Looking back to look forward: scaffolding the student support pathway for students through the eyes of an early career legal academic

Our chapter outlines a pathway to help structure student support by drawing upon our combined experience as academics with responsibility for providing student support. In our teaching practice, we often found it difficult to navigate the student support terrain and this led us to create the CADSIF formula to help give some structure to our provision of student support. CADSIF focuses on structuring support by ensuring ‘Contact’ with the student to provide ‘Assurance’ through a supportive ‘Dialogue’ to ‘Signpost’ students to appropriate support. This helps to provide students with the ‘Information’ they need to make informed decisions in their personal learning, alongside continual supportive ‘Follow-Ups’ by academic colleagues. We explore the use of the CADSIF formula in four fictional personas to reflect on how it can be maximised to scaffold student support in a variety of different circumstances.