ABSTRACT
This chapter examines distributed scaffolding, an emerging approach in the design of supports for rich learning environments intended to help students develop disciplinary ways of knowing, doing, and communicating. It presents research to date to articulate some patterns of distributed scaffolding and the pedagogical considerations that they target. Synergy refers to the characteristic that different components of distributed scaffolding, such as software supports and teacher coaching, address the same learning need and interact with each other to produce a robust form of support. The chapter illustrates the pattern through classroom examples and discusses the scaffolding functions that it can fulfill. It deals with implications for the principled design of distributed scaffolding. Cultural tools and mediational means are often used interchangeably. The basic idea behind distributed scaffolding is that developing disciplinary ways of knowing, doing, and communicating entails a large assortment of learning or support needs.
