Scaffolding Strategies for Diverse Proficiency Levels in PYP Context

This study explores how scaffolding strategies are implemented to support students with diverse English proficiency levels in the context of the bilingual Primary Years Programme (PYP). Drawing on Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, Krashen’s Input Hypothesis, and Tomlinson’s differentiated instruction framework, the research investigates how PYP teachers design, adapt, and fade scaffolding to enhance students’ comprehension, language development, and learner autonomy. The study adopts a qualitative case study approach, collecting data from classroom observations, teacher interviews, and reflective teaching logs in a bilingual international school in Poland. The findings reveal that effective scaffolding involves a dynamic combination of multimodal contextual support and interactive co-construction strategies, which are tailored to individual proficiency levels. The study also identifies key decision-making factors influencing teachers’ scaffolding choices, including students’ linguistic cues, task complexity, and classroom interaction patterns. Based on grounded analysis, the research proposes a cyclical scaffolding model that promotes progressive learner independence in bilingual PYP classrooms.