In the session which Kathrin Kaufhold and I presented on our AWESOME Dissertation Environment we were asked what we understood the term 'scaffold' to mean as they had a different sense of its meaning. I would have liked to discuss the issues more and found it a very interesting question. I am raising the question here for two reasons. First to thank the person who asked it - I had intended to come and find you later to talk more but never saw you again - and to ask her if she would say more about the different meanings / uses she associates it with. Second, I think it would be interesting to hear from others how they understand and use the term. I was recently part of an International Symposium on Academic Writing Development and we used a wiki to create a glossary of terms - it was an interesting task. How do you know whether something will be familiar to others or not; and how do you know that your meaning is the same as others?
My understanding is that the term and its practice originates in English for Academic Purposes and was then extended into writing / learning development through academic literacy theorists. I think I first encountered it in the work of Mary Lea and Barry Stierer. As a term within learning theory, it can be linked back to Vygotsky's concept of the Zone of Proximal Development, which has been adapted and popularised by many writers. I think it means that you make explicit the expectations you have when setting learning / writing tasks and that you stage the tasks and model the outcomes you expect - in other words, adopting a process approach to the production of the final text. As I said yesterday, it is the difference between saying: Write an Essay on x and You are going to write an essay on X because .... This will involve ...... Here are some examples of what I do and don't expect to see in the final essay ... Shall we talk about it? Why don't you try ....?
Note to Stu & Becca re Tweet: the themes and area of work - ie academic writing and social on-line environments came first and then as we were developing our first bid to JISC we were looking for a neat acronym and Melissa Highton suddenly said: Awesome and the rest is history...) Rebecca
Dr Rebecca O'Rourke
Senior Lecturer
Lifelong Learning Institute
Room 7.57 EC Stoner Building
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
(0)113 343 3181
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