Between the Smagorinski article and our discussion
in class today I think I gained a better understanding of scaffolding. I like
how Smagorinski gave us two examples of effective scaffolding in the classroom.
I saw the Double Column Response Log as
an answer to a cognitivist approach to teaching reading where the students have
to find the correct answers that the teacher is looking for. As an
undergraduate student there was nothing I hated more than the professor who
would give you a quiz on a reading and you wouldn’t receive credit unless you
answered the questions correctly. It wasn’t a matter of answering the questions
correctly, but giving the professor the answers that he thought were correct. I
can remember a professor talking about the ending of a novel and what he said it
meant and I thought to myself, “I see that ending totally different from how he
does. Why is his answer any more correct than my own?’ This activity on the
other hand allowed the students to question the text and try to find their own
answers. It enabled them to come up with their own meaning of the passages they
read. I believe this type of instruction will scaffold students in analyzing
texts and developing their own opinions. This will also foster students in
having something to say about a given topic which they will have to do in their
writing assignments throughout their academic careers. The Comparison-Contrast Essay went even a step further in scaffolding students
in facilitating them in providing evidence, coming to a conclusion and
developing a thesis without the teacher having to explicitly ask for it.
A couple of our discussion questions really got me
thinking about scaffolding:
What good is scaffolding if it doesn’t lead to
deeper understanding? How does scaffolding lead to deeper understanding?
I think scaffolding does eventually lead to deeper
understanding. Some students get to that understanding faster than others. I’m
in the MA TESOL program and I see students learning composition
very much like learning a new language. Some students acquire second languages easier
than others and some develop in certain skill areas quicker. I think by
scaffolding our students some may reach a deeper understand faster than others
and certain things may click for some later down the road. I believe a way we as
teachers can help scaffolding lead to deeper understanding is to explain to our
students why we have them do the things we do in class.
I agree with you, that scaffolding leads to deeper understanding when compared to the kind of teaching you describe in the first paragraph (where the teacher gives quizzes meant to test how well you memorized his interpretation of the text). But do you worry that scaffolding is in its own way just as teacher-directed? e.g., with scaffolding, the process of leading students to what the teacher wants may be more user-friendly, but students are still led to a teacher-defined goal or outcome?
ReplyDeleteAlso, one real question I have is how does scaffolding work when the teaching goals are more open-ended, or where the learning happens in the experience of inquiry and discovery, not necessarily in the mastery of particulars skills, sequences, or content?
Looking forward to reading more.
Jennifer