Educational Scaffolding in Primary Education from the Perspective of Younger-Aged School Pupils

Abstract

Educational scaffolding as a form of dynamic, situation-based intervention by the teacher in the learning process of pupils creates an interesting area for exploring specific individually conditioned forms of support that can be captured in the interaction between teachers and pupils in the classroom. With regard to its content and importance, however, the broad conceptualisation of scaffolding as a strategy representing all possible forms and sources of facilitation of a pupil’s learning calls the method into doubt. Specific features that would fulfil this strategy’s original importance and the role it plays in the learning process, specifically in the zone of proximal development, are obscured by this broad conceptualisation. We attempt to gain a better understanding of the wider conceptual framework of scaffolding, which is generally defined as learning support, by way of recording strategies and procedures that are employed in practice and which pupils, teachers, and independent observers identify as supporting elements. The results of the empirical survey presented in this paper focus on a specific research question related to the perspective from which pupils in primary education themselves see learning support. Our aim was to ascertain how pupils of a younger school age subjectively respond to and describe the importance and sources of support used in the teaching process. In terms of methodology, we applied the phenomenological approach. Data was collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 104 pupils of younger school age ranging from six to 11 years old. For data analysis, we used a qualitative structuring technique with the creation of inductive categories. A content analysis of the data made it possible to generate four key categories of learning support sources. The first, named “Absence of Fear”, showed the importance of emotional support, in the form of the need for encouragement, praise, and chances to succeed, and, at the same time, the threat of the fear of failure, errors, or bad marks. The second category, named “Again and Again”, viewed a specific social-historical feature of Czech school education in the form of routine repetition, revision, and practice of the curriculum. The importance of the social context of peer learning was coded in our data under the title “I’ll Ask Denis”. The significance of the illustrative nature of didactic aims in the form of pictures, drawings, maps, or stories, named by pupils, forms the core of the fourth and last category, called “Visualisation”.

Keywords: scaffolding, learning support, zone of proximal development, emotional scaffolding, visual scaffolding