Student wonderings: scaffolding student understanding within student-centred inquiry learning

This paper reports on scaffolding that is situated within a research project that examined the ways mathematical thinking emerged from student-centred inquiry. The project utilised qualitative methods to investigate a case study of a year-10 class (14–15-year-olds), at a new purpose-built secondary school designed to facilitate inquiry learning. In a learning situation, the teacher’s aim often involves scaffolding the learner in their zone of proximal development so that they transition to more independent processes. Student-centred inquiry enables the students to pose authentic, inquiry questions based on personal wonderings and curiosities. These questions ignite personal inquiry that might facilitate critical and mathematical thinking. The learning was supported by ‘needs-based’ workshops about concepts or processes that the inquiries evoked. The paper considers one of the project’s conclusions that learning through a student-centred inquiry process initiated scaffolding of the learning by the teacher and peer group. A key aim of this learning approach is for students to take more responsibility for their learning trajectory. This aspect, allied with the students most frequently working in groups, suggested that the nature of scaffolding might differ from traditional classroom situations. In particular, the paper considers the responsiveness and transfer of responsibility stages of scaffolding in student-centred inquiry learning, including the layered, distributive and cumulative elements associated with scaffolding in whole class situations.