Term of the Week: Scaffolding

Why does a business professional need to know this?

Business professionals who implement scaffolding in learning and development initiatives—​whether at the group, department, or enterprise level—​provide a critical, temporary support that not only enables their workforce to be supported and elevated in their learning acquisition but also provides a metric against which they can measure the effectiveness of those initiatives.

Consider the following:

• Could a construction and facilities engineer build a multi-story building without building scaffolding to support the construction?

• Could a project manager manage a multi-year, multi-million-dollar contract, including the schedule and costs, without a work breakdown structure and a framework to support project planning and scheduling?

Not using scaffolding in these contexts can be compared to a learning-and-development professional not integrating scaffolding into learning activities. Without scaffolding, there would be no supports to guide the learner through the learning process.

Most of us need some type of support when learning something new or shoring up our current understanding. When we have learned what is needed, we move up to the next level and don’t need to rely on that support any longer.

Building scaffolding supports into learning and development creates a positive and empowering learning environment.