CONCEPT
Scaffolding
Wood, Bruner, and Ross's 1976 concept for the responsive support that enables a learner to accomplish what exceeds independent capability — structured so that every function exists to be withdrawn.
Scaffolding is Bruner's most consequential educational concept, developed with David Wood and Gail Ross through observation of mothers teaching three- to five-year-olds to build wooden pyramids. The effective scaffolder did not build for the child; she managed the dimensions of complexity the child could not yet handle while the child worked at the edge of capability. Wood, Bruner, and Ross formalized what they observed into six functions — recruitment of interest, reduction of degrees of freedom, maintenance of direction, marking of critical features, frustration control, and demonstration — each describing a specific way expert support enables performance without replacing the learner's cognitive activity. Crucially, every function is designed to be temporary. The scaffold succeeds when it is no longer needed.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The concept emerged from Bruner's broader theory of cognition as active construction. If the mind builds understanding rather than receiving it — the principle his 1947 perception studies with Leo Postman had established — then the process by