Scaffolding trajectory: depicting teacher's thinking

Contingency is the main condition of scaffolding, where scaffolding is provided in accordance with the students' understanding so that the relationship between teacher and student in the problem-solving process is very close. In that condition, it is worth to learn about how the teacher thought is in diagnosing student' obstacle in dealing with the problem in mathematics learning. This qualitative research aims to investigate the scaffolding trajectory in solving mathematics problems that is limit of trigonometric. Scaffolding trajectory is used to analyze how the teacher thinks in providing assistance. Participants in this case study consisted of two teachers and 41 students of XII grader from two schools in Malang, Indonesia. The results showed that there were differences in the teachers' scaffolding trajectories. There were two categories of teacher's thinking in guiding students; diagnosis and lack of diagnosis. The category of diagnosis is identified from the assistance provided by the teacher that is appropriate to the needs of the students, while lack of diagnosis is identified from the inappropriate assistance provided by the teacher for the student's needs.