Dialogism: A Framework for CSCL and a Signature of Collaboration

International audienceAs Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) gains a broader usage in multiple educational scenarios facilitated by the use of technology, the need for automated tools capable of detecting and stimulating collaboration increases. We propose a computational model using ReaderBench that assesses collaboration from a dialogical perspective. Accordingly, collaboration emerges from the intertwining of different points of view or, more specifically, from the inter-animation of voices pertaining to different speakers. Collaboration is determined from the intertwining or overlap of voices emitted by different participants throughout the ongoing conversation. This study presents a validation of this model consisting of a comparison between the output of our system and human evaluations of 10 chat conversations, selected from a corpus of more than 100 chats, in which Computer Science students debated on the advantages and disadvantages of CSCL technologies (e.g., chat, blog, wiki, forum, or Google Wave). The human evaluations of the degree of collaboration between the participants and the automated scores showed good overlap as measured by precision, recall, and F1 scores. Our overarching conclusion is that dialogism derived from the overlapping of voices can be perceived as a signature for collaboration

Online discussion compensates for suboptimal timing of supportive information presentation in a digitally supported learning environment

This study used a sequential set-up to investigate the consecutive effects of timing of supportive information presentation (information before vs. information during the learning task clusters) in interactive digital learning materials (IDLMs) and type of collaboration (personal discussion vs. online discussion) in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) on student knowledge construction. Students (N = 87) were first randomly assigned to the two information presentation conditions to work individually on a case-based assignment in IDLM. Students who received information during learning task clusters tended to show better results on knowledge construction than those who received information only before each cluster. The students within the two separate information presentation conditions were then randomly assigned to pairs to discuss the outcomes of their assignments under either the personal discussion or online discussion condition in CSCL. When supportive information had been presented before each learning task cluster, online discussion led to better results than personal discussion. When supportive information had been presented during the learning task clusters, however, the online and personal discussion conditions had no differential effect on knowledge construction. Online discussion in CSCL appeared to compensate for suboptimal timing of presentation of supportive information before the learning task clusters in IDLM

Coordinating visualizations of polysemous action: Values added for grounding proportion

We contribute to research on visualization as an epistemic learning tool by inquiring into the didactical potential of having students visualize one phenomenon in accord with two different partial meanings of the same concept. 22 Grade 4-6 students participated in a design study that investigated the emergence of proportional-equivalence notions from mediated perceptuomotor schemas. Working as individuals or pairs in tutorial clinical interviews, students solved non-symbolic interaction problems that utilized remote-sensing technology. Next, they used symbolic artifacts interpolated into the problem space as semiotic means to objectify in mathematical register a variety of both additive and multiplicative solution strategies. Finally, they reflected on tensions between these competing visualizations of the space. Micro-ethnographic analyses of episodes from three paradigmatic case studies suggest that students reconciled semiotic conflicts by generating heuristic logico-mathematical inferences that integrated competing meanings into cohesive conceptual networks. These inferences hinged on revisualizing additive elements multiplicatively. Implications are drawn for rethinking didactical design for proportions. © 2013 FIZ Karlsruhe

Building reflective practices in a pre-service math and science teacher education course that focuses on qualitative video analysis

The use of video for in-service and pre-service teacher development has been gaining acceptance, and yet video remains a challenging and understudied tool. Many projects have used video to help pre-service and in-service teachers reflect on their own teaching processes, examine teacher–student interactions, and develop their professional vision. But rarely has video been used in ways more akin to qualitative education research that is focused on student learning. Even more rarely has this focus occurred at the earliest stages of pre-service teaching when students have not yet decided to pursue teaching careers. Yet here we argue that there are benefits to our approach. We examine a course for prospective pre-service math and science teachers at the University of California, Berkeley, that engages participants in qualitative video analysis to foster their reflective practice. This course is unique in that the prospective pre-service teachers engage in qualitative video analysis at a level characteristic of professional educational research, in that their analysis focuses on student learning of math and science content. We describe classroom activities that provide opportunities for the preservice teacher participants to better observe, notice, and interpret their students’ sociocognitive activity. The course culmination project involves participants developing and teaching lessons in a high school classroom. The participants then videotape the lessons and conduct qualitative video analysis. Results include detailed examples of two selected prospective pre-service teachers demonstrating coherent and effective approaches to conceptualizing the learning and teaching of mathematical and science content along with some potential design principles for building reflective practices through qualitative video projects. © 2018 Association for Science Teacher Education

Leveraging Current Instructional Practices to Achieve Disciplinary Literacy in a Fifth Grade Science Classroom

Historically, reforms designed to transform teaching from rote, teacher-centered instruction to progressive student-centered instruction have had varied levels of success. Plentiful research juxtaposes teachers’ enacted instruction with the instructional ideals of reform efforts to determine the extent to which teachers’ instruction aligns with reform-based science education standards. Discrepancies and continuities are frequently explained by the mediating effects of the instructional context. While this information is valuable and establishes the strong interdependent relationship between context and instruction, little research attends to the capacity of specific contexts to support reform-based instruction. In this dissertation, I explore the liminal space between science reform adoption and reform implementation in a rural, fifth grade classroom. I immersed myself in a veteran teacher’s classroom context for two units of study, the solar system and “The Scientific Method.” Using Creswell’s (2013) interative, inductive approach along with tools from content and discourse analysis, I analyzed interview recordings and transcipts; classroom observation recordings, field notes, and digital photographs; and classroom artifacts to examine how contextual resources and constraints shape the teacher’s instructional practices and the extent to which her existing practices align with reform-based ideals and practices. Findings indicate that the teacher’s accessible resources (e.g., her own education, school provisions) and professional expectations (e.g., previous standards, school policies) position science as a set of disciplines comprised of a discrete facts that are learned through low-level cognitive tasks of recalling and understanding content and procedural knowledge. Nonetheless, in accordance with the National Academies’ call for context-specific instructional support, this study identifies existing pedagogical practices that can be leveraged to achieve instruction that more closely approximates reform-based instructional practices and considers the potential for developing teachers’ instructional practices through zones of feasible innovation (Rogan, 2007). I detail the process for identifying zones of feasible innovation for the participating teacher’s instruction as a model for designing individual learning trajectories with examples from the instructional context analyzed in this dissertation. Findings and conclusions from this study highlight the need for teacher conceptual change through reflective practices and dialogic interactions. Moreover, this study also suggests school leaders will need to ensure that school structures allow teachers adequate planning and instructional time for science as well as access to technology and spaces appropriate for science activities. Finally, this study establishes a need for equitable access to professional learning opportunities and more research exploring avenues for supporting teachers in their individual, diverse contexts (e.g., open-access, virtual educative curriculum materials), particularly those with limited resources in isolated locations.PHDEducational StudiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163119/1/jopaquet_1.pd

Mathematical conjecturing and proving

Most university courses in mathematics programs are characterized by a strong focus on the axiomatic nature of mathematics, and thus also on proof as the central scientific method of mathematics (Selden, A. & Selden, 2008). Lecturers write proofs on the blackboard, students attempt to demonstrate their understanding and skills by proving theorems on their own or in collaboration with others. However, there is often little systematic discussion in these courses on how new mathematical conjectures can be generated and on how proofs are constructed (Alcock, 2010). Students’ experiences with conjecturing and proving in schools or in university mathematics courses often lead them to “consider proof as a static product rather than a negotiated process that can help students justify and make sense of mathematical ideas” (Otten, Bleiler-Baxter, & Engledowl, 2017, p. 112). Yet, several authors (e.g., Epp, 2003; Savic, 2015a; Selden, A. & Selden, 2008) have hypothesized that often only little time can be devoted to illustrate students which strategies and processes may help to step through the proof construction process and to recover from proving impasses. Furthermore, the knowledge about what characterizes proof processes that lead to a successful outcome (i.e., an acceptable mathematical proof [according to local acceptance criteria]) is rare. To approach this issue, an extensive systematic literature search was conducted to summarize common claims and empirical findings about promising conjecturing and proving processes. 126 articles that focussed on conjecturing and proving were clustered using a topic modeling method. The algorithm identified 17 different topics. The most representative papers for each topic, in total 45 papers, were qualitatively analysed with regard to their research perspectives on which they were based and their claims and findings about the processes that are needed to successfully generate conjectures and construct proofs. This combination of statistical clustering and qualitative analyses allowed a systematic categorization of claims and empirical findings about successful conjecturing and proving processes in the literature. Based on this review, a set of characteristics of conjecturing and proving processes, that are assumed or reported to be crucial for success, is proposed. For the further analysis of such process characteristics, we started from a model differentiating students’ prerequisites they bring to bear on the proving situation, the conjecturing and proving processes they engage in, and the quality of the resulting product. The main question of the empirical work in this dissertation was, which process characteristics influence the quality of the final product (the formulated conjecture and constructed proof), and in which way they mediate the impact of students’ prerequisites on this product. Specifically, we distinguished between individual-mathematical and social-discursive process characteristics of conjecturing and proving. These process characteristics were extracted from prior research in mathematics education or in educational psychology or in the Learning Sciences. The central aim of this dissertation was to develop an instrument for assessing (prospective undergraduate) mathematics students’ conjecturing and proving processes in collaborative situations. A high-inference rating scheme with seven scales, based on theoretical considerations and on rating guidelines adapted from educational research was designed. The rating scheme was evaluated in a study with N=98 prospective undergraduate students working in dyads on an open-ended conjecturing and proving task. The results of the empirical study with regard to the basic analyses showed that collaborative conjecturing and proving processes could be rated with sufficient reliability and that the structure of the data corresponded to the underlying theoretical assumption that two dimensions, one related to individual-mathematical and one related to social-discursive process characteristics can be distinguished. The in-depth analyses pointed out that individual-mathematical process characteristics were predictive for the quality of the resulting product and mediated the relation between prerequisites (students’ prior knowledge on proof) and the quality of the product. In this way, the dissertation contributes to the scientific debate on how to assess (mathematical argumentation) skills (e.g., Blömeke, Gustafsson, & Shavelson, 2015; Koeppen, Hartig, Klieme, & Leutner, 2008) and provides theoretical and empirical insights on individual-mathematical and social-discursive process characteristics that describe the quality of collaborative conjecturing and proving processes

Managing A Discursive Journey for Classroom Inquiry: Examination of a Teacher’s Discursive Moves

This study presents an analysis of teacher discursive moves (TDMs) that aid students in altering their thinking and talking systems. The participants were a science who handled the immersion inquiry activities. The primary data source was the video recorded in the classroom. This video-based data was analyzed through systematic observation in two phases comprising coding and counting to reveal the mechanics of the discursive journey. Three assertions were made for the dynamics of the discursive journey. First, the teacher enacted a wide range of TDMs incorporating dialogically/monologically oriented, simplified (observe-compare-predict), and rather sophisticated moves (challenging). The challenging moves were the most featured among all analytical TDMs. Second, once higher-order categories were composed by collapsing subcategories of the displayed TDMs, the communicating-framing moves were the most prominent performed moves. Lastly, the teacher created an argumentative atmosphere in which the students had the right to evaluate and judge their classmates and teacher's utterances that modified the epistemic and social authority of the discursive journey. Finally, educational recommendations are offered in the context of teachers noticing the mechanics and dynamics of the discourse journey

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Plan-Draw-Evaluate (PDE) pattern in students' collaborative drawing: Interaction between visual and verbal modes of representation

The use of group drawing to promote student-generated representation is a common instructional strategy as it combines the benefits of using visual representation and collaborative talk. Although the affordances of group drawing have increasingly been emphasized in science education, few studies have investigated how drawing as a visual mode interacts with group discourse as a verbal mode as well as how that interaction facilitates the development of students' collective ideas. Informed by theories in classroom discourse and multimodality, this paper examines the interaction process between a verbal and visual mode of representation as groups of students engaged in collaborative drawing during guided science inquiry lessons. On the basis of the analysis of data from a science class that adopted group drawing, we found and documented a recurring pattern, Plan-Draw-Evaluate or PDE pattern, in how the interaction between the verbal and visual modes occurred during collaborative drawing. This PDE pattern consisted of a triad of moves that alternate between the two modes and fulfilled various discursive purposes, such as suggesting, requesting, recording, visualizing, elaborating, agreeing, and rejecting. The PDE pattern provided a basic social structure that facilitated the collaboration and progression of students' ideas. With illustrations of PDE patterns and its variations, we argue that the PDE pattern provides an insight into the dynamic organization of interactions involved in group drawing that takes into consideration the multimodal affordances of verbal and visual modes of representation and the progression of ideas developed through collaborative discourse