Improving students’ mathematical outcomes is on the forefront of many European governments’ educational agendas (Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2014; Nath & Border, 2013; OECD, 2016; Silver, 1998) and teachers’ instructional practices in mathematics classrooms has received much attention since it is an important factor for student learning (Chetty, Friedman, & Rockoff, 2011; Hattie, 2008; Seidel & Shavelson, 2007). One central instructional practice introduced to aid students’ learning is scaffolding, “the 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). The current empirical research consists of either case-studies, giving existence proofs of effective scaffolding in mathematics, or experimental studies, showing that scaffolding practices can be successfully implemented in schools (Bakker, Smit, & Wegerif, 2015). What remains an unanswered question, is how mathematics teachers currently scaffold the learning content in their everyday instruction. In the present study, we contribute to the understanding of this question by investigating everyday scaffolding practices enacted by Norwegian mathematics teachers captured through video observation.

The idea of scaffolding was initially used only about dyadic adult-child interactions (e.g. Wood et al., 1976), but has recently been used to analyze whole-class interactions in mathematics classrooms as well (Smit & van Eerde, 2013). Whether in a dyadic- or group-setting, scaffolding has three characteristic steps, following (Bakker et al., 2015): i. diagnosis (finding out what the students can do alone or with scaffolds), ii. responsiveness (adaptively giving assistance) and iii. fading or handover to independence (withdrawing assistance). These three steps can be used for cognitive scaffolding (enabling students to solve problems without the teacher’s help), social scaffolding (establishing norms for productive classroom interactions) or affective scaffolding (increasing students’ self-efficacy or motivation). Of special interest to me is cognitive scaffolding learning and Anghileri (2006) argue that two central components for mathematics learning is modelling and feedback. Thus, the aim of our study is to describe cognitive scaffolding practices in Norwegian mathematics classrooms by identifying how teachers assist students in completing mathematical tasks through modelling or feedback and how the teachers fade this assistance within the course of four lessons.

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