Scaffolding and assisted performance in multilingual classrooms

Abstract

Vygotskian-inspired sociocultural theory and related theoretical approaches ask us to read carefully the story of the classroom as it is generally told and to act towards how it might be; not as distanced teachers, researchers or implementers of policy - possibly putting to one side our own histories and practices - but as agents within a template of possibility. In agreeing with Lave (1996), we must ask ourselves what kinds of people are ‘becoming’ in our classrooms? Approaching an answer to this question, Young (1992, p 2) argues that classrooms and the activity within - especially the nature of the talk - should be of a kind:

which aims to equip each new generation of learners with problem-solving powers beyond those of the old generation which is teaching them.

Put another way, teachers need to assist the children in their care to be better thinkers than they are themselves. Through a series of everyday scenes and some brief snapshots from my recent classroom experience, in this paper I provide a practical recount of some attempts I have made to explore pedagogy from a sociocultural perspective in a multilingual primary classroom.