Embodied Interaffectivity in the Emergence and Maintenance of Group Cohesion

Group cohesion is an affect-laden construct, with a large body of research indicating its importance for success of teams. Surprisingly, it has received scant attention in collaborative learning contexts, and little is known about its development as dynamically emergent in the spontaneous, interdependent actions of actors during groupwork. This paper details an illustrative case analysis which took an embodied perspective to explore the role of interaffectivity in the emergence and maintenance of cohesion in one small group of university students who reported a highly positive and productive experience of collaborative science activities over a semester. The case analysis made visible group cohesion as unfolding and enactive in the myriad ephemeral and seemingly inconsequential microlevel behaviors that evolved into macro-temporal patterns of positive embodied interaffectivity, magnifying their visibility and collective impact. A fine-grained embodiment lens unveiled how participants cocreated collaborative affordances in actions that involved corporeal orientation as well as use of space, task, and other material artifacts. Task-related humor within routine task interaction offered the potential for establishing group cohesion in early group life, but also posed a potential threat to task-focused cohesiveness, requiring careful modulation at critical task points. Attentiveness not only to the task but importantly, to one another as interpersonal attentiveness, appeared to be a key factor in developing and maintaining group cohesion, also demonstrating collaborative learning as a process of orienting to and understanding tasks through one another. An embodiment lens highlighted mutual attentiveness in the ongoing orienter-orientee microprocesses that facilitated group orientation early in group life, and in reorienting to positive embodied interaffectivity when the group reconvened for their joint science activities in subsequent weeks

A metakogníció nemverbális indikátorai kisgyermekkorban

A metakogníció-kutatás szakirodalmának egyik jelentős kérdése, hogy a metakognitív folyamatok milyen mértékben tudatosak és elérhetőek a verbális kifejezés számára (Veenman, Van Hout-Wolters és Afflerbach, 2006). Ez fontos elméleti probléma, amely nagyon szorosan összefügg kutatásmódszertani megfontolásokkal. A metakognitív folyamatok eddigi vizsgálata elsősorban a verbális megnyilvánulásokon keresztül történt – például interjúk, kérdőívek és hangosan gondolkodtatás módszerével. Ez a megközelítés alapjában kizárja a tudattalan és a nemverbális folyamatok és viselkedésformák figyelembe vételét

Primary School Teachers’ Adaptations for Struggling Writers: Survey Study of Grade 1 to 6 Teachers in Australia

Two hundred ninety-eight primary teachers (88% female) from across all Australian states and territories reported on the frequency with which they implemented instructional adaptations for struggling writers in their classrooms. They also rated their preparation and self-efficacy for teaching writing. The majority of participating teachers indicated they provided additional instruction on spelling, capitalization and punctuation, and sentence construction at least once a week or more often. Teachers further reported implementing additional minilessons and reteaching strategies and skills, as well as extra instruction on grammar, handwriting, text structure, revising, and planning on a monthly basis or more often. The majority of teachers reported never or only once a year using adaptations to support digital writing. The frequency with which teachers provided extra instruction on spelling, handwriting, text structure, revising, and computer use differed by grade. Only teachers’ perceived efficacy to teach writing made a unique and statistically significant contribution to predicting the use of instructional adaptations for writing and adaptations to support digital writing after controlling for teacher and classroom variables

Interpersonal affect in groupwork: a comparative case study of two small groups with contrasting group dynamics outcomes

Teamwork capabilities are essential for 21st century life, with groupwork emerging as a fruitful context to develop these skills. Case studies that explore interpersonal affect dynamics in authentic higher education groupwork settings can highlight collaborative skills development needs. This comparative case-study traced the sociodynamic evolution of two groups of first-year university students to investigate the high collaborative variance outcomes of the two groups, which reported starkly contrasting group dynamics (negative and dysfunctional or positive and collaborative). Mixed-methods (video-recorded observations of five groupwork labs over one semester, and group interviews) provided interpersonal affect data as real-time visible behaviours, and the felt experiences and perceptions of  participants. The study traced interpersonal affect dynamics in the natural fluctuation of not just task-focused (on-task), but also explicitly relational (off-task) interactions, which revealed their function in both task participation and group dynamics. Findings illustrate visible interpersonal affect behaviours that manifested and evolved over time as interactive patterns, and group dynamics outcomes. Fine-grained analysis of interactions unveiled interpersonal affect as a collective, evolving process, and the mechanism through which one group started and stayed highly positive and collaborative over the semester. The other group showed a tendency towards splitting to undertake tasks early, leading to low group-level interpersonal attentiveness, and over time, subgroups emerged through interactions both off-task and on-task. The study made visible the pervasive nature of interpersonal affect as enacted through seemingly inconsequential everyday behaviours that supported the relational and task-based needs of groupwork, and those behaviours which impeded collaboration.

The Effects of Automaticity in Paper and Keyboard-Based Text Composing

The predictive association between handwriting automaticity and children’s writing performance is well documented. However, less is known about the relationship between keyboarding automaticity and children’s keyboard-based writing performance. In this exploratory study, we examined the unique contributions of automaticity in both writing modalities in predicting Australian Grade 2 students paper-based and keyboard-based writing performance after controlling for students’ literacy skills, attitudes toward writing, gender, and nesting due to classroom. Forty-nine students (Mean age: 7.19; 25 female) enrolled in one government and one independent school in Western Australia participated in the study. Written informed consent was sought from students, their guardians and classroom teachers.Data was collected in the final term of Year 2. Students participated in one individual session and one group session at school. Sessions were arranged at mutually agreed times with class teachers. During the individual sessions, students completed assessments of handwriting and keyboarding automaticity (number of letters of the alphabet accurately handwritten or typed in 15 seconds), literacy skills (word reading, text comprehension, and spelling) and attitudes towards writing (child-friendly likert scale survey). During the group sessions (carried out on a separate day) three students were assessed on their paper-based and keyboard-based text composing skills (i.e., compositional quality and fluency). Children were presented with two extended writing prompts (E.g.:"On my way home from school I found a robot") and where asked to handwrite and type a story. A maximum of 10 minutes was given per modality. To complete the paper-based writing task, students were given a sheet of A4 lined paper each and a pencil; to complete the keyboard-based writing task, students were given a laptop running a Microsoft Windows operating system with spelling and grammar checks turned off. The order of the handwritten and typed tasks was counterbalanced to control for order effects. Multilevel modelling results showed that automaticity predicted students’ paper-based compositional quality and keyboard-based compositional quality and fluency. Findings further suggested that the relationship between automaticity and writing performance was stronger in keyboard-based text composing than in paper-based text composing. These results reinforce the role of automaticity of transcription skills in predicting the writing performance of beginning writers across modalities and stress the significance of explicit pedagogy and frequent instances of practice to promote the mastery of transcription skills across modalities in the early years of schooling. We argue for the need to expand knowledge on the developmental traits of both paper and keyboard-based writing. Understanding specific modality developmental paths is of core importance since such knowledge will drive evidence-based educational policies informing when, why, and how to teach handwriting and keyboarding in primary education

The Contributions of Executive Functioning to Handwritten and Keyboarded Compositions in Year 2

Writing is a highly complex skill, recruiting a range of cognitive processes that involve working memory, attention shifting and inhibition, also known as executive functioning (EF). Despite emerging research examining associations between EF and handwritten composition, the mediating role of transcription skills such as automaticity and spelling on the relation between EF and text composition remains underexplored. Even less is understood about the nature of these potential mediation mechanisms in keyboarding, a writing modality that is becoming pervasive in the early years of schooling. The present study examined whether transcription skills mediate the relation between children’s EF and text composition across two modes (handwriting and keyboarding) on a sample of 544 Year 2 Australian children. Assessments of EF, transcription skills and text composition were measured concurrently. Indirect pathways were tested via structural equation modelling. Findings indicated that across text composition modes, transcription skills (i.e., automaticity and spelling) mediated the relationship between children’s EF and writing composition (i.e., compositional fluency and compositional quality). The findings of this study extend current understanding of associations between cognitive processes and text composition in the junior years of schooling and innovate by examining whether hypothesised associations between EF and writing can be extrapolated to keyboard-based writing

The contributions of transcription skills to paper-based and computer-based text composing in the early years

Digital tools are an integral part of most writing communities across the globe, enhancing the criticality of gaining a comprehensive understanding of both paper and computer-based writing acquisition and development. The relationships between transcription skills and children’s paper-based writing performance are well documented. Less is known about the relationships between transcription skills and children’s computer-based writing performance. In this study, we examined the unique contributions of transcription skills (i.e., handwriting automaticity, keyboarding automaticity and spelling) in predicting Grade 2 students (N = 544) paper-based and computer-based writing performance (i.e., compositional quality and productivity) after controlling for other student-level factors (i.e., gender, word reading, reading comprehension, and attitudes towards writing) and classroom-level factors (i.e., amount of time teaching handwriting, keyboarding, and spelling). Multilevel modelling showed that, compared to handwriting automaticity, spelling skills accounted for a larger percentage of unique variance in predicting paper-based compositional quality; handwriting automaticity accounted for a larger percentage of unique variance in explaining paper-based compositional productivity. Findings further showed that keyboarding automaticity accounted for a larger percentage of unique variance in students’ computer-based compositional quality and productivity when compared to spelling. Gender and word reading skills were also found to be uniquely related to students’ writing performance across modalities. These findings underscore the need for educators to address and nurture the automaticity of inscription and spelling skills to enhance students' compositional quality and productivity, whether in traditional paperbased or computer-based text composing

The effects of automaticity in paper and keyboard-based text composing: An exploratory study

The predictive relationship between handwriting automaticity and children's writing performance is well documented. However, less is known about the relationship between keyboarding automaticity and children's keyboard-based writing performance. In this exploratory study, we examined the unique contributions of automaticity in both writing modalities in predicting Grade 2 students (N = 49) paper-based and keyboard-based writing performance (i.e., compositional quality and fluency) after controlling for students’ literacy skills (i.e., spelling, word reading, and reading comprehension), attitudes toward writing, gender, and nesting due to classroom. Multilevel modelling results showed that automaticity predicted students’ paper-based compositional quality and keyboard-based compositional quality and fluency. Findings further suggested that the relationship between automaticity and writing performance was stronger in keyboard-based text composing than in paper-based text composing. These results reinforce the role of automaticity of transcription skills in predicating the writing performance of beginning writers across modalities and stress the significance of explicit pedagogy and frequent instances of practice to promote the mastery of transcription skills across modalities in the early years of schooling

The contributions of executive functioning to handwritten and keyboarded compositions in Year 2 children

Writing is a multifaceted skill, recruiting varied cognitive processes that involve working memory, attention shifting and inhibition, also known as executive functioning (EF). Despite emerging research examining associations between EF and handwritten composition, the mediating role of transcription skills on the relation between EF and text composition remains underexplored. Even less is understood about the nature of these potential mediation mechanisms in keyboard-based text composing, a writing modality that is becoming pervasive during the first years of schooling. This study investigated whether the automaticity of inscription skills (handwriting and keyboarding) and spelling mediate the relation between children’s EF and text composition across two modes (paper and keyboard-based text composing) on a sample of 544 Year 2 Australian children. Assessments of EF, inscription skills, spelling, and text composition were measured concurrently. Indirect pathways were tested via structural equation modelling. Findings indicated that across text composition modes, handwriting automaticity, keyboarding automaticity and spelling mediated the relationship between children’s EF and writing composition (i.e., compositional fluency and quality). The findings of this study extend current understanding of associations between cognitive processes and text composition in the junior years by examining keyboard-based text composing