Contextualizing the changing face of scaffolding research: Are we driving pedagogical theory development or avoiding it?

This symposium will discuss how scaffolding research can inform the next generation of highly distributed and technology-rich learning environments. Contemporary technologies offer great potential to complete some of the activities that have been described as scaffolding. However, despite the wide body of research that has investigated the use of technology to scaffold learning, there is a lack of consensus about what the accumulated body of scaffolding research demonstrates, what the term scaffolding should mean and how we might operationalize the concept to meet the challenges posed by modern, diverse technology-rich learning environments and increasingly techno-savvy learners. There is limited research into scaffolding through wireless, mobile, tangible and ubiquitous technologies and insufficient theory development to take forward the principles at the heart of the scaffolding concept. This situation is compounded by lack of learning-centred definitions of context that can add a 'learning sensitive' dimension to the developments in 'context sensitive' computing. Copyright © 2011 ISLS.