The point of eliciting the apprentice's articulation is to encourage reflection an important cognitive activity which is critical for effective learning A critical piece to the concept of scaffolding is fading. If the scaffolding is successful, students will learn to achieve the action or goal without the scaffolding. For students to practice the action or goal without the scaffolding, the scaffolding must fade. Instead, scaffolding should be adapted to individual student needs, typically through gradual reductions in scaffolding. However, fading does not need to be a continuous range discrete levels of support that facilitate student can provide the necessary flexibility such that each student is facilitated in performance and learning without being stifled by too much scaffolding or failing due to too little scaffolding.
Good teachers use scaffolding to support students in learning to achieve a goal or process.
Emile is an attempt to facilitate student programming for modeling and simulation by implementing scaffolding in the programming environment. Software-realized scaffolding to facilitate programming for science learning. Interacive Learning Environments. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan. Technological support for the learning and doing of design.