Peer interaction in text chat: Qualitative analysis of chat transcripts

Prior research has shown that intermediate-level adult learners of Russian who worked interactively with partners using text chat improved their vocabulary and oral production skills more than students who worked independently (Tare et al., 2014). Drawing on the dataset from Tare et al. (2014), the current study follows up to explore the nature of the students’ (N = 25) interactions during the text chat activities to determine potential sources of the gains. All 18 activities developed for the study encouraged interaction to complete tasks in pairs. A detailed coding of 169 text chat transcripts examined instances of peer–peer interactions. Our quantitative and qualitative analyses explored whether and to what extent real-time interactive language tasks foster the kinds of language-related moves that may support greater language learning. Results show that students spontaneously engaged in various behaviors which may support language learning, such as providing language-related assistance (self- and peer-correction, negotiation for meaning), using their partner as a resource (for clarifying information, modeling language use, or helping with unknown vocabulary), and providing encouragement (responding positively to the task and to each other, eliciting information from a partner). The most frequent instances were of positive affect, self-correction, and partner correction

The Development of Pragmatic Differentiation Skills in Preschool-Aged Bilingual Children.

This dissertation examined pragmatic differentiation, bilingual speakers’ ability to use two languages appropriately with different speakers. Case studies of naturalistic interaction have shown that some sensitivity emerges in early childhood (by 2 years); however, the component skills of this pragmatic understanding and their relation to other developing metacognitive capacities have not been examined. In order to examine these issues, I compared the language use of 28 bilingual children (2;7 to 3;10 and 4;1 to 4;11) across three tasks, which varied in context and interlocutor. All children were bilingual in English and Marathi, an Indian language. I also included theory of mind measures to assess how developing cognitive capacities relate to pragmatic ability. In Study 1, each child participated in an Object Naming task, where he/she was asked to name familiar objects, and a Free Play task in which the child conversed with an adult. Both tasks were conducted twice, once with an English speaker and once with a Marathi speaker. In Study 2, the child and one of his/her bilingual parents discussed a picture book in three different sessions: one with the parent-child dyad alone, and one each where a third-person bystander was either an English speaker or a Marathi speaker. Children performed very well in the Free Play task, using more of the appropriate language with each speaker. Furthermore, children switched languages between the two consecutive sessions. However, children had more difficulty with Object Naming, and used predominantly English labels with both speakers. There were developmental effects; older children were more responsive to prompts to switch languages. This responsiveness was also highly related to children’s theory of mind scores, even when controlling for their age. Finally, as predicted for the Picture Book task, parents were sensitive to the experimenter’s presence and adjusted their language use accordingly; however, children did not follow their parents’ model and adjust their language use between sessions. These results demonstrate that pragmatic differentiation is not an all-or-none ability, but one which has component skills that develop over the preschool years. This protracted development is also related to metacognitive abilities which emerge during the preschool years.Ph.D.PsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/61649/1/mtare_1.pd

A Conceptual Guide to Museum Visitors’ Understanding of Evolution

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to profile natural history museum visitors’ reasoning about the evolution of seven organisms featured in Explore Evolution, an NSF funded exhibition. Seven current research studies on evolution were exhibited; each targeted different organisms: HIV, diatoms, ant/fungus, Hawaiian flies, Galapagos finches, humans/chimps, and fossilized whales. The exhibits illustrated a common set of evolutionary principles, variation, inheritance, selection, time, and adaptation, in diverse organisms. Method: As part of the front-end evaluation, 32 museum visitors were interviewed and asked to explain evolutionary change in the seven organisms, though the term evolution was not mentioned. Based on a novel conceptual framework, responses were coded into three reasoning patterns: Informed naturalistic reasoning - one or more core evolutionary concepts; Novice naturalistic reasoning - intuitive modes of reasoning; and Creationist reasoning - supernatural explanations. Findings: In contrast with the general public, which is 45% creationist (Gallup, 2004), only 28% of the sample exhibited creationist beliefs. None of the visitors, though, were exclusively evolutionist. Instead, visitors were mixed reasoners using more than one of these reasoning patterns in different permutations across the seven organisms. Even so, most visitors did exhibit a dominant reasoning mode: 34%, informed naturalistic reasoners, 53%, novice naturalistic reasoners, 6%, creationist reasoners. The human/chimp problem elicited the most creationist reasoning, the HIV, diatom, fly and ant problems, the most novice naturalistic reasoning, and the finch, whale, and human/chimp problems the most informed naturalistic reasoning

Changing Museum Visitors’ Conceptions of Evolution

We examined whether a single visit to an evolution exhibition contributed to conceptual change in adult (n030), youth, and child (n034) museum visitors’ reasoning about evolution. The exhibition included seven current research projects in evolutionary science, each focused on a different organism. To frame this study, we integrated a developmental model of visitors’ understanding of evolution, which incorporates visitors’ intuitive beliefs, with a model of free-choice learning that includes personal, sociocultural, and contextual variables. Using pre- and postmeasures, we assessed how visitors’ causal explanations about biological change, drawn from three reasoning patterns (evolutionary, intuitive, and creationist), were modified as a result of visiting the exhibition. Whatever their age, background beliefs, or prior intuitive reasoning patterns, visitors significantly increased their use of explanations from the evolutionary reasoning pattern across all measures and extended this reasoning across diverse organisms. Visitors also increased their use of one intuitive reasoning pattern, need-based (goal-directed) explanations, which, we argue, may be a step toward evolutionary reasoning. Nonetheless, visitors continued to use mixed reasoning (endorsing all three reasoning patterns) in explaining biological change. The personal, socio-cultural, and contextual variables were found to be related to these reasoning patterns in predictable ways. These findings are used to examine the structure of visitors’ reasoning patterns and those aspects of the exhibition that may have contributed to the gains in museum visitors’ understanding of evolution