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Abstract
Understanding how to support student reading comprehension has long been a goal for education research. Yet no existing literature review links interactional scaffolding, defined as the responsive in-person support an expert reader offers to a novice, and reading comprehension. This review employed theories of scaffolding and reading comprehension to establish a theoretical framework, used an iterative search process to account for the terminological diversity of research on interactional scaffolding, and coded the resulting 57 studies according to their research designs and findings. Conclusions about research designs indicate that the observational studies predominate with fewer experimental, mixed methods, and correlational studies. In addition, study populations are overwhelmingly in K–5 settings. Synthesizing the studies’ findings produced four themes: (a) diversity in taxonomies of scaffolding, (b) a focus on contingency, (c) ways contextual and mediational resources shape scaffolding, and (d) potential pitfalls when scaffolding does not go as planned. Suggestions for future research include addressing gaps in research designs, extending and refining existing scaffolding taxa, linking specific forms of scaffolding across contexts to reading outcomes, advancing understanding of the mediational means that underpin comprehension, and deepening knowledge of developmental trajectories for comprehension scaffolding.
Educators past and present have grappled with the challenge of supporting students’ reading comprehension. Interactional scaffolding, defined as the responsive in-person support an expert reader provides to a novice, provides a promising means of support (Athanases & de Oliveira, 2014; Hammond & Gibbons, 2005). Previous reviews have examined scaffolding but not in reading (Belland, 2014; Van de Pol, Volman, & Beishuizen, 2010) or teacher–child discourse in young children learning to read (Fisher, 2005), but a comprehensive review is needed to establish theoretical grounding and synthesize empirical evidence about interactional scaffolding for reading comprehension.
Establishing a Theoretical Framework
Origins of the Term Scaffolding
Interactional scaffolding traces its roots to the original definition of scaffolding as the domain-general “process that enables a child or novice to solve a problem, carry out a task or achieve a goal which would be beyond his unassisted efforts” (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976, p. 90). Since then, many terms have been used (see Table 1). These fall into two categories: interactional (as defined above) and planned (i.e., scaffolding determined before the student begins learning, such as lesson plans or curricular tools). Each term under the interactional category emphasizes different dimensions of support. For example, soft (Brush & Saye, 2002) and adaptive (Azevedo & Hadwin, 2005) attend to scaffolding’s malleability, social (Pea, 2004) and direct interaction (Applebee & Langer, 1983) emphasize scaffolding’s human interaction, and moment-to-moment (Clark & Graves, 2005) and temporary (Roehler & Cantlon, 1997) focus scaffolding’s brief time span. The term interactional (Athanases & de Oliveira, 2014) concisely captures all of these connotations.
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Table 1. Terms for Similar Forms of Scaffolding.
Scaffolding’s Roots in Vygotskian Sociocultural Theory
Although Vygotsky (1978) never used the term scaffolding, scholars have linked the term to his theories of learning (Belland, 2014; Pea, 2004; Puntambekar & Hubscher, 2005; Stone, 1993; Van de Pol et al., 2010). Vygotsky (1978) argued that learning in the zone of proximal development (ZPD) is activated “only when a child is interacting with people in his environment” (p. 90), highlighting interaction as the agent for the novice’s development. Vygotsky also specified that after learning interactions take place in the ZPD, mental processes become internalized as part of the novice’s independent development. This highlights the temporal nature of interactional reading scaffolds where the goal is to move the child toward independent comprehension of text, use of comprehension strategies, and sensemaking skills.
Wertsch’s Specification of the Elements of the ZPD
Wertsch (1984) argued that Vygotsky left three key elements of interactive learning underspecified in the ZPD: situation definitions, semiotic mediation, and intersubjectivity. Lee’s investigation of reading instruction for underachieving African American high school students (original empirical study 1995, later explicitly connected to Wertsch in Lee, 2000, 2001) illustrates how the terms apply to comprehension scaffolding.
First, before the learning interaction takes place in the ZPD, the expert and novice have separate situation definitions or ways in which they represent the task at hand (Wertsch, 1984). At the outset of her course, Lee’s underachieving African American high school seniors, long schooled in traditional didactic reading instruction, viewed their everyday discourse as distinct from literary interpretation. In contrast, Lee saw her students’ discursive resources as useful tools for such interpretation. Her scaffolding transformed the students’ situation definitions by converting their implicit strategies for understanding discourse into explicit strategies for comprehending texts.
To address disparities in situation definitions, as Lee did, scaffolders work through semiotic mediation: the use of signs to mediate the interaction (Wertsch, 1984), which can include the texts read, materials used during instruction, and language used by the scaffolder. In fact, the expert may have to temporarily give up his or her situation definition to help students progress. Lee (1995) began instruction by studying not literature but students’ everyday language (i.e., signifying). In fact, abandoning traditional literary interpretation helped the students recognize the richness of their everyday language. In addition, as part of her planned scaffolding, Lee used African American literary works by Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison as semiotic mediators to show students how authors appropriate the rich elements of African American vernacular for literary purposes.
Finally, according to Wertsch (1984), the end goal of the use of mediating resources is intersubjectivity: agreement about the nature of the task. For example, Lee (1995) presents discourse from a student-led discussion of the title of Alice Walker’s (1982)The Color Purple, showing how the students used explicit comprehension strategies linked to everyday discourse, built on and responded to each other’s claims, and supported their interpretations with evidence such as imagery of purple frogs, eggplants, and bruises. Here, the students came to share Lee’s view of literary interpretation as grounded in the same interpretive strategies used in everyday speech.
Theories of Reading: Comprehension as Outcome, Procedure, and Sensemaking
Aligning with the theories above, in their review of research, Van de Pol, Volman, and Beishuizen (2010) underscore the importance of considering the intentions and purposes of interactional scaffolding. They highlight three key characteristics of scaffolding which support those intentions: contingency on the learners’ emerging needs, transfer of responsibility for thinking from the expert to the novice, and eventual fading as the learner progresses toward independence. Contingency suggests that scaffolding should be malleable to match the learners’ initial and evolving situation definitions. Then, over time, the transfer of responsibility happens through semiotic mediation, and, finally, the scaffolding fades as the novice and expert approach intersubjectivity. Van de Pol and colleagues’ review, however, was not specific to reading and did not consider how specific intentions and purposes of scaffolding might relate to reading comprehension, leading to the need for the current study.
Extending this framework of interactional scaffolding to reading comprehension requires a theory of comprehension. Aukerman’s (2013) framework describes three pedagogies of comprehension: comprehension as outcome, comprehension as procedure, and comprehension as sensemaking. These pedagogies illustrate different approaches to comprehension and thus different potential intersubjective ends for scaffolding.
Comprehension as outcome
With this pedagogical approach, meaning is located in the text, and the scaffolder’s job is to help the reader comprehend that meaning (Hirsch, 2003). Many such studies are designed as experimental comparisons of scaffolded reading with less or nonscaffolded reading (e.g., Brabham & Lynch-Brown, 2002; Crowe, 2003, 2005; Knapp & Windsor, 1998). For example, Crowe (2003) described the scaffolder’s role as watching for signs that “the author’s message is not being understood” (p. 18) and then stepping in to clarify that message. Similarly, Frey and Fisher (2010) describe a four-step process by which the teacher elicits student knowledge, judges whether it is appropriate reading of the text, and, if it is not, prompts students to reconsider. If the prompts do not lead students to appropriate answers, the teacher steps in to model and demonstrate the correct answer. Overall, in this pedagogy, the scaffolder’s role is to provide prior knowledge and explain the typical meanings of vocabulary words to help the reader comprehend the meaning embedded in the text.
Comprehension as procedure
While outcome pedagogies lead students toward specific readings, comprehension-as-procedure pedagogies lead students toward specific methods of reading (Harris & Pressley, 1991; National Reading Panel, 2000). These pedagogies include scaffolding approaches intended to support students’ acquisition of specific comprehension strategies (e.g., Ankrum, Genest, & Belcastro, 2014, Many, 2002). One classic example is the reciprocal teaching (RT) framework (Palincsar & Brown, 1984). Although the framework itself acts as a planned scaffold—Palincsar (1986) calls it a “metascript for scaffolded instruction” (p. 77)—the teachers’ interactional scaffolding is the key mechanism for students’ improvement in four strategies: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. Here, RT aligns with Van de Pol et al.’s (2010) findings in that the scaffolding dialogue facilitates the transfer of responsibility for strategy use from the teacher to the students. Studies using this pedagogy see intersubjectivity as the novices’ using the experts’ comprehension strategies.
Comprehension as sensemaking
A third pedagogy views the ends of scaffolding as not particular readings or strategies but as supporting students’ emerging sensemaking, however, it appears. This pedagogy can take two forms either a reader response form in which readers’ text interpretations are primarily “self-contained reader-text relationships” (Aukerman, 2013, p. A6) or a dialogic form in which readers’ interpretations initiate in their textual transactions but are transformed and refined through dialogue with others (Bakhtin, 1994). Studies of interactional scaffolding exemplify the latter category. While students are encouraged to initiate their own textual interpretations, they refine them through the dialogic scaffolding interaction with more expert readers. Daniel, Martin-Beltrán, Peercy, and Silverman (2016) explicitly linked a comprehension-as-sensemaking orientation with a focus on contingency in scaffolding. Truly contingent scaffolding, these authors argued, requires experts to honor all forms of students’ sensemaking and thus focuses more on scaffolders’ contingency and less on agreeing on an authoritative textual meaning or transferring responsibility for strategies.
The purpose of the distinctions between these pedagogies is not to draw firm boundaries; at times, instruction may take multiple approaches (Aukerman, 2013). However, considering diverse views of comprehension can deepen understandings of the various ways scaffolding could support different forms of comprehension.
Current Study
Using this theoretical framework, this study reviews the existing literature to answer two research questions about interactional scaffolding for reading comprehension:
Research Question 1: What research designs have been used and what student populations have been studied? Which designs and populations are missing from the existing research?
Research Question 2: What major themes exist across the findings of existing research?
Review and Synthesis of the Empirical Evidence
Criteria for Inclusion
This review focuses on interactional scaffolding done by a more capable other to support reading comprehension in K–12 school settings in English. Inclusion criteria required studies to specify a comprehension focus; those focused solely on oral reading performance were excluded (e.g., Cole, 2006; Rodgers, D’Agostino, Harmey, Kelly, & Brownfield, 2016; Rodgers, 2004). Practitioner-oriented articles were included only if they reported an empirical studies with descriptions of methods. Additionally, because interactional scaffolding and classroom discourse are linked but not synonymous, studies tracking discourse during reading instruction without establishing how the discourse responsively supported reading comprehension were excluded (e.g., Murphy, Wilkinson, Soter, Hennessey, & Alexander, 2009).
An iterative search process was used to account for the lexical breadth of the term scaffolding. Initial studies came from reviews by Van de Pol and colleagues (2010), Belland (2014), and Fisher (2005) and from literature reviews in recent empirical studies by Athanases and de Oliveira (2014) and Rodgers, D’Agostino, Harmey, Kelly, and Brownfield (2016). To capture additional studies using different terms, searches of PsycInfo, ERIC, and Google Scholar were conducted for the terms scaffold* reading comprehension and the terms in Table 1. During the iterative search process, articles about interactive teaching (Diehl, Armitage, Nettles, & Peterson, 2010), dialogic instruction (Aukerman, 2007; Christoph & Nystrand, 2001), conceptual press (McElhone, 2012), interactional differentiation (Poole, 2008), story discussion (McIntrye, 2007), communicative reading strategies (Crowe, 2003, 2005), feedback (Winne, Graham, & Prock, 1993), and adaptive teaching (Parsons, 2012) all provided new terms and articles. Searches were conducted for prompting, resulting in articles about planned prompting, although none focused on interactional scaffolding. This iterative process resulted in a final corpus of 57 studies
Study Coding
To answer Research Question 1, the studies’ designs were coded as experimental, observational, correlational, or mixed-methods designs, depending on how authors collected and analyzed their data. For student populations, studies were classified as authors presented them, with most studies at the K–5 level considered elementary, 6–8 considered middle, and 9–12 considered high school. Classifying studies’ theories of comprehension was more challenging because some studies’ comprehension pedagogies did not always align with their evidence of student comprehension. For example, several studies of comprehension as procedure and comprehension as sensemaking, including the Palincsar and Brown (1984) and Lee (1995) examples discussed above, also included measures of comprehension outcomes. Thus, to classify studies’ comprehension pedagogies, the measures, instruction, and goals were examined. When studies used multiple pedagogies, they were coded according to the approach used for the longest instructional time.
For Research Question 2, studies were coded according to the key constructs in the theoretical framework. Examining whether taxonomies of scaffolding focused more on contingency or on transfer of responsibility generated Finding 1 (Van de Pol et al., 2010). A close look at how different studies operationalized and described contingent scaffolding generated Finding 2 (Van de Pol et al., 2010). Since semiotic mediation affects scaffolding (Wertsch, 1984), studies which explicitly addressed the influence of contextual semiotic mediation collectively illustrate Finding 3. Finally, a group of studies illustrate how scaffolding sometimes fails to reach intersubjectivity; however, the study’s authors defined it (Wertsch, 1984). These potential pitfalls constitute Finding 4. Results are presented in Appendix A. For Research Question 1, all studies are coded by design features and for Research Question 2, studies are coded under the findings they support.
Results
Study Designs
Figure 1 presents the studies’ research designs. Observational studies (n = 38) dominate the landscape, many aligning with views of comprehension as sensemaking. Commonly, these studies examine the practices of expert teachers’ scaffolding (e.g., Aukerman, 2007; Christoph & Nystrand, 2001; Lee, 1995; Many, 2002). They demonstrate the power of skilled scaffolding in supporting reading for students of all ages, cultures, and linguistic backgrounds. Although many focus on a single teacher or school and are unable to make larger comparisons or causal statements, these in-depth examinations offer rich portraits of scaffolding.
Less common were experimental-only designs (n = 10). These studies often employed comprehension-as-outcome or comprehension-as-procedure pedagogies and typically compared a more-scaffolded treatment condition to less-scaffolded controls. These experiments provide nearly universal positive evidence of comprehension growth on both researcher-designed (Alfassi, 1998) and standardized measures (Crowe, 2003; Lysynchuk, Pressley, & Vye, 1990) of comprehension outcomes. These studies, however, were small scale; all but one (Brabham & Lynch-Brown, 2002) included treatment groups under 60 students.
Correlational-only studies were least common (n = 3), with some studies combining correlation with observation (n = 2). These studies correlated teachers’ scaffolding moves with reading comprehension measures or student talk moves. Their findings show the importance of dimensions of teacher talk; multiple studies show even distal effects of such scaffolding on the quality of students’ small-group textual discussions when the teacher was absent (Jadallah et al., 2011; Lin et al., 2015). Another study showed that teachers’ scaffolding talk that reduced cognitive challenge predicted decreased standardized reading comprehension scores (McElhone, 2012). Studies by Reynolds and Goodwin showed that teachers modified their scaffolding according to students’ comprehension skills (Reynolds & Goodwin, 2016a) and that increased motivational scaffolding predicted growth on a measure of standardized comprehension (Reynolds & Goodwin, 2016b). Although their correlational designs preclude causal claims, these studies’ larger sample sizes offer an emerging portrait about how scaffolding works across many discussions and groups.
In total, six studies examined scaffolding using mixed-methods designs that combined two or more methods. These studies confirm the positive findings of the experimental and correlational studies, while simultaneously offering detailed descriptions about mechanisms of scaffolding.
Study populations
Given that scaffolding could differ across developmental trajectories, the grade levels of the studies are presented in Figure 2. Studies at the elementary level dominate the corpus, with studies of Grades 3–5 particularly common and fewer at the middle and high school levels. Notably, several high school studies contained a disciplinary focus on literature or history, with two even conducted in social studies classrooms (Athanases & de Oliveira, 2014; Reisman, 2015), suggesting that interactional scaffolding can be adapted to disciplinary reading practices.
Figure 2. Study populations. Lysynchuk, Pressley, and Vye (1990) studied fourth and seventh graders and was coded as both elementary and middle.
Main Themes in Study Findings
When coded in light of the theoretical framework, four main themes emerged regarding the role of scaffolding in supporting reading comprehension: variation in taxonomies of scaffolding; a focus on contingency; the importance of the semiotic resources of the classroom culture, material tools, and disciplinary contexts; and potential pitfalls when teachers’ scaffolding does not consider students’ situation definitions or the mediational means of scaffolding.
Finding 1: Variation in taxonomies
Twenty-four studies have offered taxonomies of scaffolding. These can be organized into two groups: those that focus on the amount or level of scaffolding and those that focus on the kinds of scaffolding (Rodgers, 2004). The former privilege fading and transfer of responsibility, while the latter privilege contingency on the learners’ needs (Van de Pol et al., 2010).
Taxonomies that focused on the amount or level of scaffolding (n = 3) attended to how scaffolding changes over time. These can be seen as variations in the gradual release of responsibility model (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983) but demonstrate how teachers contingently modulate their interactional scaffolding based on their assessment of students’ progress. For example, Kong and Pearson (2003) classified scaffolding into three stages, with the level of teacher responsibility fading and the student responsibility increasing; Diehl and colleagues’ classification (2010) used four stages but a similar structure. McIntyre (2007) illustrated how scaffolding front loads teacher talk and explication and moves toward groups of students constructing comprehension without the teacher’s support. While these studies offered some treatment of contingency, their taxonomic focus was on transferring responsibility.
In contrast, 21 studies’ taxonomies focused on kinds of scaffolding. Interestingly, Roehler and Cantlon’s (1997) framework was used by five studies, although none explained why they selected it (Ankrum et al., 2014; Many, 2002; Many, Taylor, Wang, Sachs, & Schreiber, 2007; Parsons, 2012; Parsons, Davis, Scales, Williams, & Kear, 2010). The structures of these 21 taxonomies are profoundly different, ranging from two to eight major categories, with some studies including dozens of subcategories. An example is Frey and Fisher’s (2010) four-step scaffolding cycle of questioning, prompting, cueing, and explaining. Another study developed a taxonomy of scaffolds specific to reading and showed examples of scaffolding at the word, sentence, and whole-text level (Reynolds & Goodwin, 2016a, 2016b). On the other hand, Reisman’s (2015) taxonomy attended to differences in disciplinary reading by separating generic discussion scaffolds from history-specific ones. While all focused on contingency, their specific contexts do not reveal clear patterns within their classifications.
One notable thread was present in nine of the 23 taxonomies: an explicit attention to motivation and participation. Belland, Kim, and Hannafin (2013) noted that the original scaffolding study by Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976) attended equally to cognitive and motivational dimensions and called for motivational dimensions within scaffolding frameworks. Lutz, Guthrie, and Davis (2006) aligned most clearly with this call, as their framework included multidimensional scaffolds for motivation and engagement including collaboration, interaction, and support for autonomy. Similarly, two of Roehler and Cantlon’s (1997) categories included invitations to participate and contribute, while Gaskins, Rauch, Gensemer, and Cunicelli’ framework (1997) included scaffolding dispositions by modeling and encouraging participation in the classroom community. In addition, Reynolds and Goodwin’s (2016b) study found that motivational scaffolding—but not other kinds of scaffolding—predicted growth on a measure of standardized comprehension. While the focus on motivation was not universal, many taxonomies included it.
Finding 2: Focus on contingency
Across studies, the theme of contingency by capitalizing on students’ cultural knowledge and extending student talk emerged from the data.
Expert scaffolders recognize that students begin their journey toward reading comprehension with rich cultural knowledge. For example, Wortham (1995) studied interactional scaffolding in an inner-city high school English classroom reading a Great Books curriculum, showing how teachers scaffolded using analogies to everyday life that encouraged students to take up participant examples and act out roles within the text. Similarly, Moss, Lapp, and O’Shea (2011) showed how a ninth-grade teacher’s scaffolding around culturally familiar texts (e.g., movies) drew on students’ existing knowledge to enable productive discussion of Shakespeare. These studies (n = 11) show that effective scaffolding can leverage students’ existing knowledge toward sophisticated comprehension.
A smaller subset of these studies (n = 3) examined productive comprehension scaffolding drawing on students’ racial identities, such as the Lee (1995) example discussed above. Similarly, the history teacher in Athanases and de Oliveira’s (2014) study at a high school serving Latino students used her access to students’ culture and community knowledge as resources for scaffolding. Their comparative case study design showed how one teacher’s scaffolding was limited to routines of planned scaffolding, while the comparative focal teacher’s exemplary interactional scaffolding showed her constantly leveraging students’ cultural knowledge toward productive comprehension.
Another theme showed effective scaffolders building on student talk moves during instruction (n = 16 studies). For example, observational studies by Frey and Fisher (2010) and Gaskins and colleagues (1997) described scaffolding in which teachers’ expert scaffolding probed for student knowledge with questioning, used student responses as indices of comprehension, and offered responsive support aligned to the students’ emerging comprehension. In addition, Palincsar (1986) asserted that a key dimension of the effectiveness of scaffolding in RT was the extent to which the teacher valued and built on students’ contribution to the discussion.
Three quantitative discourse analyses echo this finding. Evidence from Mariage’s (1995) study of undergraduate preservice teachers’ small-group scaffolding showed that more successful scaffolders were more likely to encourage students to expand their initial answers. Similarly, McElhone’s (2012) study of 21 fourth- and fifth-grade teachers linked comprehension and conceptual press discourse, a pattern of teacher–student talk that challenges students to think beyond their initial responses. Findings showed that teachers’ reducing conceptual press (i.e., accepting students’ initial answers without asking them to extend) negatively predicted students’ reading comprehension scores. Likewise, in a study of a fourth- and fifth-grade ELL classroom, Boyd and Rubin (2006) found that students’ critical turns in classroom discourse (indicative of comprehension) were linked to the teacher’s questions being contingent on earlier student contributions. Taken together, these studies show scaffolders not just engaging in classroom dialogue but masterfully nurturing student ideas and shaping collective comprehension.
Finding 3: Contexts affect interactional scaffolding
Findings also emphasized how mediational and contextual resources enable or constrain interactional scaffolding (Wertsch, 1984) along three dimensions: classroom cultures, material tools, and disciplinary goals.
Nearly all classroom studies emphasize the teacher’s role in creating a positive classroom culture (e.g., Aukerman, 2007; Christoph & Nystrand, 2001; Maloch, 2004; Many, 2002). This was particularly true in comprehension-as-sensemaking studies where teachers had to foster a classroom culture of students willing to publicly volunteer their interpretations. In addition, four studies showed teachers creating this climate through careful use of nonevaluative responses to student contributions (Aukerman, 2007; Boyd & Rubin, 2006; Jadallah et al., 2011; McIntyre, Kyle, & Moore, 2006). These teachers deliberately avoided evaluating student comprehension (thus avoiding a comprehension-as-outcome stance), allowing students to extend and refine their own and each other’s emerging comprehension. These studies demonstrated how teachers’ careful use of the mediational means of language can build participatory classroom cultures to scaffold comprehension.
While nearly every study recognized texts and verbal discourse as mediational resources for scaffolding, two studies extended to other classroom tools. Meskill’s (2005) study of an expert elementary ELL teacher used software (i.e., planned scaffolding) to capture student interest and organize instruction, but ultimately interactional scaffolding proved critical for her students’ comprehension. Similarly, a study of emergent bilingual readers by Daniel and colleagues (2016) used a design research approach to develop and implement a cross-age reading curriculum for fourth graders reading with kindergarteners. Findings showed that, in the first iteration, curricular materials inadvertently constrained scaffolding for comprehension but enabled it in later iterations. Although few studies have directly examined them, material tools may have a significant impact on scaffolding.
Particularly at the high school level, the disciplinary course context shaped teachers’ interactional scaffolding in literature (Lee, 1995, 2001; Moss, Lapp, & O’Shea, 2011; Wortham, 1995) and social studies (Athanases & de Oliveira, 2014; Reisman, 2015). For example, Reisman’s (2015) study of six history teachers’ whole-class discussions of historical texts offered parallels to scaffolding in ELA classrooms such as taking up and revoicing students’ text-based claims (like Boyd & Rubin, 2006) and textual pressing by asking students to substantiate a claim with evidence (like McElhone, 2012). Yet the study also found that the teacher’s moves to stabilize historical content and authoritatively review historical facts—often through IRE sequence questioning—scaffolded the discussion and eventual comprehension of historical texts. Such studies suggest that interactional scaffolding can look similar across domains and yet have discipline-specific forms.
Potential pitfalls of scaffolding
Studies also highlight possible difficulties with scaffolding (n = 12). A key theoretical specification of scaffolding in the ZPD requires the reader to be challenged to stretch beyond his or her current situation definition. If the teacher and student already share a situation definition at the start of the interaction or if the teacher lowers his or her situation definition to match the student’s, little learning will take place.
A series of studies document different manifestations of this problematic phenomenon. Mertzman (2008) studied teachers who professed to be equity oriented in supporting their students of color and low-SES students but found that such students received reading scaffolding focused on basic literacy skills like phonics and word reading accuracy instead of scaffolding for comprehension. On similar racial themes, Rueda, Monzo, and Higareda (2004) examined the literacy scaffolding of paraeducators (i.e., teachers’ aides) in elementary schools serving almost exclusively Latino students. The study noted the positive ways that paraeducators connected to students’ cultural knowledge but also noted that such connections were almost totally relegated to extracurricular conversations, missing many opportunities for cultural knowledge scaffolding that could have supported students’ classroom reading (as in Athanases & de Oliveira, 2014). Other examples show that teachers’ simplistic situation definitions limited opportunities for student learning. For example, McElhone (2012) documented how teachers’ reduction in conceptual press during discussions predicted reduced student comprehension. Similarly, Poole (2008) studied two heterogeneous-ability guided-reading groups, finding that the teacher and higher ability readers interactionally coconstructed simplistic situation definitions for struggling readers. These studies caution scaffolders to avoid reducing situation definitions of comprehension.
Even when teachers have rigorous situation definitions of comprehension, organizing the mediational means to achieve intersubjectivity can be difficult—especially leading productive group discourse. One study of a 3-year implementation of RT found that teachers struggled to with the framework’s challenging discursive practices, a key dimension of RT’s scaffolding (Hacker & Tenant, 2002). Similarly, another study found that even a teacher trained and motivated to implement challenging discussion practices and support students’ collaborative sensemaking instead retained a comprehension as outcome approach, evaluating student responses according to their consistency with her own interpretation (Billings & Fitzgerald, 2002), a finding echoed in other studies of veteran teachers (Christoph & Nystrand, 2001; Maloch, 2002). In a similar finding, Hedin and Gaffney (2013) found that even scaffolders well trained in contingency still preferred scaffolding routines rather than responding to students’ individual situation definitions. These results suggest that careful attention must be paid to developing teachers’ capacity for contingent scaffolding.
Discussion
While previous research specified components of successful interactional scaffolding (Van de Pol et al., 2010; Wertsch, 1984), this review connects those components to reading comprehension, and the findings shed light on both research and instructional designs. For example, based on the finding that there are a variety of scaffolding taxonomies, future research might productively incorporate these taxonomies as they align with developmental trajectories and theoretical orientations, extending the field’s ability to determine which frameworks function across contexts. For instance, studies of elementary guided reading might adopt Frey and Fisher’s (2010) taxonomy, and middle school studies might build on Reynolds and Goodwin’s (2016a, 2016b). In addition, future studies might specify what contingency looks like in reading instruction by incorporating students’ cultural knowledge and extending their talk as an instructional design principle.
The third finding attends to the importance of the mediational resources for scaffolding. Since much of scaffolding relies on productive classroom dialogue, scaffolders should attend to the importance of positive classroom culture that will enable productive discussions of text. Building such cultures could help avoid the potential pitfalls, with Finding 4 providing cautionary notes and a call for interactional scaffolders to maintain rigorous situation definitions in interaction. In addition, although materials can support instruction, researchers and teachers must to pay careful attention to ensure they do not inadvertently overscaffold students and limit them to rote responses instead of deep comprehension.
Directions for Future Research
The current study suggests areas for future work. While many observational studies show how scaffolding works in particular classrooms or schools, the lack of experimental or larger scale correlational evidence across classrooms, texts, and disciplines limits understanding, including knowledge of whether any kinds of scaffolding or any particular taxonomies have explanatory power outside the contexts in which they were derived. Therefore, future research is needed that can link specific forms of scaffolding across classrooms to student outcomes and more precisely specify the mechanisms of how scaffolding supports comprehension.
Another avenue for future research includes examination of how teachers might use different mediational means to achieve intersubjectivity. Several studies call for deeper understanding of physical interaction as part of the teacher’s and students’ work toward achieving intersubjectivity (Rodgers et al., 2016; Stone, 1993; Van de Pol et al., 2010). Interaction analyses of video data, currently absent from the literature, could present descriptions of interactional scaffolding richer than existing transcriptions of talk.
Due to the dominance of research at the elementary level, studies that examine how scaffolding differs at different developmental levels—especially middle and high schoolers—would be particularly helpful. As middle and high school students are less proficient readers than their elementary counterparts (National Center for Education Statistics, 2015), research that specifically targets scaffolding for adolescents’ comprehension is much needed.
Overall, this review’s approach to bringing varied studies and terminologies together under the focus of interactional scaffolding for comprehension offers promising directions for developing programs of research and improving reading instruction.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Supplemental Material
Supplementary material is available for this article online.
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Author Biography
Dan Reynolds is an assistant professor at John Carroll University. A former high school English teacher, he researches how scaffolding can support adolescents’ reading comprehension in all its diverse forms.
