Scaffolding in PBL

Scaffolding is standard practice in the language learning setting. As an ESL instructor every skill from grammar and reading to vocabulary and writing requires scaffolding to ease students into new language learning concepts. Likewise, scaffolding is of great importance in project based learning. In PBL students must be guided towards the creation of a product or service. According to Jamie McKenzie, scaffolding provides that guidance in the following ways:

1. Providing Clear Directions - This is a standard practice in ESL and probably should be in all educational settings. In the ESL setting both small and large scale assignments in many cases must be broken down into small digestible chunks. Directions must be broken down to into component steps and must be given using very simple language. In and ESL+PBL, I assume this skill will be the same but the need for this part of scaffolding will be even greater.
2. Providing a Clear Purpose - In my experience, this is standard practice for teachers of ESL students and at-risk students. Students want to know why they have to complete an activity. They want to know why they should invest their time in learning the skills they are being taught and if the skill will be relevant to their lives. In the ESL+PBL setting, this will be even more important since many students become unmotivated when there is a huge, time and resource consuming task at hand.
3. Keeping Students on Task - This is another issue that is relevant to all teaching settings. Students are easily distracted by "outside" factors such as unrelated conversation topics as well as "inside" factors such as vague directions or inattention by the instructor. The "inside" factor could be considered more serious since students can waste a tremendous amount of time traversing the wrong path. In the ESL setting this is a common issue since it has been found that the thought process varies from culture to culture.
4. Offering Assessments to Clarify Expectations - In the ESL department in which I teach, this is standard practice for writing assignments. Students are provided rubrics for paraphrase writing, paragraph writing, journal writing, threaded discussion, and of course in-class essays. What is expected of students is clear from the beginning. In my own writing classes, students see both good and bad writing models and analyze the models for relevant features again providing students with concrete evidence of what good and bad writing is and what their own writing is expected to look like. In an ESL+PBL unit, this practice would clearly carry over to the evaluation of final products or services.