Well all three articles stressed to social nature of meaning-making. But they all had their own takes on it.
Chin & Osborne had the strongest paper, at least for me, maybe because they seemed to incorporate both the conceptual change and the situational perspectives. For example, they write on page 884 ” Both sociocognitive conflict … and cognitive elaboration have been proposed to explain why collaborative discourse and argumentation may foster conceptual learning in socially mediated learning.” That idea of cognitive dissonance from Posner seems to be here. As a practioner, the idea of scaffolding the social interactions with the argument diagram is a needed one – students need to be taught how to learn from one another in the way that scientists learn from one another. That representation in another tool for students to communicate their thoughts – I guess I could say the diagram mediated the explanations of the students (?).
Varelas et al. was interesting because of the varieties of the communities of practice in which the students were involved. They were in a school, in a science class, but also practicing the dramatic arts. Interesting confluence. Taken to the extreme, if knowledge is purely situative and does not transfer across contexts at all, then does that mean that these students may only be able to access their knowledge while performing in front of others on stage?
All three articles emphasized the students use of language as key to their learning. And it was not language filled with scientific vocabulary. The students expressed their ideas in their vernacular. Also, the students talked extensively, not just a short response to a teacher question. This is key to promoting a socially oriented classroom. Language itself is not enough. The students must find the language to express their ideas or concerns in a way that others can understand. Also, the language mediates the data gathered by the researchers. They are interpreting the language from their own perspective.
Finally, I now want to read a recent,pure ( or close to it) ” in the head” paper to compare what it looks like in the real life of ed. research rather than from a more philosophical viewpoint. I cannot believe that I just called educational research “real life ” – I have been assimilated!
Tags: JRST2
I’ve been noticing the sociocognive thread in all these current articles, including the three additional ones I read! The three JSTE articles had elements about generating effective questions, both from the teacher and student perspective. This corresponds with Chin et al. and the importance of quality questioning as they quoted Harper, Etkina, and Lin (2003) with their findings “that it was the type of questions asked, rather than the number” (pg 901). I think this came through with the the Radinsky et al. paper in regards to Camila being placed on the “hot seat” and needing to respond to other students’ questions and how she navigated her own understanding.
With all these papers about the importance of quality questions, I can’t help but wonder how much time is spent with pre-service teachers in this area? In addition, what can we do with in-service teachers to help them become better questioning practitioners?
BTW, I think you liked Chin’s paper because it spoke to you as an engineer…
I agree that argumentation article was very strong and I also liked the argumentation diagram, I think it helps students to keep track of the structure of the argument and mediate the discussion.I also liked how students in the studies talked extensively, but i think this is something missing in our classrooms. so argumentation seems promising to provide students these kinds of discussion environments based on claims and evidences for these claims.
Oh, I am also curious to read a recent paper with a “pure” cognitive theoretical framework, especially since ours this week were all so socially derived. I really like your reference to the importance of language and the need to get students to talk extensively. Despite my seemingly endless need to talk, I think it is so important to improve and increase student-student discourse and student-teacher discourse. I felt like the Chin and Osborne paper was a challenge to read because it was so full of rules and codings. The activation energy needed to get into that paper was high!