Distributed scaffolding: Difference between revisions

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'''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 learnlearning 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 achieverachieve 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 ofwith 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.

==Theoretical Basis of Scaffolding==

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

::“the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers” (Vygotsky, 1978, p.86)