This article considers how theories of instructional scaffolding--which call for a skilled expert to teach a novice a new task by breaking it into smaller pieces--might be employed in graduate-level qualitative methods courses. The author discusses how she used instructional scaffolding in the design and delivery of a qualitative methods course and suggests that the research methods literature, in particular, and higher education literature, more broadly, would benefit from considering how theories of instructional design affect student learning and teaching practice.