Most of humanity's important and difficult problems such as pandemics, environmental health, and social unrest require recognizing and understanding complex systems. Students often have difficulty understanding complex systems concepts and previous research indicates that scaffolded computer simulations may facilitate learning. Few studies,…

Transfer of responsibility for learning from the teacher to the learner has been considered the final aim of successful scaffolding. Despite this importance, few studies have been conducted in this area. The present conversation analytic study examined the scaffolding interactions of a sample of Iranian English language teachers to identify how…

Inquiry includes a broad spectrum of approaches, depending on students' responsibility over the process and the extent of the teacher's guidance. While numerous studies have examined students' achievements and engagement across different types of inquiry-based environments, analyses of teachers' guidance during the process are lacking. Therefore,…

Concept map (CM) is introduced as a useful tool for studying students' system thinking (ST). However, it is more known to represent students' knowledge of system components and organization and less recognized as a tool to examine and enhance students' understanding about the underlying causal mechanisms in complex systems. In this study, through…

In this study, we investigated whether drawing after learning supports metacognitive monitoring especially when students are supported in their drawing efforts. Therefore, eighty-eight participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental groups. They were asked to learn from a text comprising five paragraphs about the formation of…

Scaffolding is one of the critical features in a problem-based learning environment to address challenges associated with problem solving. While transfer of responsibility is considered as an ultimate goal in scaffolding that is adaptive and contingent, it is rarely studied and practiced. Thus, the purpose of this study was to inform a deeper…

We extended research on scaffolds for formulating scientific hypotheses, namely the Hypothesis Scratchpad (HS), in the domain of relative density. The sample comprised of secondary school students who used three different configurations of the HS: Fully structured, containing all words needed to formulate a hypothesis in the domain of the study;…

Instructional videos have been widely used in online learning environments. Effective video learning requires self-regulation by learners, which can be facilitated by deliberate instructional design, such as through prompting. Grounded in the interactive, constructive, active, and passive (ICAP) framework, this study compared the effects of…

Research on learning communities has developed as a perspective radically different from teacher-led instruction. This might be a main reason for why scaffolding is rarely foregrounded in work on learning communities. This contribution analyzes how four recent approaches to learning communities address scaffolding and identifies three different…

Hypothesis-based reasoning with conditionals is a skill that is required for engaging in integral activities of modern elementary school science-curricula. The teaching of this skill at this early stage of education, however, is demanding, particularly in whole school classes in which it is difficult to adapt teaching to children's individual…

We compared performances on a learning task in which students (N = 81) viewed a pedagogical multimedia document without (control group) or with a readymade graphic organizer (readymade group) with performances on an active learning task where students self-generated a graphic organizer either totally (total self-generated group) or partially…

Research has indicated that students can be taught self-regulated learning (SRL) in scaffolding programs focusing on a fixed continuous practice (e.g., metacognitive question prompts). However, the fading role of scaffolding to prepare autonomous learning is often an overlooked component. A unique approach for fading is suggested that offers a…

Teaching with Scrum methodology includes ceremonies, roles and artefacts supporting students in planning, monitoring and directing their learning process. It scaffolds students' learning in complex and sometimes overwhelming context-based learning environments. Effects of the implementation on both students' learning outcomes and self-reported…

Discovery learning continues to be a topic of heated debate. It has been called a zombie, and this special issue raises the question whether it may be a phoenix arising from the ashes to which the topic was burnt. However, in this commentary I propose it is more like an elephant--a huge topic approached by many people who address different…

Scientific knowledge, including the critical evaluation and comprehension of empirical articles, is a key skill valued by most undergraduate institutions for students within the sciences. Students often find it difficult to not only summarize empirical journal articles, but moreover to successfully grasp the quality and rigor of investigation…