16 Feb 2012 - Scaffolding as a learning description

Today I attended the first day of a course that I need to complete in order to upgrade my training qualification. During the course, the term scaffolding in reference to a learning strategy was mentioned. I had never heard this term used and was unsure what it meant exactly, so I inquired. It turns out that there is a scaffolding approach to learning, which the facilitator explained as, breaking down the topic into many pieces and then putting it back together to form the structure, just as you do when transporting scaffolding. Once explained it made sense using that word, because that is a fairly fundamental method of teaching a subject to somebody, breaking it down into sizeable chunks so that it is easier for the learner to grasp a topic, then adding more chunks until the overall subject is understood by the recipient. I found using this term interesting and it reminded me of another learning concept, that of using an analogy to explain something. Choosing a topic that is easier to understand in order to explain a more complex subject. 

My favourite analogy is one an economics lecturer used, where he described the difference between the European economy and the American economy by describing teenagers who purchased cars. The first teenager was careful never to scratch or dent his car, so eventually was able to upgrade his car, by trading it in and adding his savings, to purchase a newer one. He continued to do this until he finally had a brand new car, this teenager was the American economy. Europe was the teenage who crashed his car and wrote it off and had to buy another older car using his savings but without the original car to trade in to add more value. He then crashed it again and had to purchase another older car and so when the first teenager had a brand new car he was still driving and old bomb of a car. The car crashes were references to the two world wars in which the European economy was "written off". It was meant to highlight, that because America had not been affected by the world wars in the same way as fighting never reached their country to disrupt it, it was able to keep it's economy in much better shape than Europe. The only way that Europe saw to compete with the American economy was to draw themselves together into the European Union. The analogy here, was one of many teenagers (European countries), who had crashed their cars, pooling their savings together to buy a new car. I like to use analogies to describe concepts and I really liked that by using the word scaffolding to describe a learning strategy, you are using a learning strategy to describe a learning strategy.