Dear All,
This is a topic that gets revisited from time to time if you look in
the xmca archives, and I always appreciate the new ideas that come
out of the discussion. Bill's 'much more-than-half-baked' discussion
of metaphors in terms of developing conceptual understandings is very
thought-provoking. Whatever the intended meaning of "scaffolding" in
different contexts, I wonder if it is useful to revisit the origin of
the metaphor, which most agree sprang out of the Wood, Bruner and
Ross study in 1976, and which concerned a series of dyadic adult-
child tutoring interactions? If so, see attached table of "the role
of the tutor" during the problem-solving episodes. Maybe a new
metaphor can grow from this discussion? "Guided performance" is a
metaphor I have favoured, although the potential acronym 'GP' can be
as problematic as in Carol's case :-)
Thirty years on we have not only merged our theoretical base of
scaffolding with the zpd, but we have, as Sung Won reminds us,
learned that the interactions are transformational and that tutor-
tutee roles can flip flop (as well as much much more). But I still
hang on to the roots of the taxonomy of goal-directed interactions
that came from the study in my teachings and my understandings of
human development - recruiting interest and engagement, reducing
degrees of freedom, maintaining goal-orientation, modelling critical
features, managing affective responses, and modelling activity
outcomes. I just need to work out what I mean by "hang on to".
Phil: miles away from Sweden
(I hope the attachment comes through - it's a jpg file)

Wood, D.J., J.S. Bruner, and G. Ross, The role of tutoring in problem
solving, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 1976. 17(2): p.
89-100_______________________________________________
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