Interleaving scaffolding and differentiated instruction: Complementary teaching methods for advancing students’ learning

Teacher preparation often incorporates educational psychology because of licensure requirements to demonstrate understanding of learning theories, learning differences, and instructional practices. Yet, teacher educators must continuously reevaluate how they teach and model psychological theories in practice. In this article, I examine how to interleave instructional scaffolding and differentiated instruction (DI) into an elementary/primary science lesson so that constructivist and Vygotskian learning theories are activated. While scaffolding and DI similarly provide contingent support, they have different theoretical emphases in conceptualization and enactment. In response, I provide a review of relevant learning theories and development of scaffolding and DI. I also identify key similarities and differences between scaffolding and DI. Finally, I illustrate how scaffolding and DI can be interleaved in a science lesson to strategically call upon both constructivist and Vygotskian approaches to learning at specific points. I argue that integrating both scaffolding and DI as synergistic methods promotes greater impacts on knowledge construction and advancement of students’ zones of proximal development (ZPDs) than using either method alone. In sharing this model for modifying lessons, I contribute to models of learning theory in practice that support the work of teachers and teacher educators.