. To support the construction of new knowledge would be to scaffold activities by enlisting the leaner's interest as it is related to the task, or simplify the task to make it more achievable for the learner. To provide scaffolding techniques within the construction of new knowledge would also include reducing frustration by providing some direction to support a focus on goal obtainment, along with providing clarification of students current work and how it compares to the desired standards. In the traditional educational setting, scaffolding techniques include graphic organizer, teacher initiated, prompts, essential questions concerning content objectives, or modeling through direct instruction. In the flipped classroom these traditional scaffolding strategies become a little more complex, as the facilitator constructs the principles of reasoning as it is related to Problem Based Learning. Ngeow and Yoon in a 2001 published an article on "Learning to Learn: preparing teachers and students for problem-based learning," state that, Problem-based learning (PBL) is an educational approach that challenges students to "learn to learn. In the flipped classroom the facilitator assesses the activities that the students can perform

independently and what they must learn to complete the task. The facilitator is thus responsible for, designing PBL activities which offer just enough of a scaffold for students to overcome this gap in knowledge and skills.

Scaffolding In Problem-based Learning

Problem Based Learning in the flipped classroom is centered around the presentation of a problem, not lectures or assignments or exercises. Since "content obtainment" is not at the center of learning the classroom becomes an active center for discovery using content as a support to solve a problem. Scaffolding through the process of reasoning is to retrieve information through the effective use of references. This is not to say that learning is content free. Learning in fact is the use of multiple constructed content references that is project oriented to real life situations.

To use content in multiple references allows the learner to construct higher levels of thought while blending multiple resources into conceptual understanding. When scaffolding within the flipped classroom the facilitator establishes themselves as the master of continent allowing for meta-cognitive questioning to occur in higher frequency. In other words leaving behind the idea of traditional practices of burning information into the neural circuits and acknowledging that resources to the information age will always hold more than what individual memory can store. This approach will require the flipped classroom facilitator to construct reasoning proficiencies within the students learning environment. Constructing reasoning proficiencies is the third paradigm shift to 21st Century Learning and will be the second part of this article on "Scaffolding for Reasoning."