Different conclusions after replication of famous education research

A good teacher provides a student with the right help at the right time, and then revokes that support once it is clear that the student can do it without help. That is scaffolding in a nutshell, one of the most popular ways to help children solve difficult tasks. Scaffolding was researched in the 1970s, and became a beloved and much discussed concept in education. But does this approach really work that well? No, is what Utrecht University educational scientist Nienke Smit concludes. Together with colleagues, Smit replicated the groundbreaking research into scaffolding. Smit's zero results have been published in the  Journal of Educational Psychology.

The original research into scaffolding dates back to 1978 and has since become THE way to help children to solve a difficult task. Scaffolding is seen as a characteristic of good teaching. The rule of thumb for teachers is: is it going well, take a step back; is it going wrong, help more. But when Smit exactly repeated the original research from the 1970s, the much discussed effect turned out to not occur. Smit says: “That surprised us. We've thought we knew how it worked for a long time, but it turned out to be a little different some 50 years later after all.”

Not 32 but 285 toddlers

research was completely identical to the original study. Smit says: “We used the same block puzzle and the same instructions. We also used four types of supervision: demonstrating, only talking, a mix between demonstrating and vague clues, or scaffolding. Much to our surprise, we found no differences between these four forms of instructions on the children's learning outcomes.”

Our research shows scaffolding is much more sophisticated and much more complex.

Quality of the research

Besides this conclusion, Smit's research invites reflection on the quality of education research. Smit says: “The results of the original research have had big consequences for the entire field of education. From policy makers and school leaders, to employees at teacher-training programmes: everyone became convinced scaffolding works. We all started working with it. But our research shows we have to go back to the drawing board with questions like: what is that, tailored help? When do you step in to help? And how do we determine afterwards that something was tailored help?”

More sophisticated and more complex

Smit points out that this study does not conclude that scaffolding does not work at all. “It doesn't work as well as was believed. Scaffolding was handed to teachers as a simple step-by-step plan. It was supposedly a method every teacher could apply easily to help children with difficult tasks. Our research shows scaffolding is much more sophisticated and much more complex. It's about timing, about dosing, about fine-tuning. The teacher and the child have to build together. How this works exactly, and how it doesn't: much can still be learned about that.”