Learning is Scaffolded Construction

Standard models of representation as encodings of what is represented yield models of knowledge as banks of such encodings. Learning, in such a view, is the transmission of new encodings into those storage banks in the mind. Technology, therefore, can be a wonderful aid in enhancing the accessibility and transmission of these encoded representations — in enhancing learning as viewed in this model. Every component and every step of this framework, however, is false, beginning with the central presuppositions about the nature of representation. This chapter outlines the fatal critiques of standard encoding models, introduces an alternative model of representation that solves and dissolves these aporia, and shows that this alternative model of representation forces a model of learning as construction, and a functional model of scaffolding that puts scaffolding, selfscaffolding, and the scaffolding of self-scaffolding, at the center of educational aims. This framework places technology at the center of an agentive and social process that participates in and nurtures such scaffolding, rather than just a high bandwidth storage and retrieval device.