The study buddy is a learning strategy employed in a graduate distance course to promote informal peer reviewing of assignments before submission. This strategy promotes student-student interaction and helps break the social isolation of distance learning. Given the concern by Arum and Roksa (2011) that student-student interaction may be…

This critical analysis of the scaffolding metaphor for the field of learning disabilities first reviews the origins and early applications of the metaphor and criticisms of the metaphor raised by others. It proposes an enriched version of the metaphor which emphasizes the communicational dynamics and conceptual reorganization involved in…

This commentary on C. Addison Stone's paper on the scaffolding metaphor for the learning disabilities field concludes that the scaffolding metaphor is fundamentally flawed. The author proposes an alternative model, Strategic Content Learning, which is seen as more successfully promoting correspondence between instructional activities and the…

This commentary on C. Addison Stone's paper on the scaffolding metaphor for learning disabilities first suggests the flying buttress, which becomes integrated into a new structure, as a better metaphor. It suggests that scaffolded instruction depends on sophisticated shared assumptions about the conversational process. Evidence that some children…

This response by the original author to six commentaries on his paper concerning the scaffolding metaphor for learning disabilities highlights common themes (such as the basic dynamics of meaningful learning) and revisits arguments for and against the utility of the metaphor. Suggestions for broadening the metaphor to address related issues such…

This commentary on C. Addison Stone's paper on scaffolding for the learning disabilities field suggests that many current applications prevent rather than encourage transfer of responsibility to students for learning and task accomplishment and that current practices in many schools may result in "reverse-scaffolding". (DB)

The student teaching field experience has proven to be one of the most critical components of teacher preparation programs, and yet little is known about how pedagogical skills develop during this period. The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine student teachers' classroom interactions over the course of a 10-week student teaching…