Fading scaffolds. Part 1: Making thinking visible through school scientific explanations

Abstract

This article studies the school scientific explanation and scaffolding as contingent pedagogical support, based on socio-constructivist theories of learning. The relevance of this work is guiding science education teaching practice on fading scaffolds, the design and application for supporting the learning process, especially when students construct scientific explanations in the school. The relationship between the students’ initial explanations, the explanations they construct in the classroom and the opportunities to make their thinking visible through scaffolding is discussed based on national and international studies. Finally, the fundamental characteristics of scaffolding that help to make thinking visible are presented, as a proposal of guidelines for the design of pedagogical supports derived from science education research and theory.