Social Scaffolding Research Articles

Narrative construction of vocational identity in university students: The role of influential experiences and significant others in the framework of cultural psychology

This study sought to understand the process of construction of the vocational identity of university students. Assuming cultural psychology as a theoretical reference, a qualitative methodology was adopted, with a narrative perspective. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 participants, male and female engineering, and psychology students from two universities in Colombia about their exploration process, choice, commitment, and reconsideration to the career. In the findings the vocational identity emerges as a product of the negotiation of meanings between the personal dimension and the social dimension of individuals, which allows them to intentionally orient their actions towards the achievement of their life goals. In turn, the negotiation between these two dimensions occurs through psychosocial processes derived from the influential experiences and interactions with significant others. These processes facilitate the appropriation of the folk psychology of a socio-cultural context, a background of meanings about occupational and/or educational practices on which the vocational identity is configured. It is concluded that vocational identity is a process in constant formation shaped by a social scaffolding mechanism; namely, support structures that provided by the relational resource in the context of everyday interactions and that assist in the configuration of vocational identity of young people. It has an important organizing function of experiences, emotions, cognitions, and actions in the occupational and educational spheres. The conceptual model validated by the findings allows understanding the process of negotiation of identity meanings and the construction of possible vocational worlds.

Explaining and exploring the dynamics of parent-child interactions and children's causal reasoning at a children's museum exhibit.

This study examines how parents' and children's explanatory talk and exploratory behaviors support children's causal reasoning at a museum in San Jose, CA in 2017. One-hundred-nine parent-child dyads (3-6 years; 56 girls, 53 boys; 32 White, 9 Latino/Hispanic, 17 Asian-American, 17 South Asian, 1 Pacific Islander, 26 mixed ethnicity, 7 unreported) played at an air flow exhibit with a nonobvious causal mechanism. Children's causal reasoning was probed afterward. The timing of parents' explanatory talk and exploratory behaviors was related to children's systematic exploration during play. Children's exploratory behavior, and parents' goal setting during play, were related to children's subsequent causal reasoning. These findings support the hypothesis that children's exploration is related to both internal learning processes and external social scaffolding.

Intrinsic motivation as a determinant of perceived usefulness of library makerspace: the influence of learning dimensions

An increasing number of academic libraries are providing techno-savvy spaces, generally regarded as makerspace, that plays a significant role to serve the learning needs of university students. Yet, the underutilization of these makerspaces among learners in Nigerian universities is a growing concern. This study suggests a model using the Self-Determination Theory and the Tinkering Learning Dimensions Framework to investigate the influence of intrinsic motivation and learning dimensions (learning engagement and social scaffolding) on the perceived usefulness of library makerspace among Nigerian university students. Using a quantitative approach, four hypotheses were developed to examine the relationship between the constructs. Data from 323 valid respondents were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The findings reveal that intrinsic motivational factors have no direct statistically significant influence on the perceived usefulness of library makerspace. However, the relationship is mediated by an indirect influence of learning engagement. Social scaffolding and learning engagement were both found to have a direct significant influence on the perceived usefulness of makerspace. This study contributes to understanding the factors that influence the perceived usefulness of makerspace which would then lead to the increased use of this collaborative workspace. Contribution to the literature of the utilization of makerspace is discussed based on the presented framework.

From badges to boss challenges: Gamification through need-supporting scaffolded design to instruct and motivate elementary learners

Researchers and instructors are turning to gamification and self-determination theory for need-supporting, student motivation for learning. Using a mixed methods approach over two school years, we examined how an elementary science teacher successfully implemented gamification in a blended learning environment to meet students’ psychological needs. Through observations and interviews, we analyzed the mechanics and dynamics within the gamification design. Next, for a deeper understanding of applied motivation theory, we examined the teacher's use of motivational and cognitive scaffolds in the design. Students participating in the gamified classroom experienced both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations but reported higher levels of autonomous motivation. Additionally, students reported high levels of the psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, stating that the classroom was need-supporting. As a case study of an authentic, teacher-designed, need-supporting elementary classroom, this study adds a unique perspective to the educational gamification literature. Importantly for gamification exploration, we describe the cognitive and social scaffolds that created the need-supporting context, which illustrate the holistic aspects of gamification where multiple mechanisms produce a gamified environment.

Of Ants and Men

Of Ants and Men

Scaffolding knowledge

AbstractIn this article I argue that often propositional knowledge is acquired and retained by extensive reliance on physical and social scaffolds that create an environment or niche conducive to knowledge. It is incumbent on epistemologists to subject these aids to epistemic assessments. I show that several of the activities involved in the creation of niches within which inquiry can thrive are carried out by whole cultures. New generations benefit from inheriting these niches whilst being able to improve upon them to the advantage of their descendants. Finally, I highlight that the growth of human epistemic achievements is often due to increased outsourcing of cognitive effort and epistemic powers onto impersonal physical and social structures so that human beings can succeed more by contributing less to the solution of problems.

Lost in pandemic time: a phenomenological analysis of temporal disorientation during the Covid-19 crisis

People have experienced many forms of temporal disorientation during the Covid-19 crisis. For this study, we collected a rich corpus of reports on the multifaceted experiences of disorientation during the pandemic. In this paper, we study the resulting corpus using a descriptive approach. We identify six emerging themes: temporal rift; temporal vertigo; impoverished time; tunnel vision; spatial and social scaffolding of time; suspended time. We offer a phenomenological analysis of each of the themes. Based on the phenomenological analysis, we draw a key distinction between episodic and existential forms of temporal disorientation, and we argue that the Covid-19 crisis is best conceptualised as a period of suspended time.

Understanding the Effects of Structured Note-taking Systems for Video-based Learners in Individual and Social Learning Contexts

Video-based learning is widely adopted by online learners, yet, learning experience and quality may be negatively affected by asynchronous and remote natures of video-based learning. As note-taking is a common practice employed by video-based learners and is known to be an effective way to trigger active construction and processing of knowledge, yet as a meta-skill, it is challenging to most learners. In this study, we aim to approach the goal of providing cognitive and social scaffolds to video-based learners by structuring their note-taking process. We presented and evaluated structured note-taking systems designed for learners in two contexts, namely, individual learning context and social learning context. With an online controlled study involving 43 participants, we compared the structured note-taking systems with two baseline systems (for individual learning and social learning contexts respectively) and found that structured note-taking significantly improved certain aspects of video-based learning such as and higher cognitive engagement and lower distraction. We discussed our results to inform the design, iteration, and adoption of note-taking tools in video-based learning.

Scaffolding the development of creativity from the students’ perspective

Global demands for creative contributions have raised interest in the conditions which encourage creative activity throughout an individual’s lifespan. The investigation of implicit theories of creativity is an attempt to learn more about its emergence and transformation in real life conditions. The paper deals with students’ beliefs related to creativity which were studied in order to gain a better understanding of the development of creativity in the educational setting. The survey was carried out among secondary school students (N = 337) who participated in out-of-school programs devoted to students with high motivation for activities in their field of interests and talents. The students completed a questionnaire about the way education supports creativity. The collected data were analyzed in the socio-cultural framework using the concept of scaffolding. A thematic analysis of the participants’ answers was conducted through a combination of deductive and inductive approaches. These analyses resulted in the definition of four types of scaffolding the development of creativity: cognitive, social, motivational and cultural scaffolding. Cognitive scaffolding was mostly related to building a knowledge base and the development of critical and divergent thinking. A dominant role in motivational scaffolding was played by the students’ interests and their freedom in the learning process. The most important social scaffolding strategy was associated with teachers’ facilitation of learning, while the subject area was the most relevant aspect of cultural scaffolding. The characteristics of creative teaching and learning that nurture the development of creativity are discussed. The concluding comments refer to the educational implications of the research.

A(nother) time for nature? Situating non-human nature experiences within the emotional transitions of sight loss

Sight impairment is experienced by approximately 253 million people worldwide, including people of all generations, at all life course stages. Caught between past and present embodiments of the world, people often express feelings of loss with the onset of sight impairment. This paper examines the role of nonhuman nature encounters as a contingent resource amongst individuals navigating these emotional transitions. It responds to recent calls to attend to the life course in both critical disability studies and the growing body of work linking nonhuman nature relations to human wellbeing. The paper draws on findings from a qualitative study that combined in-depth narrative interviews with in situ go-along interviews to explore how 31 people with sight impairment in England describe and experience a sense of wellbeing (or otherwise) with nature across their everyday lives and life trajectories. The data were analysed using inductive narrative thematic analysis. While nonhuman nature encounters were valued by many participants in promoting a sense of freedom, relatedness, pleasurable sensory immersion, opportunities for exploration and 'skilling up', this paper cautions against generalised or overly Romantic tropes of what nonhuman nature can 'do' through key sight loss junctures, and for whom. It highlights the value of providing timely and sensitive social scaffolding and nurturing creativity to open up meaningful opportunities to engage with nonhuman nature and to counter feelings of loss exacerbated by identity-limiting life course narratives and disability stereotypes. Informed by the stories shared by participants to chart and situate their experiences of sight loss, we call for a new identity politics within and beyond the growing movement to 'connect' people to nonhuman nature for wellbeing; a politics that affirms diverse forms of more-than-human embodiment, recognising how and why such relations may weave into - and indeed out of - people's varied, interdependent life course trajectories.

Performa Punch: Subverting the Female Aggressor Trope

Performa Punch: Subverting the Female Aggressor Trope

“Are We Not What We Seem?”: Infrapolitical Maneuvers in the Era of College and Career Readiness

This article explores the ways in which social scaffolding and cultural brokering processes within educational spaces engender ideological tensions among predominantly Latinx youth participants and educators within a college and career readiness organization. Based upon data from an 18‐month ethnography, they engaged in forms of resistance through infrapolitics. Youth and educators simultaneously critiqued and negotiated the contradictions that emerge from engaging with the symbolic demands associated with respectability and citizenship within the United States.

Informing Makerspace Outcomes Through a Linguistic Analysis of Written and Video-Recorded Project Assessments

A growing body of research focuses on what outcomes to assess in makerspaces, and appropriate formats for capturing those outcomes (e.g. reflections, surveys, and portfolios). Linguistic analysis as a data mining technique holds promise for revealing different dimensions of learning exhibited by students in makerspaces. In this study, student reflections on makerspace projects were gathered in 2 formats over 2 years: private written assessments captured in the 3D GameLab gamification platform, and semi-public video-recorded assessments posted in the more social FlipGrid platform. Transcripts of student assessments were analyzed using Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC) to generate 4 summary variables thought to inform makerspace outcomes of interest (i.e. analytical thinking, authenticity, clout, and emotional tone). Comparative findings indicate that written assessments may elicit more analytical thinking about maker projects compared with less analytical conversation in videos, while video assessments may elicit somewhat higher clout scores as evidence of social scaffolding along with a much more positive emotional tone. Recommendations are provided for layering assessment approaches to maximize the potential benefits of each format, including reflective writing for social spaces, in social groups, and about design processes and procedures.

Design and Evaluation of DIO Construction Toolkit for Co-making Shared Constructions

We present the design and implementation of DIO, a novel digital-physical construction toolkit to enable constructionist learning for children from age group 8-12 years. The toolkit comprises of dome-shaped (D) tangible modules with various attachments that allow suspension on the body of multiple children and/or in the environment to support a variety of sensing/input (I), actuation/output (O) functionalities. The modules are enabled for wireless communication and can be linked together using an Augmented Reality based programming interface running on a smartphone. The smartphone recognizes our hemispherical modules omnidirectionally through novel computer vision based 3D patterns; custom made to provide logical as well as semantic encoding. In this paper, we show how, owing to its unique form-factor, the toolkit enables multi-user constructions for the children and offers a shared learning experience. We further reflect on our learning from a one-year long iterative design process and contribute a social scaffolding based procedure to engage children with such constructionist toolkits effectively.

Do Helpful Mothers Help? Effects of Maternal Scaffolding and Infant Engagement on Cognitive Performance.

Infants are highly social and much early learning takes place in a social context during interactions with caregivers. Previous research shows that social scaffolding – responsive parenting and joint attention – can confer benefits for infants’ long-term development and learning. However, little previous research has examined whether dynamic (moment-to-moment) adaptations in adults’ social scaffolding are able to produce immediate effects on infants’ performance. Here we ask whether infants’ success on an object search task is more strongly influenced by maternal behavior, including dynamic changes in response behavior, or by fluctuations in infants’ own engagement levels. Thirty-five mother-infant dyads (infants aged 10.8 months, on average) participated in an object search task that was delivered in a naturalistic manner by the child’s mother. Measures of maternal responsiveness (teaching duration; sensitivity) and infant engagement (engagement score; visual attention) were assessed. Mothers varied their task delivery trial by trial, but neither measure of maternal responsiveness significantly predicted infants’ success in performing the search task. Rather, infants’ own level of engagement was the sole significant predictor of accuracy. These results indicate that while parental scaffolding is offered spontaneously (and is undoubtedly crucial for development), in this context children’s endogenous engagement proved to be a more powerful determinant of task success. Future work should explore this interplay between parental and child-internal factors in other learning and social contexts.

Longing for concreteness: how body memory matters to continuing bonds

ABSTRACT This paper explores the relevance of body memory to Continuing Bonds. Specifically, I argue that an adequately sedimented felt sense of the deceased in inter-corporeal body memory is a condition of possibility for maintaining a continued bond. This felt sense of the deceased, which amounts to a complex embodied sensorium, does not exist in isolation, but is vitally dependent on being maintained through continued enactments, social scaffolding and material affordances. Lacking such a felt sense of a deceased person integral to one’s life – either due to inadequate sedimentations or lack of maintenance – does not imply an absence of grief and longing. Rather, it may involve its own kind of profound existential suffering which I shall propose we conceptualise as a longing for concreteness. I argue these points using contrasting single-case studies of persons having suffered early parental bereavement. The cases were obtained through in-depth interviews structured by insights from phenomenological philosophy.

수학수업에서 나타난 비계의 특징과 전략 분석: 한 중학교 교사의 사례를 중심으로

Scaffolding is considered as an interactive system that enables a learner to accomplish a task which the leaner would otherwise fail to complete without the support of a teacher or more competent peer. As teaching and learning perspectives shift from knowledge delivery through teacher’s one-sided explanation to knowledge construction through teacher-student interaction, we need to understand how students learn from their teacher or peers during classroom discussion. Scaffolding may be useful in analyzing teacher-student interactions during discussion with the entire class. This paper investigated the characteristics of scaffolding which occurred during whole class discussion in middle school mathematics classroom in regards to analytic and social scaffolding, and also analyzed the teacher's strategies that were employed to offer analytic and social scaffolding. On the basis of these findings, implications for scaffolding in whole class discussion were discussed.

Vietnamese pre-schoolers’ tablet use and early childhood learning: an ecological investigation

ABSTRACTAs Vietnam’s economic growth and consumer demands continue to accelerate, more Vietnamese families are now able to acquire portable touchscreen devices such as iPads. Previous research has shown that the use of touchscreen devices can benefit pre-schoolers’ learning, especially within school and home settings. However, little is known about the broader sociocultural environment within which such technology adoption by families with pre-schoolers takes place, especially in the Global South. Guided by Bronfenbrenner’s ecology of human development, this research investigates the ecology of tablet use and early childhood learning by pre-schoolers in Vietnam through an ethnographic investigation of 42 mother-child dyads. We found that Vietnamese pre-schoolers’ tablet use for the purpose of early childhood learning was initiated, sustained or even enforced by their parents. Vietnamese mothers strongly regard tablets as learning tools that give their children a distinct edge in educational achievement. However, such enthusiastic appropriation of the tablets was not matched by the mothers’ concomitant understanding of the benefits and risks of touchscreen devices for children, nor the availability of social scaffolding structures for the parents.

Neurobiology of maternal regulation of infant fear: the role of mesolimbic dopamine and its disruption by maltreatment.

Child development research highlights caregiver regulation of infant physiology and behavior as a key feature of early life attachment, although mechanisms for maternal control of infant neural circuits remain elusive. Here we explored the neurobiology of maternal regulation of infant fear using neural network and molecular levels of analysis in a rodent model. Previous research has shown maternal suppression of amygdala-dependent fear learning during a sensitive period. Here we characterize changes in neural networks engaged during maternal regulation and the transition to infant self-regulation. Metabolic mapping of 2-deoxyglucose uptake during odor-shock conditioning in postnatal day (PN)14 rat pups showed that maternal presence blocked fear learning, disengaged mesolimbic circuitry, basolateral amygdala (BLA), and plasticity-related AMPA receptor subunit trafficking. At PN18, when maternal presence only socially buffers threat learning (similar to social modulation in adults), maternal presence failed to disengage the mesolimbic dopaminergic system, and failed to disengage both the BLA and plasticity-related AMPA receptor subunit trafficking. Further, maternal presence failed to block threat learning at PN14 pups following abuse, and mesolimbic dopamine engagement and AMPA were not significantly altered by maternal presence-analogous to compromised maternal regulation of children in abusive relationships. Our results highlight three key features of maternal regulation: (1) maternal presence blocks fear learning and amygdala plasticity through age-dependent suppression of amygdala AMPA receptor subunit trafficking, (2) maternal presence suppresses engagement of brain regions within the mesolimbic dopamine circuit, and (3) early-life abuse compromises network and molecular biomarkers of maternal regulation, suggesting reduced social scaffolding of the brain.

How prior experience and task presentation modulate innovation in 6-year-old-children

Low innovation rates have been found with children until 6–8 years of age in tasks that required them to make a tool. Little is known about how prior experience and task presentation influence innovation rates. In the current study, we investigated these aspects in the floating peanut task (FPT), which required children to pour water into a vertical tube to retrieve a peanut. In three experiments, we varied the amount of plants that 6-year-olds (N = 256) watered prior to the task (zero, one, or five plants), who watered the plants (child or experimenter), and the distance and salience of the water source. We expected that prior experience with the water would modulate task performance by either boosting innovation rates (facilitation effect) or reducing them given that children would possibly learn that the water was for watering plants (functional fixedness effect). Our results indicate robustly low innovation rates in 6-year-olds. However, children’s performance improved to some extent with increased salience of the water source as well as with an experimenter-given hint. Due to the low innovation rates in this age group, we investigated whether watering plants prior to the FPT would influence innovation rates in 7- and 8-year-olds (N = 33), for which we did not find evidence. We conclude that 6-year-olds struggle with innovation but that they are more likely to innovate if crucial aspects of the task are made more salient. Thus, although 6-year-olds can innovate, they require more physical and social scaffolding than older children and adults.