Scaffolding Creative Programming Projects

While most teachers welcome the idea of learning activities fostering creativity, it is not clear how to effectively scaffold creativity. Without suitable pedagogical approaches, it is difficult to provide appropriate levels of scaffolding. Over-scaffolding, on the one hand, while providing support appreciated especially by less experienced students, leaves little room for creative expression. Under-scaffolding, on the other hand, while fostering more authentic learning opportunities with a high potential for creativity, can lead to student frustration. The Process Artifact Creativity Landscape (PACL) is a framework that helps pre-service teachers scaffold creative projects. PACL consists of a two dimensional space providing four scaffolding approaches offering different tradeoffs between scaffolding and creativity. This paper introduces the PACL framework and outlines experiences with K–6 preservice teachers reasoning about scaffold creative programming projects.