The Consequences of Overscaffolding

Scaffolding has long been recognized as one of the principles of effective teaching. Based on psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development theory, scaffolding bridges the gap between what students can perform on their own and what they can do with support. But if we tend to overrely on scaffolding, the negative outcomes might prevent students from reaching their best level of performance.

Understanding Overscaffolding

Overscaffolding occurs when teachers provide too much structure, guidance, or intervention and prevent students from engaging in productive struggle. Scaffolding should disappear as students become more proficient in their work, but overscaffolding keeps rigor low and prevents students from working independently on challenging tasks.

I don’t think teachers do this on purpose; they want to help students master skills but set lower expectations unintentionally. It can lead to what researchers call “learned helplessness” in students.

Several factors might lead to overscaffolding, including:

• Pressure from standardized testing and accountability systems that causes teachers to prioritize short-term academic gains over longer-term, deep learning and skills development.
• Teachers who tend to overintervene in an effort to prevent student frustration, unintentionally hindering the development of resilience and perseverance.
• Excessive modifications to the curriculum made in the name of differentiation or equity, which can lead teachers to oversimplify tasks and limit students’ engagement in higher-order thinking.
• Overscaffolding has the following negative impacts on student learning:
• Without opportunities to analyze, predict, revise, and assess, students might develop limited problem-​solving skills that make it harder for them to succeed in future classrooms that don’t overscaffold.
• Providing quick prompts, directions, and feedback prior to independent thinking limits students’ agency, autonomy, and self-efficacy.
• Surface-level learning that helps students grasp basic concepts without more profound understanding. Students struggle to apply those foundational skills to more complex, nonfoundational tasks.
• Exacerbated equity gaps that assign lower-level tasks and expectations to historically underserved students and deny them access to rigorous learning opportunities.

Rightsizing Support

Striking an appropriate balance in scaffolding is essential. You can’t eliminate scaffolding, but you must ensure that it is applied with responsiveness and intentionality. The following strategies outline how school leaders can support teachers in achieving equilibrium:

1. Promote deep cognitive engagement. This involves tracking the level of cognitive demand lessons take. Models such as Bloom’s Taxonomy and Webb’s Depth of Knowledge can help create learning experiences that extend beyond recall or comprehension to involve students in higher-order activities such as analysis, synthesis, and creation.

2. Teach the value of productive struggle. Students need practice dealing with challenging learning. A growth mindset is critical; with persistence, students can learn without being “saved” immediately by an educator. Principals can provide professional learning that helps teachers differentiate between the frustration that prevents learning from occurring and the productive challenges that enhance learning.

3. Use intelligent formative assessments. Based on student data, principals can work with teachers to remove supports when overscaffolding exists. As students start to demonstrate mastery, educators can remove a scaffold and continue to help students take ownership of their own learning.

4. Foster metacognition. School leaders can collaborate with teachers to integrate open-ended, reflective questions, such as “What prior knowledge might assist you in this task?” or “What alternative strategies could you employ?” Inquiry like this encourages students to engage actively in reviewing their cognitive processes.

5. Build peer support. Promote classroom structures that emphasize peer collaboration and authentic academic discussions. Students can work together without having the teacher remove opportunities for independent thinking.

The Principal and Scaffolding

As instructional leaders, principals are well positioned to help teachers reflect on their use of scaffolding. Observation and coaching conversations must explore what scaffolds are present and whether the scaffolds are temporary, flexible, and student-centered. Fostering a culture that values student agency, risk, and growth over perfection is key to addressing overscaffolding.

Through professional learning communities, we can examine student work for evidence of thinking rather than only correct answers. We can facilitate data-driven conversations that examine whether homework, feedback, and classroom procedures reinforce autonomy or dependency. We can also “walk the walk” by avoiding overscaffolding in teachers’ professional development.

Scaffolding will always be an important aspect of classroom learning when used appropriately. But overscaffolding can work against the outcomes teachers are trying to develop: independence, understanding, and student ownership in learning. If we can help teachers provide the right amount of scaffolding to students, those students will be empowered to thrive and think critically on their own, which will benefit them throughout their lives.

Andy Gutierrez is principal of Gateway Elementary School in Phoenix, Arizona.