Scaffolding Students to Success

Alex Fairlamb and Rachel Ball

An in-depth look at scaffolding, highlighting its benefits over differentiation and offering practical techniques for classroom success.

In 2017, in response to the news that a snap election had been announced, Brenda from Bristol stole the heart of the nation when she gasped “You’re joking! Not another one!”  What Brenda was expressing was her fatigue with a constant carousel of political developments which were preventing her from going about her daily business.

Applying this to teaching, we think at some point as educators, we’ve all felt a bit like Brenda.  Throughout the course of our careers, we have all been subjected to many different educational initiatives where we can see the writing on the wall well in advance – namely that they’re going to be short lived, will have limited impact and generally be a bit naff.  Looking back, I remember a well-intentioned day where thousands of pounds was spent launching ‘Building Learning Power’ using inflatable relay races for resilience tests and mirrors for reflectiveness activities.  Not surprisingly, this learning strategy did not stand the test of time, and more worryingly it meant that teachers became even more jaded about what teaching and learning strategy was “coming next”.

As a result of such experiences, it’s understandable why teachers may feel a sense of caution and scepticism when it comes to T&L initiatives.  Consequently, T&L Leads can experience barriers of buy-in when driving forward pedagogical approaches which make up a part of a school’s T&L toolkit.  There can be a feeling of “oh, this is the new fad… give it a couple of years and it’ll go back to… I’ve seen it before and it’ll come full cycle.”  We get it; we too have endured it.

Whilst this may have been the case in many places, it has to be noted that there has been a positive seismic shift in the past few years in T&L initiatives.  Educators and institutions have become much more adept at ensuring that T&L strategies are research-informed and well-implemented, forensically identifying the ‘best bets’ approaches for teaching the students in their classrooms, in their contexts.  This approach has ensured that high-impact strategies now make up much of T&L practice, building confidence of the teachers in terms of belief in their use and also supporting longevity of application.

Why am I saying all of this?  Because in our education system there exists a deeply entrenched culture of differentiation, which has permeated across key stages and institutions.  And when we begin to explain why scaffolding is a better alternative to differentiation, I do not want this to be dismissed as a ‘new fad’ or the short-shelf life ‘de jour’ strategy which will ‘last until the next big thing comes along.’  Scaffolding is far too important a strategy to be dismissed as such.  And, it is also not new!  It is an essential part of our T&L practice, and one that when used effectively, results in classrooms rooted in the belief of high expectations of all, contributing to positive outcomes for the different children that are before us.

What does scaffolding mean?

In 1976, Wood, Bruner and Ross first defined scaffolding as “a process that enables a child or novice to solve a task or achieve a goal that would be beyond his unassisted efforts^[1]” More recently, the EEF (2020) have refined this definition further by stating that scaffolding is ‘a metaphor for temporary support that is removed when no longer required. It may be visual, verbal or written^[2]’.

Mansworth (2021) underpins the ethos that sits behind scaffolding, summarising it as ensuring that we are ““…consistently teaching higher-level ideas and knowledge and making this accessible to all students ……ensuring that every student is afforded access to the most stimulating, challenging and thought-provoking learning opportunities.^[3]”

Breaking this down, we can see that scaffolding is:

• High expectations of all – the belief that no child should have a pre-determined glass ceiling or cap put on their learning
• The achievement of a goal – goals mean high expectations. For all students, not just some.
• Temporary – scaffolding should be removed over time, when our checks for understanding provide us with the feedback and knowledge of when to do this
• A process – one that guides students towards becoming independent and autonomous. However, this process may not be linear.  At varying points, it may be that scaffolds need to be instated.  An example of this might be with a source analysis in History.  The students may have developed their source analysis skills on the topic of Weimar and Nazi Germany, but when they move onto the Cold War they will encounter new content, and so to support with this, it may be that scaffolds that were removed during the previous topic have to be temporarily reinstated until their knowledge of the Cold War (and therefore their ability to unpick and analyse the source) develops
• Support which can be verbal, visual or written – and therefore might be explicit or implicit, it can be pre-planned but also introduced/adapted live in the moment.

What firmly underpins scaffolding is the drive to ensure that learning is equitable, and that all are given access to the full curriculum, with appropriate scaffolds that ensure that they are successful when doing so.

How then does scaffolding differ from differentiation?

The need to provide support for students to access learning is not a new idea.  The pathway to do this, however, has been subject to differences in opinion and approach.  For much of the noughties, differentiation was the favoured approach to providing support for students to learn.  Differentiation is when content, resources, groupings and/or instruction are tailored to meet individual needs.  Often, what input to provide students with was determined by predicted target grades/levels and sub-groups such as ‘Pupil Premium’ and SEND.   Virtuous in its intent, the idea was that by providing this tailored approach to learning, that equality in the classroom could be achieved.

However, differentiation is problematic and we will unpack a couple of reasons why.

The first reason why it is problematic is that it puts into place a glass ceiling for some learners and it creates a rigid, unresponsive approach to learning as it happens live in the classroom.  Myatt (2020) clearly explains how “Above all, differentiation goes against the heart of the principles of the curriculum which is that all children should be following the same course of work, are entitled to do difficult things and are supported on the way….support consists of the live conversations and additional unpacking of the material during the lesson. Differentiating materials in advance predetermines what children are able to do^[4].  Essentially, we are deciding in advance what we think a child is capable – and not capable – of doing, limiting the opportunity for them to experience a curriculum that some others will get to explore and try.  This means that some students are on the receiving end of a ‘dumbed down’ version of the curriculum, which over time leads to an increased gap between the lower and higher attainers, as they are doomed to always be playing “catch up.”

The second reason why differentiation is problematic, is due to the lethal mutations which have spawned over the past two decades.  These mutations include:

• Tiered learning objectives (for example, all, most and some) – sometimes based on Bloom’s Taxonomy
• Multiple different activities happening simultaneously
• Multiple versions of a worksheet
• Differentiated groups (a school Alex worked in enforced three ability groupings in each class, each with their own learning objective and activity. The English department called their three Shelley, Orwell and Byron.  The RS department called theirs Jesus, Mary and Joseph!)
• Personalised differentiation – where students select the task that they want to do, based on their ‘earning preference’ (justified as driving motivation through choice)

Roberts (2022) succinctly states the impact that this can have on learning and students, ‘what we are saying is that we expect much less from some students than others. We are advertising our low expectations to the class … The impact on motivation, effort levels and outcomes are catastrophic^[5]’.

Added to that, these mutations have resulted in an immensely high workload for staff.  Mulholland (2022) explains how ‘Differentiation tends to focus on working with individuals or small groups of learners. While it can be a useful approach when understood and deployed well – for example, in special schools – when used in mainstream, it can lead to teachers juggling multiple “micro-lessons” during a class^[6].’

What does scaffolding look like?

A good starting point for understanding the broad types of scaffolding that can be deployed is the below EEF diagram.  It breaks down the types of scaffolding into three key areas: visual, verbal and written.

Figure 1: Education Endowment Fund (2020) Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Schools (Online)

What this graphic helps us to understand is that there is more to scaffolding than a writing frame or a key word box.  Often, when showing colleagues this diagram, they comment “we’re already doing a lot of that.”  Because, in essence, a negative consequence of differentiation has been that any form of support must be explicit and heavily signposted.  This is not the case.  Scaffolding and adaptive teaching can be something as simple as a verbal nudge or cue during whole class questioning, or live marking a piece of work and noticing that the student might need support with starting a sentence, and so you prove the first few words or a mini-whiteboard for them to jot down some potential ideas for how to start the sentence.

Eaton’s blog (2022)^[7] is useful to use in tandem with this graphic.  In it, he discusses how a three-stage process can be used to plan for scaffolding, and how to adapt live in the moment, using checks for understanding to know how to respond.  In brief. He outlines that:

Figure 2: An adapted version of Eaton’s 2022 blog, Moving from ‘differentiation’ to ‘adaptive teaching’

From this, we need to be clear that providing scaffolding and carrying out adaptive teaching is not an exercise in evidencing all that we’re doing to provide support.  When we observe someone or look in books, there will be all manner of types of scaffolding and adaptive teaching taking place, much of which is implicit.  It is a poor proxy of the quality of teaching if these exercises become a hunt for explicit evidence of adaptations being made.   If this is the case in your school, then scaffolding and adaptive teaching have been misunderstood and this will result in prescriptive, performative and non-responsive types of support being offered.  What we can look at is how is the student’s knowledge building over time and how are the skills developing?; if these are improving during the course of a topic and students are moving further towards independently applying these skills and knowledge malleably, then we know that scaffolding and adaptive teaching is taking place.

It is important to raise at this point the importance of age/stage, practical subjects and the disciplinary nuances of subjects.  Having overarching strategies to support scaffolding (such as common approaches to checks for understanding, and a strategy list of scaffolding and adaptive teaching techniques) can be beneficial when setting the vision within your school, but time must be given to Middle Leaders to be explore what scaffolding looks like within their subject, key stage/age expectations, and for practical subjects.  This is why in our book we have dedicated chapters exploring how scaffolding has been deployed in KS1, KS2 and KS5, as well as Sports Studies, Design Technology, Science practicals, Music and Art.  Ball’s TES article (2022)^[8] provides an exemplar of how this could work, looking at History specific scaffolding and adaptive teaching strategies.

What are the general key approaches to scaffolding?

Below are just some scaffolding and adaptive teaching strategies.  Our book goes into greater depth about these, so the below is to provide a starting point for further research.

• Retrieval: giving time for struggle (minimum of three seconds when posing questions), using hints and cues, modelling and guiding (for example, how to start the retrieval activity), partially completed answers.
• Modelling: ‘I do, we do, you do’ (as a continuum), visualisers, model answers, examples and non-examples
• Explanations: analogies, chunking and the pre-teaching of vocabulary.
• Reading: activating prior knowledge, number lines, reciprocal reading strategies, teacher-led modelled reading, bookmarks.
• Writing: mini-whiteboards for idea generation and planning, structure tools, sentence starters, success criteria
• Oracy: class charters, aides-memoires, sentence stems, group roles
• Homework: routines, checklist instructions, access to homework clubs or small revision sessions, use of a Cornell note taking template to support summarising reading.

What is reassuring for many teachers is that many of these techniques are already commonly used in the classroom, but they may not have been explicitly aware of it being a scaffolding strategy; putting it down to using it anyway as it’s “just good teaching to use them.” This can be a great way to launch CPD with staff, by introducing them to scaffolding and general strategies, and asking them to map where they already use them within their subject or key stage.

Scaffolding and Professional Development

Research has shown that when it comes to teaching and learning, scaffolding is often an area that teachers feel less confident with and would like more support.  The sharp shift from terms such as differentiation being used, to instead scaffolding and adaptive teaching (particularly by Ofsted and in the ECF), has created a need for clarity and confidence building when it comes to these two aspects of pedagogy.

How then can we develop our staff without overloading them?  Some general steps that we recommend are:

• Senior Leadership Level. As a Senior Leadership Team, ensure that you have diagnosed and determined what practice is currently being used in your school, and what staff know about differentiation, scaffolding and adaptive teaching.  This can come from observations, learning walks, staff voice and curriculum conversations.  This will help you to know what the readiness of staff is, and also scaffold those who may have less knowledge or lower confidence when it comes to scaffolding and adaptive teaching. Sometimes we can make the mistake of experience meaning expertise, when this is not necessarily the case. From this, including the SENDCo in conversations, it is important to carve out a vision for scaffolding and ensure it aligns with other T&L strategies and the curriculum.  There must be synergy between all of these, to avoid scaffolding being an additional layer or block added onto T&L, literacy and curriculum.  Instead, scaffolding should be a thread that weaves throughout everything.  Part of this will be ensuring that due diligence has been carried out with a forensic exploration of research in tandem with the school context (and readiness) to ensure that a ‘best bets’ approach is formulated.  Within this, having a common and shared language will be key to codifying practice and building a scheme surrounding scaffolding.  Remember, your diagnostic exercise will also bring to the fore the varying levels of expertise when it comes to scaffolding, and this should be used to help scaffold CPD.  Educators are also learners, and require scaffolding too.
• Middle Leadership Level. Prior to whole-school CPD, it is important to involve your Middle Leaders in conversations and ensure that they too are upskilled.  Essentially, Middle Leaders are the drivers of T&L and it is they that will lead the development of scaffolding within their departments.  Staff value subject specific approaches to T&L strategies, where the nuances and unique nature of the discipline are celebrated and elevated.  Having your Middle Leaders confident and clear on scaffolding and adaptive teaching, means that powerful conversations can continue in departmental meetings, and they can also help to answer questions from the floor.  Added to this too, Middle Leaders have a strong understanding of what it’s like on the ground day in day out, and they are therefore incredibly valuable in providing feedback about CPD initiatives and the delivery of them (and implementation).  We would strongly advise using Middle Leader voice to calibrate plans.
• Whole School Level. Whole school CPD can be a useful way to share your scaffolding vision and how it aligns with whole school practice, addressing misconceptions and dispelling myths, and creating a sense of purpose (as well as sharing the common language) whilst sharing an overview of core strategies.  During this, you can cultivate conversations where staff (in departmental or phase groups) discuss and audit existing practice, which helps to further foster the idea of this is “not something new” as well as identify where good practice is already taking place.  These are conversations which should continue within subsequent departmental meetings.  As always, CPD should be chunked and sequential, and so in further whole school CPD sessions we advise that you focus on one strategy at a time, giving the staff opportunities to see modelling in action as well as carry out deliberate practice within the session itself, and then in forthcoming lessons.  Coaching can further help to develop cycles of deliberate practice of strategies.  This will help to bridge the knowing-doing gap.
• Departmental/Phase Level. With empowered Middle Leaders equipped with the “know how”, they can drive conversations surrounding either age or subject specific strategies.  Such departmental meetings can be powerful as they create the conditions for staff to share and discuss research, model good practice and map strategies that can be used within their contexts.  This fosters a sense of ownership when it comes to scaffolding strategies as well as providing a ground upon which professional conversations can take place and collaborative enquiries can be forged.
• Personalised. As always, personalised CPD is important as it ensures that teachers have the opportunity to explore further individual strands that they are working on or are interested in.  Providing a bank of possible scaffolding CPD to access (including subject/phase specific) will help to ensure that staff do not feel overwhelmed by the amount of material out there to engage with, but it also means that you are able to quality assure what CPD they are accessing.  This will help to reduce the potential for lethal mutations.  Moreover, coaching can help the individual teacher to further engage with models and carry out deliberate practice, supported by a coach, as they move towards securing action steps.

A final word

Drawing all of this together, it is important for us to say that we are wary that scaffolding within schools could lethally mutate.   We really advise doing the ground-work – both in terms of delving into the research, but also auditing current staff knowledge and practice.  Scaffolding is something which can be implicit and invisible to observers, and therefore quality assurance or professional development such as observations, learning walks or book looks should not become an exercise in trying to “evidence” that scaffolding is happening.  It is impossible to evidence an adaptive verbal nudge given live in the moment in books; and nor should it be something that is “evidenced” purely for external eyes to spot.  Let’s not go back to the verbal feedback stamp days!  Instead, as mentioned, if the quality of work is improving over time and children are becoming more successful with their work, then that suggests that scaffolding and adaptive teaching is taking place.

And remember, scaffolding is not:

• Deciding in advance what work students are capable of
• Creating multiple worksheets
• Different learning outcomes
• Making the work easier
• Using a writing frame every lesson
• Something you add for senior leaders to look at
• Permanent

Scaffolding is:

• Considering potential barriers to learning
• Making adaptations as appropriate before and within the lesson
• Using assessment for learning to guide
• Using visual, verbal or written supports as needed
• Temporary support removed as students become more proficient

We hope that this article has been useful.  If you want to find out more about scaffolding and adaptive teaching, our book The Scaffolding Effect will be published by the summer.

References

^[1] Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976) The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving (p.90)

^[2] Education Endowment Fund (2020) Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Schools (Online)

^[3] Mansworth, M. (2021) Teaching to the Top.  Aiming High for Every Learner

^[4] Myatt, M. (2020) Death by Differentiation, Myatt&Co Online

^[5] Roberts, M. (2022) The Boy Question, Routledge

^[6] Mulholland, M. (2022) Adaptive teaching: Why it matters, TES Online (Online)

^[7] Eaton, J. (2022) Moving from ‘differentiation’ to ‘adaptive teaching’, EEF (Online) Available online at: EEF blog: Moving from ‘differentiation’ to ‘adaptive teaching’ | EEF

^[8] Ball, R (2022) Scaffolding; How to use it well, TES Online (Online)