Interpersonal, social and societal signals in successful and unsuccessful scaffolding

The paper proposes the idea that observations on everyday scaffolding interactions may allow us to grasp interesting social signals referred to interpersonal helipng. After discussing theoretical understanding of scaffolding, back to the origin of this concept in Vygotsky works, the paper proposes an original methodological choice for disentangling successfull scaffolding from over-scaffolding that on the contrary does not foster the development of the child receiving it, since the adult underestimates the child's possibility to cope autonomously without any necessity being helped.