Scaffolding is like the opposite of "spoon-feeding". It is a guided learning that I, sometimes,use as a mother teaching her one-and-a-half year old son.
I would teach him the ABCs everyday, then at one point, I would just stop at A and B, so he would fill in the C.
I remember having a piano teacher when I was 8 years old. She was really quite old, and she didn't speak a lot. She would just show me how to do the song and I will just follow, she would have me do it again and again, but even if I get the song, there's no explanation why it was done like that.
There's no scaffolding that happened there. There was one summer that I studied Physics outside our school. It was really an advanced class, but somehow I was able to understand most concepts. The professor allowed us to analyze and see how the formula works after he lectures. He would go beside us and check to see how we were doing it. He would point out some details. He usually gives simple examples first before going to the more complex and difficult one. He was certainly more effective than my piano teacher.
Scaffolding, like in building buildings, are needed at the start. But at the end, the building will be able to stand without it. It is quite a good concept that teachers should keep in mind. As teachers, you would want your students to be able to be independent thinkers in the future.
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