Designing digital resources to effectively scaffold teachers’ learning

Abstract

This article synthesizes findings from an on-going line of inquiry investigating the potential of educatively scaffolded digital resources to help teachers understand and implement a complex model of history instruction, problem-based historical inquiry. The digital resources developed for this inquiry provided teachers with wise-practice curricula that were also scaffolded with opportunities to develop their craft. Spanning two design-based research investigations, I followed six social studies teachers as they planned and implemented lessons designed from encounters with those scaffolded online materials. Here, I specifically concentrate on interface design principles that informed the construction of those digital resources and address two research questions: Do teachers interact with educatively scaffolded digital resources in substantially different ways from traditional materials?, and Can digital resources be educatively scaffolded to help social studies teachers better understand and implement problem-based historical inquiry?