Two studies documented and evaluated parental scaffolding of 3and 4-year-olds' spatial communication. In Study 1, children gave directions to parents about locations of objects. Three-year-olds gave ambiguous directions more often than 4-year-olds, and parents used directive prompts more often with 3-year-olds than 4-year-olds, Study 2 compared the effectiveness of parental prompts in a control...

Teachers’ Social Representations in Relation to EJA: affectivity and teacher training. The aim of this article is to present Youth and Adult Education – EJA teachers’ social representations, concerning their teacher training and affectivity in the teaching-learning process. The participants were teachers who work at the Youth and Adult Education Center – CEJA and the Youth and Adult Education S...

BACKGROUND: HealthWise South Africa: Life Skills for Adolescents (HW) is an evidence-based substance use and sexual risk prevention program that emphasizes the positive use of leisure time. Since 2000, this program has evolved from pilot testing through an efficacy trial involving over 7,000 youth in the Cape Town area. Beginning in 2011, through 2015, we are undertaking a new study that expand...

Many pedagogues have argued that learners should shape their own learning experience whilst tutors should facilitate this process of knowledge construction. Digital environments have been often used in an attempt to scaffold learning in these innovative learning settings. However the results obtained have been mixed both in terms of learning achievements and learners' satisfaction. We argue tha...

The aim of this article is twofold. First, the final results of two research projects, which investigated the impact of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on primary schools teachers in disadvantaged areas in Brazil (BET k-12) and South Africa (MELISSA), are presented and discussed. Second, the Self-Efficacy construct is proposed as a tool to measure how teachers’ perception of bein...

OBJECTIVE To examine the perceived effect of teaching clinical skills and associated teacher training programmes on general practitioners' morale and clinical practice. DESIGN Qualitative semistructured interview study. SETTING General practices throughout north London. SUBJECTS 30 general practitioners who taught clinical skills were asked about the effect of teaching and teacher trainin...

Much attention has been focused on the role of teachers and curriculum materials in scaffolding learners. However, a growing area of focus is on the potential of computer software to provide cognitive support for learners engaging in complex intellectual activities. A substantial amount of research and development in this area, particularly at the University of Michigan, has focused on scaffold...

The didactical metaphor of scaffolding has become so ubiquitous in the rhetoric of education researchers and practitioners, that its meaning has become diffuse, its theoretical rationale unquestioned, and its pedagogical operationalization vague (Pea 2004). We submit that scaffolding is a victim of its own popularity: its adoption by multifarious and even competing theories of learning has rend...

Scaffolding is a widely used educational practice in which directed instruction gradually decreases as student competence increases—resulting in increased independent learning. This research introduces and evaluates an MR-based system for technology-mediated scaffolding in anesthesia education. Through merging real and virtual objects, the system addresses a vital problem in merging abstract an...

Intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) are highly effective at fostering learning gains across a broad range of educational domains (VanLehn, 2011; Woolf, 2008). Tutorial planning is a critical component of ITSs, controlling how scaffolding is structured and delivered to learners. Tutorial planners operate at multiple levels, including the macro-level (e.g., selecting problems for learners to solv...