Support Structures

Ultimately, partial instruction is ineffective for novice learners (Pearce, 2022) with previous studies showing a positive relationship between students’ uptake of teachers’ instructional moves and student learning ?(Jadallah et al.,?2011; Lin et al.,?2015).

‘The amount of scaffolding you use depends on the needs of each student’ -Jamie Clark

Partially guided instructions does become more effective as our learners develop their skills because they have the required knowledge of skills to solve the problem. By providing a range of support structures to our students you can give them a sequence for learning but with the ability to gradually remove these structures so they can succeed independently. This is what separates providing structures to giving shortcuts - an oversimplified approach which often restricts future learning.

Key question for you as tutors

Think of a time you have given a student a shortcut to finding a solution, but which has ultimately not supported them with more complex problems. What could you have changed?

Scaffolding and more specifically contingent support represents intervening in such a way that the learner can succeed at the task (Mattanah et al. 2005) and in the next section we are going to look at three specific ways we can support our students get to the most appropriately challenging questions for them.

Some supports structures can planned prior to lessons whilst some are provided responsively, and remember these supports can only be helpful if they are appropriate to the learning and the pupil (Nasen, 2015). This is sadly not a one-fit all solution.

I'll discuss one such method tomorrow: checklists

References

Pearce, J. (2022). What Every Teacher Needs to Know How to Embed Evidence-Informed Teaching and Learning in Your School. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Clark, J. (2024). Teaching One-Pagers: Evidence-Informed Summaries for Busy Educational Professionals. Hodder Education, pp.52–53.

Jadallah, M., Anderson, R. C., Nguyen-Jahiel, K., Miller, B. W., Kim, I. H., Kuo, L. J., … Wu, X. (2011). Influence of a teacher’s scaffolding moves during child-led small group discussions.?American Educational Research Journal,?48(1), 194–230. doi:10.3102/0002831210371498

Lin, T. J., Jadallah, M., Anderson, R. C., Baker, A. R., Nguyen-Jahiel, K., Kim, I. H., … Wu, X. (2015). Less is more: Teachers’ influence during peer collaboration.?Journal of Educational Psychology,?107(2), 609–629. doi:10.1037/a0037758

Mattanah, J. F., Pratt, M. W., Cowan, P. A., & Cowan, C. P. (2005). Authoritative parenting, parental scaffolding of long-division mathematics, and children’s academic competence in fourth grade. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 26, 85–106. doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2004.10.007.

Nasen (2015). Differentiation – why and how? [online] Available at: https://www.egfl.org.uk/sites/default/files/Services_for_children/SEND/Differentiation%20Nasen.pdf [Accessed Jun. 2024].