I would have to agree with the teacher's response. As educators, we should be building foundations that are meant to last. Scaffolding is temporary assistance that will be removed at a future date, were as a foundation can support the student indefinitely.

Depending upon the grade level and content area, I can see this from both sides. Elementary teachers build foundations for everything that the students will learn as they continue throughout their education. How to read, how to write a sentence, how to compute mathematically, and how to use the scientific method are all things that students learn at an early age that is used throughout the rest of their educational careers and lives. However, once the foundations are build, scaffolding is used in order to build upon those foundations until the new structures (or concepts) are self-supported. As a middle school teacher, I know how important it is to scaffold upon what students have already learned, but I also realize that I am building new foundations for their high school teachers to build upon.

At the same time you are building a foundation of basic skills for your students, you can also scaffold. For example, we have just implemented a phonics program in our school. We are teaching students the basic skills they will need, or the foundation, to become good readers. The lessons within this program are very scaffolded. They follow the gradual release of responsibility model, where the teacher does, the teacher and student do together, and then the student does independently. The two, scaffolding and foundation, can and should exist and occur simultaneously.

Scaffolds are meant to be removed while foundations are meant to be permanently built upon. Without a foundation, all scaffolding is unsteady. Therefore, if a teacher is truly building a foundation for students, it is not appropriate to be teaching students advanced ideas. If the students do not have necessary background or experience, they cannot be expected to use content in complex or far-reaching ways. A solid foundation must come first.

I believe building foundation is a good representation, after all, this is what teachers do. Once students have the foundation and support, their growth and development can excel from there. Another word used in relation to scaffolding is spiraling. The information is spiraled and eventually navigates back around to where it initially started, helping to connect the content. Meaning, the information is implemented, students apply new information, and then evaluate their work to to check for understanding.