Instructional Scaffolding Strategies in Problem-Solving Learning Environments

Educational scaffolding is a kind of supporting that will help to learner to learn for solving the problem. The purpose of this study was to investigate scaffolding educational strategies and development of the educational scaffolding framework in the problem-solving learning environment. This mixed study includes qualitative and quantitative sections. Qualitative content analysis method was used in the qualitative section and comparative survey research method was used in the quantitative section. In content analysis, 47 articles were evaluated according to the criteria. To form the proposed model, the obtained data were combined. The researcher-made questionnaire was used whose validity was confirmed by 5 experts in the Educational Sciences field. To validate the proposed model, 20 experts from the educational sciences field were selected by purposefully and the proposed model was validated based on their views. The results were analyzed using SPSS 18 software. Generally, experts had positive assessment to the proposed framework. The question related to the educational scaffolding strategies for the unstructured problem-solving learning environments (Question 7) obtained the lowest score and the question related to the effectiveness of the framework in the computer-based learning environments (Question 11) received the highest score. Development of the optimal scaffolding strategies is essential to design the learning environments.