Scaffolding is one of those practices most educators have been trained to use, talk about as a part of daily planning, but might need to reconsider now that we live in the age of AI. We’ve been using it for a long time: breaking down a complex task, modeling a thinking move, offering a hint when a student gets stuck, then stepping back as they find their footing. But knowing what scaffolding is and implementing it with fidelity in an AI-enhanced classroom are two different things. When the support is too tight, too scripted, or never fades, scaffolding can stop being supportive of student learning and growth. In a classroom where AI is available, a student oriented toward completion rather than understanding is one click away from outsourcing the whole thing.

So this article is about one question with two parts: what does strong scaffolding look like when AI is in the room, and how do we design for it deliberately? The research on effective scaffolding gives us the foundation. AI gives us both a powerful new tool and a new set of risks. Understanding both is what makes the difference between AI enhancing student thinking and replacing it.

Definitions

I find that Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and differentiated instruction (DI) are often used interchangeably with scaffolding, so I want to take a minute to explore the three of them in relationship to one another before we move forward. I imagine that the conflation comes from the fact that each involves a teacher adjusting something for a learner to be successful. But there are some nuances between the three, and to make it more interesting, all three could technically exist at the same time.

Defining Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

CAST, the organization that developed Universal Design for Learning, describes UDL as a framework for designing curriculum so it works for all learners from the outset. Before the unit exists, a UDL-informed teacher is asking: Why are we learning this? How will I present it in multiple ways? How will students engage with it? How will they show what they know? The three principles (engagement, representation, and expression) aren't checkboxes. They're what Katie Novak might call design orientations.

Many teachers and school systems treat UDL as a synonym for accommodation: extra time, modified texts, assistive technology. Those things matter, but they aren't UDL. UDL isn't retrofitting the curriculum for students who can't access it. It's designing the curriculum so the barriers don't exist in the first place.

Defining Differentiated Instruction (DI)

Carol Ann Tomlinson, who is arguably a leader in differentiation, has stated for decades that differentiation is a proactive mindset that a teacher brings to planning. Before the lesson begins, a differentiated teacher is asking: Who are my learners? What do I know about where they’re starting? What pathways and options can I build in so the learning reaches all of them? Multiple approaches to content, process, and product; not different destinations, but different routes to the same one.

Many teachers have accepted a version of differentiation that means reducing the task for students who struggle. Fewer requirements or something like that. Tomlinson calls this myth out directly: differentiation is more qualitative than quantitative. It isn’t giving some students less of the same assignment. It’s rethinking the nature of the assignment so it fits the learner while keeping the learning objectives intact.

Defining Scaffolding

Scaffolding is what happens once learners are in the room, and you can see what’s actually happening. Pauline Gibbons puts it precisely in her book Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning. She writes:

“Scaffolding is not simply another word for help. It is a special kind of help that assists learners in moving toward new skills, concepts, or levels of understanding. It is future-oriented and aimed at increasing a learner’s autonomy. As Vygotsky has said, what a child can do with support today, she or he can do alone tomorrow.”

In practice, scaffolding might look like a sentence frame that gives a student the language structure so their thinking can do the real work. It looks like a worked example that shows the process, not just the product. It looks like gradual release: I do, we do, you do. A think-aloud where a teacher makes their invisible reasoning visible. A guiding question that narrows the cognitive load just enough to get a student unstuck without removing the challenge. Notice what all of these have in common: none of them lower the intellectual demand. Second, with scaffolding, the aim is that students gain a level of independence to implement learning strategies on their own or with peers rather than relying on the teacher.

Bringing UDL, DI, and Scaffolding Together

Here’s a Claude Artifact (screenshot also below) of my understanding between UDL, Differentiated Instruction (DI), and Scaffolding as supported by several texts and AIs.

All three of these practices can occupy the same classroom, the same lesson, even the same moment. Consider a history teacher designing a unit on the civil rights movement. Before the unit begins, she thinks about how students will access primary sources, how they will engage with the material, and how they will show understanding through writing, discussion, or a visual product. That’s UDL doing its work at the design stage.

Within the unit, she notices some students need more time with the documents while others are ready to move into analysis. For students still wrestling with the sources, she designs a close-reading process. For students ready to push further, she moves them into a comparison and argument-building process. Different actions, same destination. That’s differentiation.

Then on a Tuesday, she opens a language scaffold bot she built in advance; one that knows the sentence starters, knows the argument structure, and knows its job is to practice with students until they can do it alone. A student who can’t connect evidence to a claim works through three or four cycles with the bot; it offers a starter, the student completes it, the bot pushes back gently, and the student tries again. By the end, the student has written the sentence. The bot didn’t write it. The teacher didn’t write it either, though she designed the whole condition that made it possible. The scaffold existed for six minutes. The student is ready to meet the standard and gains a sense of independence.

Over-Scaffolding and The Learning Pit

When a teacher manages every step of a lesson, students follow the path but never make sense of the terrain. Ready-made answers lead students to reuse solutions rather than build reasoning. Frey, Fisher, and Almarode put it plainly in How Scaffolding Works: without sufficient fading, students develop a dependency on the supports provided and fail to reach independence.

It's a little counterintuitive, but teachers need to allow students to sit in what James Nottingham calls "the learning pit"; that uncomfortable space of not yet knowing, which is where the real thinking happens. Tolerating that discomfort long enough for the thinking to happen isn't cruelty. It's the whole mechanism.

Monday Ready Resource: Prompt for Learning Pit Coach

When students get stuck, this bot helps them sit with the discomfort long enough to work through it rather than around it. A great addition to a “ask three before me” approach.

COPY AND PASTE INTO AN AI BOT FOR STUDENTS: You are a coach for students who are stuck and frustrated. Your first job is not to ask a question. It is to acknowledge what the student is feeling. Tell them directly that being stuck is not a sign that something has gone wrong; it is a sign that they are in the middle of real learning. Be warm and specific: the discomfort they feel right now is the learning pit, and every person who has ever learned something hard has felt exactly this. Only after that acknowledgment ask them one question: what is one small thing you could tr...