Peer Scaffolding to Learn Science in Symmetrical Groups Collaborating Over Time

While educators often assume that students working together in symmetrical groups support each other’s learning, this scaffolding may look very different from scaffolding in asymmetrical relationships. Little is known about how students in symmetrical groups support one another to learn. We examined scaffolding interactions of two symmetrical groups of students as they worked on physics simulations over time. We analyzed the interactions within each group to understand how students support their peers to learn science. We found that students in Group A had a significantly greater proportion of scaffolding discourse than students in Group B, but there were no significant differences in students’ learning gains between the two groups. However, we found that one student in each group emerged as a more dominant scaffolder by driving the discourse and helping the group move forward with the task; this student made the most learning gains in each group.