Productive disciplinary engagement in high- and low-outcome student groups: Observations from three collaborative science learning contexts

This study explored how productive disciplinary engagement (PDE) is associated with the level of cognitive activity and collective group outcome in collaborative learning across multiple contexts. Traditionally, PDE has been studied in a single collaborative learning environment, without analysis of how these environments fulfill the supporting conditions for PDE. In addition, research on the quality of a collective learning outcome and product in relation to the extent of the group’s PDE during actual collaborative learning processes is scarce. In this study, the learning processes of low- and high-outcome small groups were compared within three collaborative learning contexts: high school general science, second year university veterinary science, and fourth year university engineering. Two meaningful and self-contained phases from each context were selected for analysis. The same theory-based analytical methods were used across contexts. The findings revealed similar patterns in the high school science and second year university veterinary science data sets, where high-outcome groups displayed a greater proportion of high-level cognitive activity while working on the task. Thus, they could be distinctively perceived as high- and low-performing groups. These high-performing groups’ interactions also reflected more of the supporting conditions associated with PDE than the low-performing groups. An opposite pattern was found in the fourth year university engineering data set, calling for interpretation grounded in the literature on the nature and development of expertise. This study reveals the criticality of using comparable analytical methods across different contexts to enable discrepancies to emerge, thus refining our contextualized understanding of PDE in collaborative science learnin

Significance of forms and foci of metacognitive regulation in collaborative science learning of less and more successful outcome groups in diverse contexts

This study investigated how metacognitive regulation (MR), especially its forms and foci, was manifested in less and more successful outcome groups’ collaborative science learning in diverse learning contexts. Whilst previous research has shown that different forms and foci of MR exist in collaborative learning, their role in groups’ learning outcomes remains unexplored. Drawing conclusions from different studies has been difficult because these have used different conceptualisations and analytic methods. In the present study, the learning processes of less and more successful outcome groups from three diverse collaborative science learning contexts were scrutinised. The contexts differed in academic level, disciplinary subject, and national culture. The same theory-based conceptualisations, coding systems, coders, and analyses were used across contexts. In addition, the tasks studied were designed using the same guiding principles. Transcribed video and audio recordings of the groups’ verbal interactions for two distinct interaction segments from these tasks formed the basis of the analyses. Manifestation of forms and foci of MR were quantitatively and qualitatively illustrated in each context. The main findings show that the manifestation of MR of less and more successful outcome groups demonstrated similarities and differences in the three different learning contexts. This study contributes to a contextualised understanding of MR in collaborative science learning, and highlights the importance of using similar, rigorous analytical tools across diverse contexts