Of black and glass boxes: scaffolding for doing and learning

Abstract

Constructivist approaches to education advocate situating learning in real-world problems-- but these problems are complex. Providing scaffolding allows learners to deal with a problem's complexity and successfully solve and learn from these kinds of problems. In this paper, we describe a theory of learning-by-doing and suggest several ways that the doing can be supported without forgetting the learning. We use the metaphors of black-box and glass-box scaffolding to suggest how scaffolding might be used to support learning and performance. Black-box scaffolding is scaffolding that facilitates student performance. Black-box scaffolding performs a task in place of the student performing that performance goal, usually because learning to perform that goal is determined to be unimportant for the learning goals of the activity. Glass-box scaffolding is scaffolding that facilitates performance and learning. It is important for the student to understand what glass-box scaffolding is providing because we want the student to be able to take on the functions that the glass-box scaffolding is providing. Finally, we illustrate how glass-box and black-box scaffolding have been used in two educational software programs.

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