新作坊 Humanity Innovation and Social Practice

In recent years, public scholarship has gained widespread attention as universities are increasingly expected to take responsibility for significant social issues. In this context, this research project was implemented in a course focused on community engagement for college students who tutored disadvantaged junior high school students on reading. Participants included 14 undergraduates and one graduate student, with 13 in the first semester and seven in the second semester. In the fall semester of 2019, the students decided to become an autonomous learning team. This study is guided by these questions that emerged in this process: (1) What are their goals in becoming the autonomous learning team? (2) How are different goals being supported by the peer group or other kinds of scaffolding? (3) What is the role of the instructor in this process of gradually releasing responsibility to students?
The data included one-on-one interviews, records kept by the students in the process, minutes of their preparation meetings, and application forms and materials used in the process of becoming an autonomous learning team. The findings show that two aspects of their learning, professional developmentand administrative work, can be explained by peer scaffolding. Self-growth and social contribution are fostered by the climate of working together as a team, supported by both human and artifact scaffolds. The fading role of the teacher caused some frustration, yet the team eventually developed distributed scaffolding for the novices which led to better team cohesion.