Abstract
Research on learning communities has developed as a perspective radically different from teacher-led instruction. This might be a main reason for why scaffolding is rarely foregrounded in work on learning communities. This contribution analyzes how four recent approaches to learning communities address scaffolding and identifies three different stances. These area radical anti-scaffolding stance represented by Hod and Ben-Zvi (Instr Sci. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-018-9459-z, 2018); a self-regulation approach to scaffolding for learning communities represented by Toa and Zhang (Instr Sci. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-018-9462-4, 2018); and the orchestration stance represented by Hall and Ma (Instr Sci. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-018-9455-3, 2018) as well as Fong and Slotta (Instr Sci. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-018-9463-3, 2018). An integration of the approaches might not be possible nor even desirable. However, a systematic research program could identify conditions under which scaffolding and scripting do indeed show the predicted effects on collaboration, learning, and individual growth in learning communities.
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Fischer, F. Learning communities and scaffolding: three different ways to conceptualizing their relationship. Instr Sci 46, 633–637 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-018-9468-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-018-9468-y