Analysis of students’ ideas and conceptual artifacts in knowledge-building discourse

This study proposes a new methodological approach to evaluate students’ knowledge-building discourse. First, we discuss the knowledge–creation metaphor of learning. In the metaphor, theories mention that learners should consider their collective knowledge objects or artifacts that materialize as a result of their collaborative discourse. Second, we argue the necessity of developing new analytics to evaluate student learning. We describe how students’ ideas and their conceptual artifacts can be examined in discourse analysis. Third, we demonstrate the application of our analytics to real discourse data. We conducted a new type of social network analysis of discourse to examine how students continuously improve their ideas. Further, we conducted another network analysis of discourse, called the Epistemic Network Analysis, by coding students’ epistemic actions as conceptual artifacts to create and examine their ideas.     

Saturate,situate, synthesize: Fostering preservice teachers’ conceptual and practical knowledge for learning to lead class discussion

To develop preservice teachers’ (PSTs’) knowledge and practice for complex teaching, a pedagogical innovation featured a design of saturate, situate, and synthesize. Small-group inquiry into English teaching challenges was guided by a course saturated with diverse resources, situated in K-12 classrooms, and supported by visualization tools and reflection for synthesis. A case of one diverse group analyzes how they developed knowledge and practice for facilitating discussion to support critical response to text. Supported by diverse resources and synthesizing tools, discourse analysis into their culturally and linguistically diverse students’ interactions, social dynamics, and perspectives shaped PSTs’ conceptions of students co-constructing discussion.     

Assessment and the co-regulation of learning in the classroom

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the processes of regulation of student learning that are associated with formative assessment in the classroom. It discusses the concept of co-regulation and presents a model of co-regulation developed in a situated perspective on classroom learning. This model conceptualises co-regulated learning as resulting from the joint influence of student self-regulation and of sources of regulation in the learning environment: namely, the structure of the teaching/learning situation, the teacher’s interventions and interactions with students, the interactions between students, and the tools used for instruction and for assessment. Examples of research showing how co-regulation functions are discussed, in particular students’ use of tools for self-assessment and peer assessment, and the role of teacher–student interactions that encourage active student participation in formative assessment.     

Designing pedagogic strategies for dialogic learning in higher education

This article focuses on the pedagogic value of dialogue to strengthen pre-service teachers’ reflective practices and improve their knowledge about the power of talk for learning. Dialogic learning was introduced to a unit of study taken by a final-year cohort of students in an initial teacher education degree at an urban university in Australia. Various opportunities for dialogue were designed into the unit through blended learning such as face-to-face tutorials, social networks and Viva Voce contexts. In the face of mixed opinion on their efficacy, the author profiles the use of social networks as a means of incorporating more interactive discourse through Web 2.0 platforms in higher education. The mixed-methods study reports on data collected from focus group interviews run at the end of the semester. An analytical framework based on Alexander’s principles of dialogic learning is used to interrogate the data set. The results illustrate the positive impact that dialogue employed as a pedagogic tool had on the value students perceived of their learning experience. It is recommended that designs for learning in higher education incorporate iterative exchanges across a variety of blended learning contexts to encourage productive interactions between students, peers and tutors.     

Effective self- and co-regulation in collaborative learning groups: An analysis of how students regulate problem solving of authentic interdisciplinary tasks

This study examined the use of collaborative interdisciplinary authentic tasks as a context in which learners develop and use self-regulated learning (SRL) processes. Participants included sixty-four students from a U.S. middle school whose residents are largely from low-income families. Students worked in groups to design and carry out an authentic, interdisciplinary project over a 9-week period. A Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) analysis suggested that students’ individual SRL increased over the course of the project and that co-regulated learning (CRL) moderated this relationship. Furthermore, one group was selected as an exemplar case to provide an explanation of how co-regulation occurred and influenced SRL in this collaborative group. Theoretical and practical implications of the research are discussed.     

The emergence of leadership in students’ group interaction in a school-based makerspace

This case study is an examination of the emergence of leadership in students’ group interaction in a school-based makerspace. The data comprised video records of 20 primary school students’ group work within this context, encompassing student-driven creative engagement in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) learning activities. Interaction analysis was applied to analyze the students’ leadership moves and to depict how students’ leadership was related to their collaboration. The analysis resulted in a typology of students’ leadership moves in a makerspace context, namely, coordination of joint work, exploring new ideas, seeking out resources,

and offering guidance and supporting others, adding to the existing literature on student leadership and collaboration in novel learning environments. The study also illustrates how the students’ leadership moves in group interactions can lead to dominating and/or shared leadership, with consequences for students’ collaboration. The study points to the importance of more research and development of pedagogical practices that support students’ symmetric participation and opportunities to lead collaborative work and to promote advanced collaboration in school-based makerspaces.

     

An exploration of social regulation of learning during scientific argumentation discourse

Argumentation and scientific discourse are essential aspects of science education and inquiry in the 21st century. Student groups often struggle to enact these critical science skills, particularly with challenging content or tasks. Social regulation of learning research addresses the ways groups attempt to navigate such struggles by collectively planning, monitoring, controlling, and reflecting upon their learning in collaborative settings. Such regulation and argumentation can also elicit socioemotional responses and interactions. However, little is known regarding how regulation processes and socioemotional interactions manifest among students involved in small-group discourse about scientific phenomena. As such, in this qualitative study, we explored social regulation of learning, scientific argumentation discourse, and socioemotional interactions in the discussions of two groups of high school physics students (n = 7, n = 6). We found key qualitative distinctions between the two groups, including how they enacted planning activities, their emphasis on challenging other’s ideas versus building shared understanding, and how socioemotional interactions drove discourse. Commonalities across groups included how regulation initiation related to discourse, as well as how the difficulty of the content hindered, and teacher support augmented, the enactment of social regulation. Finally, we found overlapping regulation and discourse codes that provide a foundation for future work.     

‘Who Thinks this Teaspoon Is Art?’ A Discourse Analysis of Elementary School Students' Negotiation of Meaning During Art Museum Visits

This intrinsic case study examines art museum learning of elementary school students during a week-long visit at the Mackenzie Art Museum. Museums are informative institutions that provide opportunities for visitors to engage with self, others, and society. It is a unique place for visitors to learn beyond classroom settings. This project aims to analyse the discourse around art and understand how young learners utilise discourse as tools to make meaning during art museum visits. By examining learners' dialogues, the research investigated a meaning-making framework that incorporates strategies for negotiating insights in art museums. This study includes approximately 12 hours of video-recorded data and student artefacts. The data suggests learners engage and form new meanings through building and negotiating discourses with peers and museum educators. Different discourses and knowledge are valued and reinforced by members of the group. This study addresses the gap in children's meaning-making during art museum visits, illustrating their strategies to construct knowledge and bridge connections.     

Towards Knowledge Building: From Facts to Explanations in Primary Students' Computer Mediated Discourse

Educational institutions are required to find new pedagogical and cognitive models and practices to cope with the challenges of an emerging knowledge society. In creating a theoretical and practical model for future education, Scardamalia and Bereiter have proposed the concept of knowledge building. An early implementation of this idea was in the networked classroom software and ancillary structures known as Computer-Supported Intentional Learning Environment (CSILE). The present study aimed to explore the indicators of knowledge building in computer-mediated discourse among 26 11-year-old Finnish students. The data were collected during a four-week course on Energy, and consisted of students' postings stored in the CSILE database. Analysis revealed three pedagogically and cognitively different modes of discourse: social-oriented, fact-oriented, and explanation-oriented. These modes differed essentially from each other in the nature of the knowledge which students constructed during discourse and in the object and focus of students' communication. During explanation-oriented discourse, students actively used abstract and scientific concepts and the objects of their comments were theories, ideas and methods of research. Such activity is a component of knowledge building. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Activity Theory as a Framework for Analysing Knowledge Building

Content analyses of computer databases parsed into notes or ideas do not shed adequate light on the role of collaboration and the Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning environment in knowledge building; analysis of what is happening in the classroom and how students interpret that is also needed. This study used ethnographic methods to explore activity theory as an analytic framework for knowledge building, drawing from a class of Grade 4 students’ contributions to online and face-to-face discourse over a period of five months, as well as end-of-year interviews with the students. The analysis focuses on four issues: community; rules; mediating artefacts; and division of labour. The findings indicate how understanding such issues can lead to better understanding of collaboration and of the role of the online environment. The use of activity theory as a framework for improving pedagogy aimed at knowledge building is also outlined.     

Assessment for learning as support for student self-regulation

Assessment for learning (AfL) is integral to teaching and learning, and has as its central foci (i) pedagogical intervention in the immediacy of student learning, and (ii) the students’ agency in the learning and assessment process. The role that students adopt in AfL is consistent with the idea of self-regulated learning, which involves students as metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally active agents in their own learning. Through an analysis of an extended sequence of classroom interaction for the purpose of obtaining evidence of learning, this paper demonstrates that self-regulation is supported through a temporary process of co-regulation between teacher and student in the context of AfL. Co-regulation is a construct derived from Vygotsky’s concept of socially mediated learning, and the neo-Vygotskian perspective on human learning as a culturally based communicative process, through which knowledge is shared and constructed. Specific features of co-regulation illustrated through the analyses presented in the paper are (i) goal orientation, a focus on the learning to be achieved; (ii) scaffolding, the assistance the teacher provides to achieve a goal that is currently beyond students’ unassisted efforts; (iii) intersubjectivity, a shared understanding based on a common focus of attention; (iv) the active construction of knowledge by students, rather than transference of knowledge from the teacher to the student; and (v) temporary support, provided through scaffolding and other external supports that students can ultimately appropriate as their own.     

Promoting elementary students’ epistemology of science through computer-supported knowledge-building discourse and epistemic reflection

This study examined the role of computer-supported knowledge-building discourse and epistemic reflection in promoting elementary-school students’ scientific epistemology and science learning. The participants were 39 Grade 5 students who were collectively pursuing ideas and inquiry for knowledge advance using Knowledge Forum (KF) while studying a unit on electricity; they also reflected on the epistemic nature of their discourse. A comparison class of 22 students, taught by the same teacher, studied the same unit using the school’s established scientific investigation method. We hypothesised that engaging students in idea-driven and theory-building discourse, as well as scaffolding them to reflect on the epistemic nature of their discourse, would help them understand their own scientific collaborative discourse as a theory-building process, and therefore understand scientific inquiry as an idea-driven and theory-building process. As hypothesised, we found that students engaged in knowledge-building discourse and reflection outperformed comparison students in scientific epistemology and science learning, and that students’ understanding of collaborative discourse predicted their post-test scientific epistemology and science learning. To further understand the epistemic change process among knowledge-building students, we analysed their KF discourse to understand whether and how their epistemic practice had changed after epistemic reflection. The implications on ways of promoting epistemic change are discussed.     

Inquiry in interaction: How local adaptations of curricula shape classroom communities

In this study, we seek a better understanding of how individuals and their daily interactions shape and reshape social structures that constitute a classroom community. Moreover, we provide insight into how discourse and classroom interactions shape the nature of a learning community, as well as which aspects of the classroom culture may be consequential for learning. The participants in this study include two teachers who are implementing a new environmental science program, Global Learning through Observation to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE), and interacting with 54 children in an urban middle school. Both qualitative and quantitative data are analyzed and presented. To gain a better understanding of the inquiry teaching within classroom communities, we compare and contrast the discourse and interactions of the two teachers during three parallel environmental science lessons. The focus of our analysis includes (1) how the community identifies the object or goal of its activity; and (2) how the rights, rules, and roles for members are established and inhabited in interaction. Quantitative analyses of student pre‐ and posttests suggest greater learning for students in one classroom over the other, providing support for the influence of the classroom community and interactional choices of the teacher on student learning. Implications of the findings from this study are discussed in the context of curricular design, professional development, and educational reform. ? 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 905‐935, 2004.     

Improving the pedagogy of Islamic religious education through an application of critical religious education,variation theory and the learning study model

This study presents a new theoretical and pedagogical framework based on the theories of Critical Religious Education (CRE), Variation Theory (VT) and the Learning Study model with the purpose of improving teaching and learning in Islamic Religious Education (IRE). It reports a Learning Study conducted in a secondary girls Muslim school in London on the topic of ‘Islam and being Muslim’. The aim of this research study is to examine if and how the proposed framework can be applied to IRE lessons, and how it affects the students’ learning. Thirty students of two seventh grade classes and their religious education teacher participated in the study. The data was collected through interviews and written tasks with the students before and after their participation in the study, video-recordings of the research lessons, and meetings with the teacher. Phenomenography and VT were utilised in the analysis of the data. The results suggest that the use of CRE, VT and Learning Study in teaching Islam contributes to students’ learning outcomes by means of helping teacher consider students’ diverse perspectives on religious phenomena when planning and implementing the curricular content, increasing students’ awareness of the ontological and epistemological dimensions of their faith as well as allowing them to make informed judgments about religious phenomena.     

Judy constructs a genuine question: a case for interactional inclusion

This case study offers teachers and teacher educators a sociocultural view of inclusion, showing how it was accomplished for a student who had long been segregated in special education classrooms. Judy, a student classified as learning disabled, participated and learned in collaboration with her peers in a diverse classroom environment. Through close analysis of segments of instructional discourse, the study illustrates how her general education teacher enacted “interactional inclusion”. By making particular discourse moves, he supported the building of an inclusional culture that repositioned Judy and her classmates. She achieved social affiliation and academic success, without limiting other students’ learning opportunities. The study provides guidelines for the implementation of classroom inclusive practices suggested by this profile; offers evidence of the benefits of this kind of research; and, argues for why we need more if it.     

Active classroom participation in a Group Scribbles primary science classroom

A key stimulus of learning efficacy for students in the classroom is active participation and engagement in the learning process. This study examines the nature of teacher–student and student–student discourse when leveraged by an interactive technology—Group Scribbles (GS) in a Primary 5 Science classroom in Singapore which supports rapid collaborative knowledge building (RCKB). We envisaged nine design principles for RCKB in the design of lessons and postulated a logic model that links and explains the effects of our design principles to the ultimate goal of learning efficacy. We presented a case study of a GS lesson which shows that GS affordances leveraged by good lesson and activity design could enable the students to have more epistemic agency. Students had opportunities to participate spontaneously in class discussions by fully expressing their ideas without inhibition. The technology effect is used to support instant formative feedback and interactions among students effectively.     

Experiences in Sense Making: Health Science Students’ I-Positioning in an Online Philosophy of Science Course

This article reports on a qualitative study on the dialogical approach to learning in the context of higher education. The aim was to shed light on the I-Position and multivoicedness in students’ identity building and to provide empirical substantiation for these theoretical constructs, focusing especially on the connection between personal knowledge and theoretical knowledge. The study explored how health science students’ reflections on their work and discipline-related experiences provided resources for making personal sense of and understanding the subject studied. The students took an online course on the philosophy of science. To study students’ internal and external dialogue in terms of multivoicedness in their sense-making processes I combined a discourse analysis with a dialogical approach. The results showed that in reflecting on their experiences in light of different scientific approaches, the students became engaged in dialogues with different voices, thereby experiencing tensions in their professional positioning. The reasoning tasks gave rise to internal dialogue, involving negotiation between different I-Positions of the self or heterodialogue with the texts. These identity negotiations were manifested in refining, strengthening, and reconstructing professional and scientific I-Positions and in sharing and constructing a We-Position.     

基于学习共同体的中小学生学习心理机制及有效教学策略

学习共同体的学习方式有别于传统的教师主讲式的课堂授课形式。学习共同体特别强调"师-生"之间,"生-生"之间缔结一个相互联系、相互制约、彼此促进的共同体来完成学生的学习活动。基于学习共同体的中小学生学习心理机制是一种主动建构、信息加工的过程,即:"1.输入信息、注意保持、认知观念;2.加工信息、内化知识、建构系统;3.改组经验、解决问题、生成能力"。学习共同体旨在教师引导下,让学生通过自主探究、小组讨论、合作分享、获得知识、生成能力。教师实施有效的教学策略,充分发挥学习共同体的功能,会促进培养中小学生的核心素养,提升学生分析问题解决问题能力。     

Students’ silence and identity in small group interactions

Problem-based learning (PBL) has been increasingly employed as a teaching and learning approach in many disciplines in higher education. In English medium of instruction (EMI) universities in Asia, PBL can further enhance knowledge construction as well as development of disciplinary language and communicative skills. It is necessary to explore how learners participate in PBL, especially considering PBL requires high level of both domain knowledge and language skills. The issue of silence in small group collaborative learning such as PBL tutorials has received very limited attention. More factors such as identity need to be considered in fully exploring small group interactions in higher education. Thus, this study aims to investigate undergraduate students’ silence and identity in small group interactions for PBL in EMI universities in Asia. Eight PBL tutorials in the Faculty of Dentistry were video recorded. Three extracts of PBL interactions and the accompanying stimulated recall interviews were selected for case analysis. The analysis provides in-depth insights into the significant instances of students’ silence and identity construction in the learning process. Such a study offers opportunities to rethink the issue of silence and provides facilitators and curriculum developers with useful information about small group collaborative learning in higher education.