Peer interaction and scaffolded support on social media: Exercising learner autonomy

As more practitioners use social media as a part of their teaching, this chapter will be of interest as it investigates both social media and Web 2.0, from the point of view of how scaffolding can be used successfully in these new environments. Peeters points out that in recent years the field of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) has increasingly explored and assessed the possibilities and constraints social media and Web 2.0 hold for language education, resulting in an intricate collection of research projects, applications and recommendations (cf. Peeters & Pretorius, 2020; Reinhardt, 2019, Zourou, 2019). Next to the enquiry into the affordances of these technologies, the growing adoption of Web 2.0 in language learning has also reignited a much older debate: how to conceptualise and interpret scaffolding as a pedagogical technique (Little et al., 2003). Generally speaking, scaffolding refers to any kind of support that teachers, learning advisors or peers can provide for learners to help them progress in their learning. While the concept of scaffolded support in education has been around for several decades (Wood et al., 1976), the ways in which scaffolding takes shape in dynamic and discursive learning spaces, such as the ones on social media, deserve further scrutiny (Sato & Ballinger, 2016). Moreover, the impact of scaffolded support on the development of learner autonomy in these online contexts and what roles learners and teachers play in this process are insufficiently explored (Cappellini, Lewis, & Rivens Mompean, 2017; Manca & Ranieri, 2016).