LITERATURE REVIEW: SCAFFOLDING 1
Literature Review: Scaffolding in Special Education
Deborah Schloemer-Frazer
Liberty University
LITERATURE REVIEW: SCAFFOLDING 2
Literature Review: Scaffolding in Special Education
While all students benefit from instructional strategies, such as scaffolding, students in
special education require the intervention of scaffolding more frequently. Special Education
teachers are tasked with creating specially designed instruction for a variety of student needs in
their classrooms, which often requires more scaffolding than other classrooms. Scaffolding is an
instructional support that a teacher intentionally adds to the lesson by breaking down a skill into
manageable steps (West et al., 2019). Scaffolding benefits all students, especially those with
developmental delays, executive functioning disorders, and delayed working memory (Reynvoet
et al., 2020), who often receive services in special education classrooms. This literature review
addresses scaffolding in special education to answer the research question: What scaffolding
strategies will be implemented with students with special needs, and how will they impact
student achievement?
Theoretical Background
The foundation of scaffolding comes from Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development,
which targets a student’s ability and builds upon their potential. Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal
Development is “the distance between the actual development level as determined through
problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers” (Vygotsky,
1978, p. 86). James Bruner then mainstreamed the term “scaffolding” to describe the foundation
of Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development used by teachers in the classroom to help students
focus on a specific skill (University of San Diego Professional and Continuing Education, n.d.).
The term “scaffolding” is used as a metaphor for construction scaffolding used to create
foundational platforms that build from the base to the top (McIsaac, 2019).
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The history of scaffolding has grown to become a part of equitable goals targeted by the
United Nations to provide accessible education for students with disabilities (Zhang et al., 2020).
Accessibility for students is described as the process “in order for all to have equitable learning
experiences, the learning experience, including its learning content and teaching process, should
be adjusted according to students’ needs, including their disabilities” (Zhang et al., 2020, p. 3).
Research has encouraged the intentionality of learning supports, such as scaffolding.
Benefits of Scaffolding
Scaffolding helps students to build upon their current knowledge and skills to access new
information or skills through cues, tips, strategies, and the breakdown of steps (West et al.,
2019). The teacher determines the students’ prior knowledge and abilities in order to connect the
new skill with their current understanding. Scaffolding is an evidence-based instructional
strategy that serves students with disabilities in a very advantageous way (Lei et al., 2020; West
et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2020) because students with learning disabilities require more
repetition and specially designed instruction. Scaffolding supports students with learning
disabilities by providing foundational in-depth “explaining, reviewing, restructuring, and
developing conceptual thinking” (Tri Anggadewi, 2017). Implementing scaffolding into daily
instructional activities has supported students’ standardized achievement test scores (Lei et al.,
2020).
Scaffolding is a technique that most teachers do naturally, but thinking through the
concept of scaffolding helps the teacher intentionally think about how to support the student by
breaking down the lesson or skill. Much of the research regarding scaffolding widely explains
how to implement the strategy into specific school subjects, such as English, Mathematics, and
Science. Scaffolding is also popular in special education; teachers are faced with scaffolding
LITERATURE REVIEW: SCAFFOLDING 4
different activities for most of their students. Scaffolding has been a popular teaching strategy in
special education for decades and is becoming popular in other education, such as English
learning (Lei et al., 2020).
Scaffolding Strategies
As teachers juggle their many duties, several strategies can drive their instruction to
include scaffolding techniques that benefit all students. Part of a teacher’s goal is for the student
to master the task independently. To promote success for student mastery, there are techniques
and best practice methods that teachers can implement to promote successful scaffolding.
Scaffolding is a strategy that requires the teacher first to observe the student’s needs,
break them down into smaller steps, then, most importantly, determine if the scaffolding
strategies worked for that student (McIsaac, 2019). Learning is a process that sometimes requires
trial and error before finding the right strategy. When scaffolding and promoting success in a
practiced skill, it is important to encourage the student to do as much independently as possible
to master the process (West et al., 2019).
Learning Aids
Learning aids are designed to activate and build upon prior knowledge and can come in
many forms, such as flashcards, sentence frames, and graphic organizers. When implementing
learning aids, it is important to intentionally teach the student how to use the learning aid (The
University of the State of New York State Education Department Office of Curriculum and
Instruction and Office of Special Education, 2019).
While there is a list of beneficial learning aids, graphic organizers come in many forms
and can be personalized to many different lessons and skills. While graphic organizers are often
LITERATURE REVIEW: SCAFFOLDING 5
associated with writing, they can be used in other subjects, such as math. Graphic organizers
offer the breakdown of skills through visual, linguistic, and interactive scaffolding (Lei et al.,
2020). Examples of graphic organizers may help the students to organize their steps, visually
distribute their counting, or organize their ideas.
Breaking it Down
Breaking a skill down into simpler steps can look different for each student. Some
students may need to use the “think aloud, or verbalizing thinking processes” (West et al., 2019).
These processes may include the teacher thinking aloud so the student can follow the thought
process, which is very beneficial for students with poor working memory or executive
functioning skills (Reynvoet et al., 2020). Thinking aloud or verbalizing your thinking process
can also be a beneficial dialogue between peers.
In special education, teachers often teach life skills, which offers many hands-on learning
opportunities. When scaffolding a hands-on skill, it is beneficial to break steps down into a task
analysis or simpler steps. Task analyses “present a method of incrementalizing or breaking down
behavior chains in a sequence to encourage learning and future performance of skills” (Barnard-
Brak et al., 2023, p. 1). Data taken using a task analysis may help the teacher to identify what
step the student needs the most support with.
Modeling
Teachers may model or demonstrate a skill to a student to observe, often called I do-we
do-you do. Teachers demonstrate the skill for students to gain a foundational understanding.
Next, the student practices with others, with the teacher or other students, to practice with
opportunities for facilitation of direction and feedback. This practice also allows students to learn
LITERATURE REVIEW: SCAFFOLDING 6
from fellow students because peer modeling is a beneficial learning strategy. Finally, the student
practices independently, still allowing for re-direction but the opportunity to independently
demonstrate their learning.
Modeling is very useful when teaching math to students with disabilities. Much of the
evidence-based research demonstrates that scaffolding with cues positively impacts the
performance of students with developmental disorders (Reynvoet et al., 2020). By offering
different cues, modeling gives the student a better understanding of the skill. The teacher can
then offer the same cues when the student practices the skill independently.
Conclusion
Scaffolding strategies benefit all students, especially students with learning disabilities.
The scaffolding framework has grown from Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development to a
widely researched instructional strategy that proves beneficial for students, especially those in
special education, as it supports those with executive functioning disorder. This literature review
focused on answering the research question: what scaffolding strategies will be implemented
with students with special needs, and how will they impact student achievement? Literature
suggests multiple best practice methods that a special education teacher may implement to
improve student scaffolding in lessons. Once a teacher has observed their students’ needs, best
practice methods to implement include implementing learning aids, breaking lessons down into
steps, and modeling.
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References
Barnard-Brak, L., Mutua, K., Mugoya, G. C., Williamson, A., & Kudesey, C. (2023). Task
analysis guidance for number of and readability of steps for individuals with intellectual
disabilities. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 133, 104411.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2022.104411
Lei, Q., Xin, Y. P., Morita-Mullaney, T., & Tzur, R. (2020). Instructional scaffolds in
mathematics instruction for english learners with learning disabilities: An exploratory case
study. Learning Disabilities, 18(1), 123–144.
McIsaac, J. (2019). What is “scaffolding” in teaching?: A simple explanation. Exceptional Lives.
https://www.exceptionallives.org/blog/scaffolding-in-teaching-a-simple-explanation
Reynvoet, B., Marinova, M., & Sasanguie, D. (2020). Take it of your shoulders: Providing
scaffolds leads to better performance on mathematical word problems in secondary
school children with developmental coordination disorder. Research in Developmental
Disabilities, 105(March), 103745. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2020.103745
The University of the State of New York State Education Department Office of Curriculum and
Instruction and Office of Special Education. (2019). Scaffolding instruction for all
students: A resource guide for english language arts grade 3 .
https://www.nysed.gov/sites/default/files/programs/curriculum-
instruction/grade3elascaffoldingguide.pdf
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Tri Anggadewi, B. E. (2017). Scaffolding: How it works for students with learning difficulties.
https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:293216b0-b9c5-3113-8e56-
674aaeb6e2d8
West, A., Janet Swanson, & Lipscomb, L. (2019). Scaffolding. In Instructional methods,
strategies and technologies to meet the needs of all learners (pp. 185–201). Creative
Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike.
University of San Diego Professional and Continuing Education. (n.d.). 7 Scaffolding learning
strategies for the classroom [web log]. Retrieved June 2023, from
https://pce.sandiego.edu/scaffolding-in-education-examples/.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Zhang, X., Tlili, A., Nascimbeni, F., Burgos, D., Huang, R., Chang, T. W., Jemni, M., & Khribi,
M. K. (2020). Accessibility within open educational resources and practices for disabled
learners: a systematic literature review. Smart Learning Environments, 7(1), 1–20.
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-019-0113-2
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