Patterns of Scaffolds in One-to-One Mathematics Teaching: An Analysis

Educators have been talking much about constructivism as the learning theory for mathematics education since the last quarter of the last century but the practice in teaching of mathematics in Pakistan is still the traditional content teaching approach. Scaffolding was formulated from Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development. It emphasizes active participation or a greater degree of control from students over their learning. Application of scaffolding in one-to-one or small group teaching of mathematics is easier than the large group teaching. The purpose of this paper is to explore and improve the prototypes of scaffolds in one-to-one mathematics teaching that may help to enhance classroom teaching especially for slow learners, in the mathematics classes. The results indicate that generally teachers provide ready-made solutions of the problems to students by traditional lecture method that ultimately produces a trend of memorizing the rigid methods to solve a problem and do not encourage them any independent venture. Teachers need to change their role in the classroom from the sole source of mathematical knowledge to facilitators in the development of students’ mathematical constructions, while employing scaffolding