The Impact of Scaffolding Program on English Teacher Candidates’ Scaffolding Skills

Abstract

The aim of this study was to implement Scaffolding Program (SP) and to determine its impact on English teacher candidates’ scaffolding skills. Scaffolding is a socio-constructivist strategy where a more knowledgeable person guides the learner while performing a task that the learner would never accomplish without the help. Concurrent transformative design model, one of the mixed research designs, was used in the study. The study group consisted of four English teacher candidates. The data were collected by scaffolding scenario form, journals and the observation form. For analyzing the quantitative data descriptive statistics and percentages were calculated, and the qualitative data were subjected to detailed content analysis. Findings of the research showed that four teacher candidates who participated in the SP had an increase in their scaffolding scores after the program, the highest increase in the posttest scores was found in diagnosing student need stage, they could explain reasons for choosing the scaffolding intentions and methods more clearly, their intention for scaffolding was mostly for direction maintenance and the means they proposed most were prompting. Results show that teacher candidates expressed positive opinions about the program in their journals, they stated that they benefited from the program and they presented ideas about how they could use scaffolding in their classes. It was observed that teacher candidates tried to use scaffolding in their classes, in accordance with the stages and principles of
scaffolding.