Scaffolding: Why Today's Kids Need Caring Adults

This Thursday I (Kelly) became very aware of the necessity of scaffolding outside the classroom. For those of you who are not teachers here is a short definition of scaffolding from Education.com

Scaffolding has been defined by Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976) as an “adult controlling those elements of the task that are essentially beyond the learner's capacity, thus permitting him to concentrate upon and complete only those elements that are within his range of competence.” The notion of scaffolding has been linked to the work of Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934). However, Vygotsky never used the term scaffolding (Stone, 1998), but emphasized the role of social interaction as being crucial to cognitive development, so that learning first occurs at the social or interindividual level. Thus, when a child (or a novice) learns with an adult or a more capable peer, the learning occurs within the child'szone of proximal development (ZPD). ZPD is defined as the “distance between the child's actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the higher level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance and in collaboration with more capable peers” (Vygotksy, 1978, p. 86). Enabling the learner to bridge this gap between the actual and the potential depends on the resources or the kind of support that is provided.

In short, scaffolding is an adult giving a student/child the extra help they need to achieve their goal. It is really quite simple. Big Brothers/ Big Sisters is a group that demonstrates the effectiveness of this approach again and again.

I may be preaching to the choir but more than once this week I have seen a student seek help to reach beyond their "zone" and not one caring adult, including their family, sought to help them. How can we see students reach and not offer a boost?

Many students (especially high school) stricken with poverty have no idea how to apply for college or visit a college, get scholarships, etc. How can they move beyond their circumstances if they have no idea how?

A lot of questions I know, but there are some answers, Ruby Payne in her book Understanding Poverty, suggests that the only way for most students to move away from poverty stricken circumstances is to have a middle or upperclass mentor. Her research shows that scaffolding for those in the lower classes works in terms of helping them eventually reach the middle class via a caring adult and furthering education. Further education is not valued in the poverty setting as a skill set, thus it needs to be encouraged by someone outside of the poverty mindset.

Please be that caring adult for a student in need, you may be all they have, and you might not even know it. You can be their mentor and make them aware of a whole new world of opportunities they never even dreamed about.

(This piece was written after taking a student on her very first college visit. She will be the first generation of her family to attend any sort of college.)