Learning Science and the LSAT – Part 3: Scaffolding
Learning science has come a long way in recent years, and we’ve been learning with it. We incorporate the latest discoveries in learning science into our LSAT courses to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of your prep. Want to see? Try the first session of any of our upcoming courses for free.
“Why can’t I do this homework? I understood the questions in class!”
Raise your hand if you’ve been there before. Now realize that no one around you knows why you’re raising your hand, and put it down. If you were reading this in class and just got called on, I apologize.
We all know the feeling of “knowing” something in class, following along perfectly, and understanding the explanation, and then heading home and struggling through the homework. Worst of all, most homework is designed with a mind towards you perfecting your skills – if you’re lost, there’s not much you can do to fix that.
So what’s going on?
There’s a big gulf between what you can understand and what you can do.
When someone else is prompting you with questions, pointing you in the right direction, telling you the strategy to use, and then explaining their own solution, it’s a lot easier to follow along. You can absolutely understand that solution, and you can understand the work, each step and strategy used along the way.
However, it’s a lot different when you’re the one who needs to do the work. There are a ton of paths in front of you, and you need to select the correct one. Each fork along the path? That’s on you. And there are no sign posts up ahead to tell you if you’re going on the right or wrong one.
Traditional classes, featuring a lot of lecture, are very good at helping you understand what is going on in a particular problem. And that definitely helps you along the learning path.
But if you want to master material – if you don’t want to be the person who understands in class but can’t perform on the test – then it’s important to workshop those questions. You need to be the one to do the work, to make those decisions, to fail, and then to have someone there who can help you figure out where you failed and how to avoid that in the future.
This type of in-class support is a form of scaffolded learning. When you show up for class, you’ll be able to answer certain questions, but others will be beyond you. One approach is to show you how to do problems, and that can be effective. But there also has to be steps where you work through, struggle on, and ultimately break through questions.
Under this model, the instructor works as a scaffold, supporting you in the places where you aren’t yet proficient. This support takes the form of guidance, hints, and questions, but it’s not about giving you the solution. It’s about guiding you as you do the work to learn how to approach the question yourself.
Large classes with lecture-style teaching simply can’t hit this type of instruction, but it’s key to developing approaches in class. After all, if an instructor is just giving you explanations, you might as well be at home, watching a video.
Want to apply learning science to your LSAT prep experience? Don’t forget that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person LSAT courses absolutely free. We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here. ?
Matt Shinners is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in New York City. After receiving a degree in Biochemistry from Boston College, Matt scored a 180 on his LSAT and enrolled in Harvard Law School. There’s nothing that makes him happier than seeing his students receive the scores they want to get into the schools of their choice. Check out Matt’s upcoming LSAT courses here!