LD-SIG.ORG

• Home
• Officers
• Community
• Learning Learning
• Publications

Community Menu

Community Page

Discussion LIst

2006 SIG Forum Handout

LINKS

JALT

LA-SIG(IATEFL)

ILA Japan

July 13, 2008 Greater Tokyo Get-Together Reflections

This is the second local gathering report from 2008, collected by Naoko Harada.

Tanya McCarthy

This was my first meeting as a new member of the LD SIG. It was well supported and members came from different backgrounds: Japanese and non-Japanese, teachers from junior high and senior high to private and public tertiary institutions. This provided for interesting discussion. Like many others at the meeting, I did not have a clear notion of what scaffolding was, but I claimed to have used it in my classroom for Project-Based Learning. What I got out of the meeting was…

1. Before getting into deep discussion (or research) about scaffolding, it’s best to define exactly what scaffolding is to provide more clarity, as any activity could be considered ‘scaffolding’ depending on the context.

2. Definitions provided by members were that scaffolding is a temporary structure. That is, students are given support with the expectation that they will be able to work more independently when the scaffolding is take away. Another view was that scaffolding was a tool to help guide students through the process of learning. Within this process, students facing obstacles would be able to learn independence by learning (through self-discovery) how to overcome these challenges.

3. It was also raised that for scaffolding to be effective, it was important for there to be a dialogue between teacher and learner about learning. I find this generally true in my classroom. When students have some input into their own learning, they are more motivated, and more importantly, at the end of the term, they cannot tell you that they did not understand what to do!

4. Another interesting point raised was that according to Jim Lantoff, one of the leading theorists of Vygotsky, the term ‘scaffolding’ is not representative of the Vygotskian theory itself. Therefore, teachers should be wary of how they are using the terminology in association with this theory. Personally, it seems useful to consider the learners’ ZPD while developing tasks…however, it may be wise to familiarize myself a bit more with Vygotskian theory before going any further.

5. Another point was that when we analyze scaffolding techniques used in the classroom, it may be best to examine ‘failures’ rather than successes as it is sometimes easier to see what went wrong. For others, analyzing successes seemed to be beneficial as they could try to discover what they did right. I prefer the latter actually, as it is rare when everything goes ‘perfectly well’ in the classroom, and I am happy to share it with others.

6. Finally, we talked about a lesson introduced by one of the members which gave a practical example of scaffolding: A section from the third Harry Potter movie where students were asked to look at the differences between movie language and textbook dialogue. It was good to be able to refer to something concrete and from the one presented activity, there were many contributions of how scaffolding techniques could have been used depending on the classroom context and lessons aim.

7. The main ideas I got for scaffolding then were that: Students’ needs were most important when deciding the aims of the lesson. This would help with scaffolding the lesson as by determining their needs, the aim/objective of the lesson would become clearer. Then, it would be easier to break down the lesson step by step. It is also important to consider time-management as the lesson is being made, to ensure that the lesson is going at an adequate pace for the students. It would also be helpful for students to have choice, also for motivational reasons. So, for me, scaffolding means…

Meeting student needs – Making clear goals – Providing clear instructions – Considering time – Giving choices

Deryn Verity, Osaka Chapter

This was the first time I'd attended an LD meeting; the SIGs I belong to tend not to have chapter-like meetings, especially down in Kansai, so I really enjoyed the intimate atmosphere--we all sat around one large table and talked!

Our theme, "scaffolding," is something I've been interested in for many years--it is one of the ways in which skillful instructors help learners--and it is also interesting because it has accrued such a variety of definitions over the years. Like a lot of terminology, the usage can be very loose and even inaccurate or misleading when used to mean just about anything the speaker wants it to mean. So I appreciated the narrow focus of the discussion.

One thing I was hoping to hear more about was actual experiences with successful, or failed, scaffolding that people had had as learners, since scaffolding is essentially learner and task oriented--the teacher, like the surgeon, is a professional whose raison d'etre is to make herself redundant (superfluous). But I guess that's what we'll hear about in the LD Forum at JALT.

I also appreciated the willingness to speak up and trust the group with concerns and confusions. It's something I always find moving--so much of institutional life can be confrontational that JALT and other professional groups serve an important reflective function.

Tim Ashwell

Reflections on the LD-SIG Tokyo group meeting on July 13th 2008

Thank you everyone for a very interesting and stimulating discussion about ‘Scaffolding’ last Sunday. Rather than writing something in long hand, I have written out and extended slightly the notes I made. These are my impressions of the key ideas which seemed to come up in our discussion, but I am not claiming that these represent the group’s views!

Scaffolding – some key ideas:

• Process – scaffolding is a temporary structure, not a fixed one. It is a process, not a permanent state.
• Independence – the goal of scaffolding is independent use of skills, strategies and knowledge.
• Support – scaffolding is the balanced and principled provision or withholding of support.
• Repetition – scaffolding can be the repetition of similar tasks, perhaps intensively at first and less frequently later.
• Models – scaffolding can involve the provision of models which may offer learners alternative routes and goals.
• Reflection – scaffolding can (should?) involve reflecting on the process and extending and adapting goals.
• Dialogue – scaffolding can be seen as a process of dialogue in which a teacher can guide a learner toward jointly agreed goals.
• It’s what we do! – scaffolding is the formalization of many of the things teachers normally do as a matter of course!

Philip Brown

1. Introduction

We each had the opportunity to briefly introduce ourselves and share our ideas of scaffolding. Following this, we began to discuss the definition of 'scaffolding'. First we looked at scaffolding individual tasks and activities. Next, we considered 'scaffolding' on a more 'macro' scale in terms of helping students to become more autonomous (e.g. through learner training) over an entire course. The importance of considering other courses and overall curriculum goals was also touched upon.

2. Naoko Harada on Scaffolding Harry Potter

Naoko kindly shared how she had scaffolded activities centered on a scene from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in a SHS 3rd-year elective grammar class. The scene chosen was in fact one in which a teacher, Professor Lupin, scaffolds a student's use of his want by asking questions. This sparked interesting discussion in which a broad range of teaching ideas were shared and suggested.

3. Learner Development (LD) SIG Publications

We talked about Learning Learning and possibilities for a new publication to follow AYA and MAYA. We are currently at the brainstorming stage and some initial ideas included collaboration on articles/research on specifically in the Japanese context.

4. Call for poster presentations for the LD SIG Forum at JALT 2008

Deryn Verity welcomed further contributions to the LD Forum and following today's event, I was further encouraged to submit my own proposal.

Kay Irie

For me, the meeting had started a couple weeks before July 13th when Masuko and I were making an email announcement. We knew the theme but to be honest I hadn't had a chance to look for any readings available online. So the three suggested readings are something I found in my hasty online search. But in order for me to make sure that these readings are appropriate, I had to read them first which I may not have done if I were just attending the meeting. So becoming a coordinator and deciding to have a theme in advance actually forced me to prepare myself better for the meeting in a very positive way.

I was happy to see a good mix of familiar and new faces. It was also great to have Deryn with us to support us and encourage us to expand the definition of scaffolding and feel free to talk about it without making any theoretical connection to Vygotsky. In a way, she lifted the weights for us by telling us about what Lantolf thinks about scaffolding and how she feels about the term at the beginning. I felt like we were doing a collective "thinking aloud" about scaffolding which was stimulating! There are things I wanted to ask at the meeting such as how people adjust scaffolding to each learner in a class of 30 students and if everybody is trying to make sure students internalize whatever the skill or task that students are learning as these are often obstacles I tend to ignore but know they exist. Perhaps next time.... Naoko's share of her classroom experience and how people reacted gave us an idea for a new SIG publication – which Alison and I are excited about. I hope our next meeting will be just as exciting (or even more!).

Beth Kaplan Wolff

The Learner Development SIG meeting in July was my first encounter with the LD group. I learned about the meeting through an ETJ cross posting (thanks, Terry) and was interested in discussing the topic, scaffolding. Although I am not affiliated with Teacher's College, I was pleased to be able to meet with such an enthusiastic community of learners and educators there. Thanks to Naoko for sharing her lesson and allowing us to discuss it. I'll definitely try to attend any other LD meetups in the future. Thanks.

Alison Stewart

Kayo Ozawa

Reflections on the LD-SIG Tokyo group meeting on July 13th 2008

Thank you for letting me participate in the LD-SIG meeting. It was my first time and I appreciate being able to meet other professionals. Teaching at a university, though stimulating, can be a rather isolating experience I’ve found these past three months.

My initial response after the readings and listening to people talk was “What exactly IS scaffolding?” To clarify this rather nebulous term, from the readings:

• A scaffold is a temporarily erected structure used to support a building that is under construction. The scaffolding is gradually removed bit by bit as the building itself emerges and grows stronger and more stable (Collins COBUID English Dictionary in Yu, p.5).
• [The teacher] provides a scaffold to assure that the [learners’] ineptitudes can be rescued or rectified by appropriate intervention, and then removes the scaffold part by part as the reciprocal structure can stand on its own. (Bruner’s 1983, p.60 in Yu, p.5)
• To scaffold a task is to take over the part of a task that is cognitively beyond the learner, so that he is free to focus on what he can do independently. (Verity, p.5)
• Scaffolding as a mediating strategy must be both graduated (leveled for the learner’s apparent ZPD) and contingent (helpful in overcoming the specific problems the learner has already displayed). (Al-Jaafreh, 1992 in Verity p.5)

So for me, the relationship between autonomous learner and scaffolding is that the latter provides a temporary framework for the learner to become the former. It is different from, or the opposite of anarchy, freedom, and do whatever you want in the classroom. The teacher needs to have specific, clear goals and a tight framework or guidelines to accomplish the goals that he/she has in mind. Also, there is no such thing as a “scaffolding task”; it all depends on what the learners presently know, and what the instructor’s goals are for the particular class.

A concrete example of my own failed scaffolding that I have had as a learner, if as Yu says, “teachers are to some extent also “learners”…active constructors of their own teaching environment” (Yu, p.2).

1. I teach a TOEIC class, and in the textbook I use, there is Key Vocabulary section for each Unit (for example, a Unit can be on business transactions); students have to match the words with the Japanese definitions. However, the words may have nothing to do with the listening activities that follow (the words may not be in the actual script). So having the students do this Key Vocabulary section is not really a scaffolding activity, but a rote drill.
2. On the other hand, actually taking the TOEIC test to see how it can possibly be motivating for the students, I realized that in the listening section, the students have to read ahead to the next passage while listening. Introducing scanning/skimming activities may actually be more of a scaffolding activity. In general though, the SIMPLER the activity, the better, I learned.

The other question that popped up was the extent of the use of Japanese in the classroom, by the students as well as the instructor. In addition to the women’s college, I teach P/T in another institution where the class style is basically based on immersion style (the students are returnees), and working in this environment for twenty years, it has been drilled into me that using Japanese in the classroom could only be negative for the students. This is true for high-level students with a fair amount of fluency, and the amount of input in English is always an issue. However, for low level students, the use of Japanese can actually serve as a scaffold; for example, they may use Japanese when preparing for some presentation. In one current events class I teach, I gave students a list of expressions that were used in the textbook (Example: It turned out that scientists were wrong about lactic acid). I had clozed texts for part of the passage, and wrote the Japanese translation of the words, as well as the initial letter (Example: the expression starts with “t”), students just had to figure out the expressions and place them in the blank spaces. Students found this more accessible than for me to have a list of true/false questions about the passage, asking them to change the false sentences into true ones using English. So, the amount of Japanese that is used in the classroom ties in with this idea of scaffolding at lower levels, since it is very difficult to have students produce grammatically correct sentences in English, and since their L1 is Japanese. However, too much use of Japanese would make the class pointless; whether translation will induce or inhibit their learning will continue to be my dilemma as I teach in these institutions whose teaching methods seem polarized.

Finally, Naoko Harada’s example of Harry Potter and the scaffolding experience mentioned in the bestseller was very approachable for teenagers and interesting. I would like to join the LD-SIG next year, as I’m only in the CUE SIG right now.

Verity, D. (2007). Orienting learners: an imaginary conversation Learning Learning 2008, 15(1), 25-31. [Online] Available: http://ld-sig.org/LL/index.html

Verity, D. (2006). Vygotskyan concepts for teacher education. PanSIG “Lifelong Learning” conference proceedings. [Online] Available: http://jalt.org/pansig/2005/html/Verity.htm.

Yu, G. (2004). Perception, practice and progress-significance of scaffolding and zone of proximal development for second or foreign language teachers.

Terry Yearley

• is any kind of good teaching,
• keeps students on the right track,
• is the support of cognitive development, and
• is a temporary structure that enables a process of construction (learning).

The last one is the one that I intend to carry around in my head.

After this, the most interesting point that I noted was that scaffolding exists at two levels. The first is the classroom technique/task, which we can call the ‘micro’ level, and the second is the semester/syllabus level which we can call the ‘macro’ level.

In my notes, I put down that there is a ‘very accessible article’ by ‘Larkin’. If anyone has a link to this article, please pass it on to the group. Thank you.

Another offering that I found very useful was that ‘scaffolding provides answers to ‘how’ questions, for example How am I going to teach X?’ This, for me, was succinct, appropriate, and very practical.

In two of the schools at which I teach, my students are not only learning the content/English language, but also how to do the techniques, for example: role play, that I want them to use. In this situation scaffolding is the tool that I employ. At the beginning of the semester, it is necessary to guide them through both the language content and how to practice it. However, by the end of the semester they are familiar with various techniques, so we can spend more time on content. I’m a scaffolder, and I didn’t even know it.

One final note, if I were looking for something to represent ‘scaffolding’, a ‘parrot’ would not make it to my short list. As with all the above, I offer this in the hope that it will be helpful.

Thank you all for a very useful afternoon, and especially to Kay, Naoko and Phil for helping to set everything up.

Colin Rundle

This was my second time to join the LD-SIG get-together, and it left me with a similar, very positive, impression of this group. This SIG is really refreshing - we sat around a big table, Kay Irie skillfully coordinated the proceedings, Naoko gave an interesting presentation, we shared ideas, asked questions, gave suggestions and encouragement, and unlike similar events I've attended, nobody tried to dominate, despite there being some very distinguished participants.

As a few definitions of scaffolding were thrown around, many of us confessed that we didn't have a clear notion of what it is. But as practitioners rather than theorists, everyone seemed to find their own interpretation of scaffolding a very powerful metaphor to give structure to their classrooms. Scaffolding, to me, is the opportunities I provide to my students, which include the exercises and tasks found in most English classes, to achieve their English learning goals. The usefulness of the metaphor to me is that it keeps the focus on the student's goals, and reminds me that all students have different needs at different times. Those things are tied up with ZPD and mediation, which may be more strictly Vygotskian concepts and at least as important as scaffolding, I think. Thanks to all the participants and organizers for creating such a supportive atmosphere.

Mike Nix

Thanks to everybody for a very interesting discussion, to Kay and Masuko for making this the first Tokyo LD Get Together with a discussion theme and readings, and to Naoko for the case study from her class.

Like many, I realised that I have been using the term scaffolding very loosely, so the discussion about how it differs from just helping learners to complete tasks was very useful. In particular, I was interested in how scaffolding can help learners to become more autonomous and self-directed in their learning and use of language. For this, it seems useful to understand scaffolding as providing students with a range of choices or models for how to do things, chances to reflect on how these went, and opportunities for dialogue between learners and the teacher. We talked about how scaffolding is a temporary structure that is removed to give learners independence, but this seems easier said than done to me, especially if scaffolding is built around the completion of tasks set by the teacher: when the micro-scaffolding for one task is taken away, learners may still be dependent on the macro-scaffolding of the teachers setting them tasks in order to learn and use language. How scaffold ing can help learners move to a different orientation to the language, of learning and using it for themselves, rather than completing teacher-set tasks, seems the real challenge to me.

Two other questions that are perhaps related to this challenge struck me. One is about the role that learners working together, as opposed to with more expert teachers, can play in scaffolding. That seems to be an area that isn't very well addressed in discussions of scaffolding. Secondly, if learning and development are achieved through collaboration (with other learners or teachers/experts) why is independence a goal? Wouldn't it be more productive to aim to sustain and develop these relations of collaboration on an ongoing basis, with learners self-directing their learning within and through them, to scaffold what would be a more interdependent kind of autonomous learning?

I thought the new get together format, with the themes and readings, is a good way to structure discussion and hope we can continue with that. Doing some reading before the meeting (even if some of it was last-minute on the train!) helped focus my thinking and I was a bit disappointed we didn't address that many issues from the readings in our discussion. The round table discussion was enjoyable, but I thought some pair work would have given us time to explore in more depth scaffolding in our own teaching practice.

Izumi Kanzaka

The July 13 meeting was so inspiring. Naoko's presentation about using a Harry Potter book & movie in her grammar class took me back to the time I was also a high school teacher as I always tried to look for materials such as movies and songs that would include the grammar points or expressions that my students had just learned in my class. The lively post-discussion triggered one after another reflective thought on my own teaching: what I do in my class, how I do it, and why I do it. It also made me look back on how my students responded to the tasks and what their learning outcome was. I enjoyed every moment of the meeting, and I am so glad that I went.

Naoko Harada

Our discussion on scaffolding was inspiring in many ways to me. I would like to note three points among them.

First, I appreciate everyone for their profound questions and for giving me practical pieces of advice on my classroom activities on scaffolding. Here is the essence of what I learned from you, which I will remember throughout my teaching career: (a) sharing clear aims with my class and guiding my students in a way that everyone could keep up is crucial, (b) the balance between developing autonomous learning that will be assets to the students and achieving specific language skills.

Second, the discussion on how scaffolding is actually understood widened my scope. In other words, the meaning of the term scaffolding could differ depending on the context and the perception of the user. I need to keep in mind be clear about how and why I am using the term, but after this discussion, I think I can be more prepared when I encounter unexpected reactions.

Finally, Phil suggested that scaffolding could be seen from two levels: macro and micro. This gave me a good reason to go back to my original teaching plans and check from the long-term scaffolding perspectives.

Copyright JALT LD-SIG, 2008