C. Addison Stone

The Metaphor of Scaffolding Its Utility for the Field of Learning Disabilities

Over the past 20 years, an increasing number of psychologists and educators have used the notion of scaffolding as a metaphor for the process by which adults (and more knowledgeable peers) guide childrens learning and development. The purpose of the present article is to provide a critical analysis of the scaffolding metaphor, with particular emphasis on its applications to the case of atypical learners. In the initial sections of the article, the origins and early applications of the metaphor are sketched. With this as background, criticisms of the metaphor raised by others are reviewed, and a proposal for an enriched version of the metaphor is presented. At the heart of the proposed revision is an emphasis on the communicational dynamics and conceptual reorganization involved in adult—child interactions. With an enriched metaphor as a frame, the next section reviews applications of the scaffolding metaphor to the study of parent—child interactions and teacher—student instructional activities involving children with learning disabilities. The strengths and limitations of this work are evaluated, and proposals are made for how to reap further benefits from applications of the scaffolding metaphor to analyses of the development and instruction of children with learning disabilities.

A Social Interactional Analysis of Learning Disabilities Remediation

The remediation of learning—disabled children can often be viewed as providing them with strategies which they can use to direct their own behavior. Insight into why such strategic assistance is effective can be obtained from viewing remediation as a social/communicative setting. This perspective is illustrated with an analysis of an annotated transcript of a remediation session. The analysis makes use of Vygotskys (1978) notions of “other regulation” and “self regulation” and Rommetveits (1979) notion of communication as the creation of presuppositions in the listener. The implications of the perspective for our understanding of the remediation process and its differential efficacy are discussed.

Stereotypes of Individuals With Learning Disabilities: Views of College Students With and Without Learning Disabilities

To explore possible reasons for low self-identification rates among undergraduates with learning disabilities (LD), we asked students (38 with LD, 100 without LD) attending two large, public, research-intensive universities to respond to a questionnaire designed to assess stereotypes about individuals with LD and conceptions of ability. Responses were coded into six categories of stereotypes about LD (low intelligence, compensation possible, process deficit, nonspecific insurmountable condition, working the system, and other), and into three categories of conceptions of intelligence (entity, incremental, neither). Consistent with past findings, the most frequent metastereotype reported by individuals in both groups related to generally low ability. In addition, students with LD were more likely to espouse views of intelligence as a fixed trait. As a whole, the study’s findings have implications for our understanding of factors that influence self-identification and self-advocacy at the postsecondary level.

Should We Salvage the Scaffolding Metaphor

In response to the six commentaries on my analysis of the value of the scaffolding metaphor, I attempt to highlight common themes and revisit arguments for and against the utility of the metaphor.

Why Is Cognitive Instruction Effective? Underlying Learning Mechanisms:

If we are to design efficient and effective instructional environments for students with learning difficulties, we must understand and build on the learning principles that undergird the most productive interventions. After an overview of several studies of cognitive instruction that addressed problem learners, we describe two learning mechanisms that explain why such cognitive interventions work—prolepsis and reflective abstraction, derived respectively from Vygotskian and Piagetian accounts of development.

The Effects of Morphological Structure on Children’s Reading of Derived Words in English

The English written language system represents words at the level of the morpheme as well as the phoneme. It is likely, therefore, that awareness of not only the phonological but also the morphological structure of words plays a role in learning to read. While there is a large body of research that shows the importance of phonological awareness, there are many unanswered questions about the role of morphological awareness in the acquisition of reading skill. When and under what circumstances sensitivity to morphemic structure affects the word reading of children is the focus of the present chapter.

Are parents of school-age children with specific language impairments accurate estimators of their child’s language skills?

This study was designed to examine the relative accuracy of parents’ estimations of the language skills of school-age children (ages 5-7) with and without language impairments. The parents of children with language impairments were more accurate estimators than the parents of normally developing children in terms of the correspondence of absolute ratings of language skills, but less accurate in terms of correlations of ratings with standardized test scores. Parent ratings were not significantly correlated with teacher ratings in either group. Definitions of accuracy of estimations and their implications are discussed in terms of the role of parents in the identification of children’s language needs, both for formal intervention and for day-to-day language stimulation.

Improving the Effectiveness of Strategy Training for Learning Disabled Students: The Role of Communicational Dynamics

After much initial promise, signs of disillusionment are evident concerning the potential of strategy training as an effective method for instilling stable and general cognitive strategic skills in learning disabled students. It is argued here that the difficulties confronted by researchers and practitioners in designing effective instructional programs may relate in part to a neglect of the communicational dynamics of the strategy training situation. Greater attention to these dynamics has implications for how we structure strategy instruction and for our sensitivity to the role of learner characteristics as mediators of strategy training efforts. Recent theoretical and empirical work relevant to the role of communication in effective strategy training is reviewed, and implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.

Interactive Influences of Perceived Social Contexts on the Reading Achievement of Urban Middle Schoolers with Learning Disabilities.

This study examined the effects of social influences in the lives of an ethnically diverse sample of fifth through eighth grade students with and without learning disabilities (LD) using survey data and academic achievement scores collected in 19 Chicago public schools from 1993–1997. Similarities and differences in student perceptions of school, family, and peer group contexts were examined. In addition, longitudinal data were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to identify contextual influences on changes in student reading achievement over time. Comparisons of student responses confirm and extend existing findings in the literature concerning the perceptions of students with LD of their social environments. In particular, having a learning disability was associated with consistent, mostly negative, effects on social relations across the contexts of students’ lives, regardless of gender, race, grade, and socioeconomic status. In addition, student perceptions of their friendship groups were found to have small, but significant, effects on their growth in reading achievement over the course of middle school. While students with and without LD had somewhat different views of their social contexts, the processes working within these environments appeared to affect their reading achievement in similar ways. The results suggest that careful attention should be paid to the social contexts of students’ lives when planning academic interventions.

Children's use of perceptual set

Abstract The effects of perceptual set and of “sequential visual noise” on the identification of briefly exposed pictures were examined in 5-year-olds, 8-year-olds, and adults. Subjects were asked to indicate whether a brief target matched a standard. The standard picture was presented either before the target picture (to establish a set) or after the target. The target was presented either alone or last in a series of six brief pictures (i.e., in noise). Adults and 8-year-olds were at ceiling when the target was presented alone, but set facilitated their identification of the target in noise. The 5-year-olds benefited from set both when the target was presented alone and when it was presented in noise. These findings suggest that set for a specific target picture functions similarly at all ages.