The abundant scientific resources on the Web provide great opportunities for students to expand their science learning, yet easy access to information does not ensure learning. Prior research has ...found that middle school students tend to read Web‐based scientific resources in a shallow, superficial manner. A software tool was designed to support middle school students in reading online scientific resources through three key strategies: making explicit a skim–read–summarize structure for online reading, using prompts to guide students' reading and foster articulation of thinking, and connecting reading to learning purposes. This study examined the differences between regular and guided online reading performed by eight pairs of sixth graders in a science inquiry project. The students' online reading processes and conversations were captured by a screen‐recording programme. Analysis of 60 h of screen videos showed that the students' online reading in the regular condition was cursory, fragmented, and opportunistic, while the structured online reading was more deliberate, thorough, and purposeful. Overall, the results suggest that middle school students' online reading of scientific resources needs to be guided.
Developing teaching strategies has become the cornerstone of education. The most successful educational strategies are those that adhere to their vital role to students as they focus on raising the ...students' attitude towards learning. This research shed some light on the impact of scaffolding strategies on middle school students' attitudes towards the science subject. Specifically, the aim of this research is twofold: to examine students' attitudes towards learning and enjoying science and to emphasise their attitudes towards science teachers and their teaching methods in the classroom. A quasiexperimental research design was implemented to achieve the research objectives involving pre- and post-test for the experimental and control groups. The research population consisted of 84 ninth-grader science students in Saudi. A questionnaire of 24 items was developed to cover the major dimensions of the study after being validated by relevant experts. After conducting the questionnaire, data were collected accordingly and then analysed using descriptive analysis and inferential statistics. Findings showed a significant difference in the science student's attitude in favour of students who were taught using scaffolding strategies compared with those taught using conventional teaching methods. Based on the findings, the research proposes that scaffolding strategies should be applied as educational venues of learning autonomy to students in classrooms that directly and indirectly promote students' positive attitudes towards learning science. The research concluded with a recommendation that scaffolding strategies should be applied when teaching science for better outputs. Therefore, policymakers and curriculum planners need to adopt scaffolding as a typical teaching strategy for the art of teaching in general and science in particular.
The article reported a case study investigating the scaffolding strategies of twelve Asian EFL learners in four small groups’ scaffolding strategies during two online collaborative writing (OCW) ...tasks in a composition course using Google Docs as a writing platform. Of interest was how EFL learners with different L1 scaffold each other while co-constructing OCW tasks, and also if scaffolding strategies used during OCW tasks influence writing performance. Data collection included pre-test and post-test writing, two OCW tasks on descriptive and argumentative essays, learners’ use of scaffolding and non-scaffolding negotiations during OCW tasks observed through Google Docs revision history, and student reflection. The findings showed that learners in small groups employed both scaffolding and non-scaffolding dialogues to jointly construct their OCW tasks by giving advice, providing suggestions, responding to questions or requests, asking questions, or clarifying ideas. Learners who contributed more texts directed their team and initiated both scaffolding negotiations and non-negotiations while performing group work. The study results also revealed that members who employed more scaffolding negotiations during their OCW processes likely produced a better quality of writing in their post-test. Nevertheless, these findings indicated that members in small groups benefited from both scaffolding and non-scaffolding negotiations as they helped in task revisions. The findings contributed to research that has investigated online scaffolding strategies in EFL learners’ collaborative writing tasks.
Encouraging students’ higher-order thinking skills (HOTs) has become an ultimate objective for several education programmes. Being a significant domain of scaffolding strategies, HOTs has been ...considered as a concern that should persistently be at the vanguard of reform agenda of science. The present research aims to examine the effect of scaffolding strategies on HOTs of middle school science students in the context of Saudi Arabia. To carry out the research aim, quasi-experimental design has been applied based on multiple-choice questions comprising 20 questions all distributed on four skills, namely, application, analysis, evaluation and creation. The total population of the research was 84 grade 9 students who all sat for both pre-test and post-test. Convenient sampling was chosen as a sampling method that typically suits both the experimental group (42 students) and the control group (42 students). After collection, data were analysed using both descriptive analysis, mean and standard deviation, and inferential statistics including t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multivariate ANOVA. The effect of scaffolding strategies on the four skills was found to be significant (p <.01). The present research can contribute to the enhancement of students’ HOTs, provided that scaffolding strategies are applied in science classes and, from a research perspective, will be a reference for researchers who are interested in scaffolding strategies in the context of either Saudi Arabia or other countries.
Background: In many universities, undergraduate engineering students are taught in English rather than their first language. This requires the crucial skill of academic listening, but many students ...have limited linguistic knowledge and skills, necessitating additional scaffolding by instructors.
Purpose: The purpose of this study was thus threefold: (a) to explore the needs of Engineering students for scaffolding in the academic listening, (b) to compare their needs for scaffolding strategies and their performance on the academic listening test, and (c) to investigate the performance of two listening instructors in terms of using scaffolding strategies in their classes.
Participants: The participants were 140 undergraduate students of Engineering and two PhD holders teaching academic listening at the Iran University of Science and Technology.
Design and Methods: The data for this descriptive, correlational research was collected through a sample of academic IELTS listening test, a questionnaire on scaffolding strategies followed by five open-ended questions, and five sessions of observation of the listening classes.
Results: The results showed that in one class with 96% of learners' satisfaction, the most frequently used strategies by the instructor were 'repeating whole or part of a task for the students if needed' and 'waiting for them to answer the questions', while in another class with 30% of the learners' satisfaction, only one strategy, 'providing a comfortable atmosphere for the students to listen to the tasks', received the highest percentage. The results also revealed that 'providing clues and directions to help students find the correct answer' and 'correcting task or the answers of students' were the only two statistically significant strategies required by those who obtained the lowest scores on the academic listening test.
Conclusions: The findings revealed that meeting students' needs for scaffolding in listening classes can enhance their satisfaction.
The present study aimed at investigating the effects of scaffolding strategies using input and output-oriented tasks on Iranian EFL learners' receptive and productive knowledge of lexical ...collocations. For this purpose, 540 adult intermediate-level EFL learners- both male and female- were selected and divided into six experimental groups; three input-oriented and three output-oriented tasks. Each experimental group received treatment under one of the three scaffolding strategies of direct corrective feedback, cooperative group technique, and visual cues. After the treatment period, a 40-item multiple-choice test and a 40-item fill-in-the-blanks test were administered to assess the participants' receptive and productive collocations knowledge. To analyze the data, two separate two-way ANOVA procedures were used. The results indicated that visual cues were the most effective scaffolding strategy in teaching lexical collocations. Moreover, the cooperative group technique had a significant positive impact on learning collocations compared to direct corrective feedback. The results also showed that the participants in the output-oriented tasks group significantly outperformed those in the input-oriented tasks group. These findings can have practical implications for language learners, teachers, and materials developers, and theoretical implications for researchers.
"Authentic Project-Based Learning in Grades 9-12" provides a clear guide to design, develop, and implement real-world challenges for any high school subject. The author lays out five clear, ...standards-based stages of assessment to help you and your learners process the what, how, and why of authentic project-based experiences. You'll learn how to create projects that: (1) Align with your content standards; (2) Integrate technology effectively; (3) Support reading and writing development; (4) Utilize formative assessment; (5) Allow for multiple complex pathways to emerge; and (6) Facilitate the development of essential skills beyond school. Each chapter includes a variety of practical examples to assist with scaffolding and implementation. The templates and tools in the appendix are also provided on our website as free eResources for ease of use.
This article provides a comprehensive overview of the key aspects of classroom interaction in L2 and CLIL contexts and its effects on students’ academic and language development in such educational ...settings. It also aims to raise awareness of the role of language and discourse in teaching content and language in CLIL classrooms. More specifically, it discusses how teachers can efficiently enact Classroom Interactional competence (CIC) which is a range of interactional strategies adjusted to the classroom micro-context and which are essential for the correct development of the teaching-learning process. The article presents how teachers can use classroom interaction to guide students in better understanding of subject-specific content, foster the development of students’ communicative competence in a foreign language and the integrated learning of content and language as well as promote a more active students’ participation in content-rich contexts. Last but not the least, the article discusses the role of the teacher in providing emotional support in the classroom and creating a safe environment where students can develop a positive self-image through their interactions both with the teacher and the peers.
The current research aims to establish several theoretical frameworks and educational implications for a new web-based learning model “SOSE”. Additionally, it also aims to compare and contrast the ...new model to a well-known web-based learning model, WebQuest, which was developed by Dodge of San Diego State University (
1995b
). WebQuest is a web-based learning model that is derived from Web 1.0 to help students to learn. However, with today’s advances in internet-based learning and the evolution from Web 2.0 to Web 5.0 applications, which have been widely adopted, new web-based learning models are necessary. Learning in a sheltered online scaffolding environment (SOSE) consists of three main stages: a preparation stage including task exploration and information collection; a data refinement stage including refining data and extracting evidence and findings; and a cooperation and publishment stage including decision-making, final agreement and publishing. The theoretical bases of the suggested model basically rely on six main educational theories and approaches: web-based learning, constructivist theory, scaffolding strategies, project-based learning, inquiry-based learning, discovery learning, problem-based learning and active learning.
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