A Research On Scaffolding Instruction

Vygotsky is the founder of Soviet psychology and the Social-historical Cultural School. His research involves many fields of psychology, Vygotsky's theory in the field of education and psychology embodies the essence of his teaching and development of ideas. This thought eventually described by "proximal-zone development theory", and practiced by "scaffolding instruction".Our research is mainly divided into four parts.The first part introduces the different perspectives about the relationship between teaching and development. On the relationship between teaching and development can be attributed to three key points: Development is falling behind teaching. Teaching must be carried out in the maturity and development of the organism; teaching is equal to development, and development is teaching; There is another viewpoint attempting to combine the above two reasons then created a theory of dualism. On this basis of those theories, Vygotsky's proposed his own ideas about teaching and development: development should follow teaching. There are two connotations about this point: First of all, teaching plays a leading role in the development. It affects development level, speed and intellectual activity of a child; Secondly, Teaching must be created out the zone of proximal development before development. That is to say, the flowing zone between children's actual development level and potential development level is determined by teaching.The second part interprets the zone of proximal development and different understandings about it by different researchers. Vygotsky consider that the development of a child at any time is not only decided by nature mature but at least by two level of development. You can not really understand the correct relationship between children's development process and the possibilities of teaching if you don't understand these two levels. The first level is existing development level, which constitutes by the completed developmental programs, it performances that child solve problems independently. The second level is potential development level as determined through problems solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. Between the two levels is called "zone of proximal development". Different researchers have different interpretations about zone of proximal development, some supported from the scaffolding instruction, some focused on the cultural interpretation, and other researchers explained it from the social perspective. Different interpretations are bound to come up with different teaching models.The third part discusses the meaning and types of the scaffolding instruction, and ability that an outstanding teacher should have to structure scaffolding, that is , how a teacher inspire students in classroom.The final part of this paper reviews Vygotsky's proximal-zone development theory and scaffolding teaching, pointing out the existing problems and shortcomings of their development. However, compared with traditional modes of teaching and teaching theories, it is a big progress. We believe that this theory will have very broad application with the depth of research.