Interest is a significant feature of the diagnosis and lives of learners with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS). Unlike the interest of more normative populations that positively influences learning strategies, goal setting, and attention, the interest of people with AS is typically considered a liability and is something that is difficult for teachers and families to work with. In order to explore differences among learners with AS and those with more normative interest profiles, semi-structured e-mail interviews were conducted with 10 young adults with AS and 10 young adults not diagnosed with AS. Although interest appears to be a central aspect of life for both groups of participants, differences of structure and form in the interests of each group were identified.
Theoretical and practical implications of these findings will be discussed.
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29 August 2007 08:30 - 10:30 Room: 3.67 Békésy
Symposium
Fostering agency and knowledge creation: cases from higher education
Chair: Anne Edwards, University of Oxford, United Kingdom Chair: Marlene Scardamalia, University of Toronto, Canada Organiser: Hanni Muukkonen, University of Helsinki, Finland
This symposium presents cases from higher education where the development of agency and practices of knowledge creation are central. The symposium aims at understanding the role of individual and collective efforts of knowledge advancement around shared objects. The studies present different dimensions of agency from the theoretical perspectives of learning sciences and activity theory, and, further, reflect on these dimensions from the point of view of educational practices and empirical findings. The papers address forms of agency, particularly epistemic agency, and suggest empirical operationalizations of agency. The concept of boundary-crossing emphasizes traversing institutional, professional, and disciplinary boundaries; its implications for creating links between theory and applied work are addressed in the papers. Further, the competencies and metaskills for engaging in knowledge creation are examined. The symposium contributes to the discussion on domain-general skills and competencies relevant to students moving from educational settings to professional environments. In addition, it provides pedagogical examples for adopting assignments and course designs simulating professional problems and projects.
Assessing the development of epistemic agency of students in higher education: an explorative case study
Crina Damsa, Utrecht University, Netherlands Jerry Andriessen, Utrecht University, Netherlands Patrick Sins, Utrecht University, Netherlands Gijsbert Erkens, Utrecht University, Netherlands Paul Kirschner, Utrecht University, Netherlands
Epistemic agency is considered a type of human agency that learners need and develop in the context of learning processes (Hakkarainen, 2006) and it is concerned with the complex combination of qualities that permit a student to deal with knowledge and collaborative knowledge creation. Education should support students to become responsible for and to become actively engaged in their own learning and knowledge creation; in other words to become epistemic agents.
This study attempts to identify features of epistemic agency development by students in higher education and to provide a framework to assess this development. An in-depth analysis study was conducted, using data gathered from higher education students who worked on collaborative tasks, in a project-based set-up. Based on theoretical insights, dimensions of epistemic agency were identified. A method of analytic generalization was used to compare the theoretical dimensions with identified changes in the empirical data and to decide whether these are indicative for epistemic agency development. A preliminary analysis indicated a number of dimensions of epistemic agency, wherein changes indicating development were identified, such as (collective) responsibility for the shared knowledge object and the advancement of the group’s knowledge, coordination of interdependent plans of actions, or (self) monitoring and reflecting activities.
Epistemic agency in two higher education courses in organizational behavior Orna Shternlicht, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Zvi Ben Ami, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Sarah Schrire, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Unlike many courses in higher education where course content is simply transmitted to the learners usually through frontal lectures, the pedagogical approach in the two higher education courses that form the basis for this paper emphasizes learner participation, collaborative knowledge building, and the development of epistemic agency. Epistemic agency is one of the central concepts of trialogical learning, a main focus of the KP-Lab (Knowledge Practices Laboratory) EU project, which provides the framework for this study. In the trialogical approach, learning is viewed as a process of knowledge creation which concentrates on mediated processes where common objects of activity are developed collaboratively (Paavola & Hakkarainen, 2005).
Characteristic of epistemic agency is that the participants themselves assume responsibility for the advancement of their knowledge and inquiry. Rather than rely on the teacher’s or tutor’s cognitive authority, the participants take responsibility for their own thinking and problem solving. Through epistemic agency, the participants are authoring themselves as well as their knowledge objects (KP-Lab, 2006).Consequently, they relate their personal ideas with one another, monitor advancement of collective activities, and overcome challenges emerging in the process (Paavola &
Hakkarainen, 2005 ). The objective of the research is to follow up on these processes and to explore how they develop.
Boundary-crossing in the training of speech therapists in psychology Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont, University of Neuchatel, Switzerland Pascale Marro, University of Neuchatel, Switzerland
Alexandra Bugnon, University of Neuchatel, Switzerland
The case presented belongs to the EU funded Kp-Lab project and explores boundary-crossing in a professional course. It concerns a course in psychology of relationships offered to speech therapists during their professional and academic training in a 4-years course in the University. In our intervention, we will first examine the image of the profession transmitted by the curriculum at large and then try to understand the implicits about the links between "theory" and "applied work".
We will then consider the internships during which the students are immersed in the daily life of their future profession. These young students most often experience then their first contact with difficult life situations. We will thus consider what kind of questions they formulate explicitly and draw some hypothesis about their initial implicit difficulties in boundary-crossing over the disciplines, and from the university to the field. These will guide the next steps of the intervention and the examination of the data collected about their growing understanding of the relationships involved in speech therapy. One of the difficulties of such a training is the students’ inability to link their former readings with their present observations. Another one is their shyness in discussing relationships and emotions. Yet, it was found that role-playing, discussions, and group work can contribute to the development of such skills. Another result concerns the types of expertise available in the profession. It seems that students behave as if they had been offered plenty of very limited models of action as speech therapists. They have difficulties in gaining also a general understanding of their intervention in terms of an educational/therapeutical activity to be appreciated as a whole. The results will be discussed in the perspective of activity theory, situated cognition, active and trialogical learning.
Promoting metaskills for collaborative object-oriented inquiry in a project management course Hanni Muukkonen, University of Helsinki, Finland
Minna Lakkala, University of Helsinki, Finland
Metaskills of collaborative inquiry are proposed to address commitment to collective, object-oriented, and prolonged inquiry efforts, which are not reducible to individual productions. We suggest that these skills are triggered by practices where students are responsible for coordinating and directing their activities over different aspects of inquiry: own individual efforts, effective collaboration in group, and the "well-being" of the knowledge objects they are developing. To examine these hypotheses, we studied a multidisciplinary course on distributed project management. Forty-seven students took part in the course, organized into ten teams. The teams worked on authentic problems from a client organization, and they had to take, very concretely, the responsibility of advancing their work. Based on the team interviews half-way through the course, the student were rather confused and even distressed with the open-ended assignment and with managing team activities. At the end of the course, their self-reflections revealed a change to more positive evaluations of the value of such open-ended assignment. Findings of the study suggest that the metaskills of collaborative object-oriented inquiry need to deal with the strategies and efforts that are helpful in getting the inquiry going and improving the objects, despite difficulties and controversies.
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29 August 2007 08:30 - 10:30 Room: 1.60
Symposium
Computer support for face-to-face collaborative problem solving
Chair: Jerry Andriessen, Utrecht University, Netherlands Organiser: Maria Beatrice Ligorio, University of Bari, Italy Organiser: Jerry Andriessen, Utrecht University, Netherlands Discussant: Richard Joiner, University of Bath, United Kingdom
Computer mediated collaborative learning (CSCL) is already a solid stream of research. Many results and insight are gathered based on a quite conspicuous amount of researches performed.
One of the reason CSCL covers such a large part of the educational research is because encompasses quite an array of settings involving computers; from users interacting in front of a screen, to users at a distance; from impact on cognition and metacognition to influence on the educational context intended as a large cultural environment. A particular situation yet not adequately inquired is how students (in their school practice) can be supported by technology when they face-to-face solve collaboratively open-ended problems. This symposium addresses this particular aspect. Thanks to a European Community funding, a project called LEAD is in progress in order to define the crucial aspects to obtain computer mediated face-to-face collaborative problem solving. As it can be easily assumed, many dimensions contribute to the definition of such specific setting. Each paper included into the symposium addresses a particular dimension.
Maroni et al. inquiry about teachers expectations and representations. Gelmini et al. study teachers’ activities related to problem solving and to use of computers in educational practices.
Overdijk and Diggelen look at educational community’s ways of appropriating the technology.
Dyke et al. describe a tool able to perform parallel analysis of a multi-modal corpus. The ultimate goal of the LEAD project is to come up with educational and pedagogical directions to design a software aimed at supporting and improving face-to-face interaction when students (from primary to higher education) collaboratively solve problems. In fact, De Chiara’s et al. papers discuss how the results gathered by the pedagogical partners can be implemented into such a software.
Analysing face to face computer-mediated interactions
George Dyke, Association pour la Recherche et le Developpement, France Jan-Jack Girardot, Association pour la Recherche et le Developpement, France Kristine Lund, University of Lion, France
Annie Corbel, Association pour la Recherche et le Developpement, France
Detailed analysis of face to face computer mediated interactions implies a study of a corpus composed of the interaction traces produced by the collaborative tool and video and audio recordings. Because of their separate nature, it is frequently difficult to perform this joint analysis.
In order to facilitate such analyses we propose a model for describing corpora composed of sources from different media; we also describe how certain types of analyses can be modelled and reified for future use. We show how a tool based on these models facilitates a number of analysis methodologies by simplifying situations where entities are multiple: several researchers (inter-coder reliability), several sources for the corpus (multi-modal interactions) or several analyses (for re-use of prior analyses or for the confrontation and comparison of two different analyses. We
believe that capitalizing on previous analyses and affording parallel analysis of video and computer-mediated traces will open new avenues for researchers and teachers.
The conditions of classroom discussion: challenges for ICT re-mediation Giulia Gelmini, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
Charles Crook, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom Shaaron Ainsworth, University of Nottingham, Italy
Claire O’Malley, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
A growing body of research focuses on enhancing co-located group discussion through networked technology. To design effective technology, we need to understand existing classroom practices with unmediated debate. To this end, 13 classroom observations were conducted in a local college (students were aged 16-18). These served as a vehicle for exploring the generic features of classroom debate. Of these, we identified 6 as the most conspicuous for collaborative discourse.
We argue that any technical re-mediation of such discussion needs to ground its agenda into the wide range of practices, values and expectations which these characteristics represent. The main characteristic of classroom discourse is teachers’ scaffolding role: teachers’ interventions dynamically adjust to each student’s level of skills and expertise. Teachers scaffold classroom discourse by - encouraging the production of tangible outputs (Productivity) - interleaving present activities with preceding and subsequent ones so the product of a discourse feeds into the following discourse as a resource to draw upon (Continuity) - dynamically responding to the fluid nature classroom activities (Situatedness) - ensuring that everyone is given an opportunity to participate (Participation) through authentic, original contributions (Personalization) We argue that, if technology is to be embedded into educational practices in order to facilitate the teacher’s job of scaffolding classroom discourse, the following objectives need to be at the top of designers’
agenda: - furnishing the classroom discourse with a wide array of resources and structured representations for preparation, exchange, revision and integration of ideas - allowing the recording of this common knowledge into a tangible trace - accommodating for flexible lesson and agendas - facilitating teacher’s floor control management and students’ authentic contributions.
Tool appropriation in face-to-face collaborative learning
Maarten Overdijk, Research Centre Learning in Interaction, Netherlands Wouter van Diggelen, Research Centre Learning in Interaction, Netherlands
It has been argued that group discussions in educational settings can be enhanced through a combination of face-to-face and computer-mediated communication. Computer tools provide the learners with structures that shape their actions, and give rise to specific interactions that have a positive effect on the discussion. However, the effect of a computer tool on a group of learners depends in part on how they appropriate the tool. We examine this process of tool appropriation to gain more insight in the way learners interact with educational technology.
Collaborative learning for teachers in Italian educational contexts: knowledge and practices Barbara Maroni, University of Rome, Italy
Francesca Martini, University of Rome, Italy Antonio Iannaccone, University of Salerno, Italy Maria Annarumma, University of Salerno, Italy Pina Marsico, University of Salerno, Italy
The present work investigates knowledge and expertise of a group of Italian teachers about the notion of collaborative learning (CL) from a pedagogical perspective inspired by the theoretical models of socio-constructivism. The study refers to three levels of analysis: "collaborative learning representation" (teachers conceptually relating to a Theoretical definition of CL); "pedagogical activity representation" (teachers accounting for collaboration in their classroom activities);
"pedagogical activities in classroom" (collaborative activities into teachers actual professional practice). First and second levels of analysis are investigated through semi-structured interviews to 40 teachers working in primary and secondary classrooms located in Central and Southern Italy.
Content Analysis on interviews has highlighted four main categories of CL representation (first level of analysis): "theoretical", "practical", "intuitive" and "undefined". At the second level of analysis, ("pedagogical activity representation") we frequently found that CL seems to be just a synonymous of "group work". Some teachers underline the importance of CL for problematic children because the group can be of a great help to them. Other teachers are not able to define CL at all. It seems that they don’t have a theoretical knowledge, but it is possible that their practices are based on CL. Pedagogical activities in classroom (third level of analysis) will be explored through systematic observations in interviewed teachers classrooms. We will observe collaborative activities into teachers actual professional practice looking how CL would become an implicit aspect of practice.
Design issues for a co-located collaborative learning system Ilaria Manno, University of Salerno, Italy
Rosario De Chiara, University of Salerno, Italy Vittorio Scarano, University of Salerno, Italy
Most of the existing systems for collaborative learning are designed for remote situations, employing the traditional client-server model where the server coordinates the cooperation among remote users. Among the important features, remote systems is providing team awareness, workspace awareness, collaboration process awareness that have different scope in a co-located scenario. Users can "appropriate" these systems by using them in the face-to-face (f2f) situations, but a different design for addressing co-location is needed. The aim of this paper is to present the technological and design issues for a Co-located Collaborative Learning System (CoCoLeS). Our studies in this field are within the LEAD project, whose aims are to develop, implement and evaluate conceptual models, pratical scenarios and associated network-computing technologies for effective face-toface problem solving discussion (LEAD). On the basis of the inputs provided us by the pedagogical partners, we analyze the differences between remote and co-located systems and address the open questions specific to CoCoLeS design. The first and main difference between a remote and a CoCoLeS is the distance and remote systems employs a lot of effort, resources, design issues to fill up the distance between the users, a non-existing problem in f2f.
Technologically, Local Area Networks dictate stringent requirements on management and ask for smooth service discovery and effective and stable connections. Functionalities that are influenced by the co-location are awareness, meta-task communication, teacher’s role, control and design of
the phases while different tools, i.e., co-located tools can be fruitful i.e. tools where contributions are physically located by relating the screen of each learner to others’ screens.
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29 August 2007 08:30 - 10:30 Room: 0.100B
Symposium
Consequences of perspectives on the future for student’s functioning
Chair: Thea Peetsma, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands Organiser: Thea Peetsma, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands Discussant: Stuart Karabenick, University of Michigan, USA
Students differ in their perspectives or orientations on the future and in the degree they keep in mind the consequences of their functioning now for their future. The concept of future time perspective is generally described as a conceptualization of a particular life domain in terms of time. It is characterized by ‘extension’ and ‘valence’, which means mainly the subjective extension more than the objective (see e.g. Gjesme, 1975; Lens, 1986). Nuttin & Lens (1985) defined future time perspective as the mental perception of future events, or the anticipation in the present of future events. This includes two aspects: a dynamic one, regarding the incentive value of an objective, or an individual’s disposition to value goals in the future; and a cognitive one, that is the perception of the utility of a behaviour in the future. The cognitive aspect has been operationalized as perceived instrumentality, that is an individual’s comprehension of the future value of a present behaviour. Future time perspective is mainly characterized as being cognitive in nature, but in other definitions the concept comprises affective components as well (Peetsma, 2000). Students’
time perspectives proved to be good predictors of their learning behaviour, but other student behaviours, like their social functioning, seem to be influenced by the time orientation as well. In the four presentations different use of the time concept will be shown: instrumentality for the future and interest, future time perspectives, and a trait-like time orientation. These concepts have been subject of research with university students in Italy and the USA, students from the lowest type of secondary education in the Netherlands, students from a special class, and correctional institute in Norway. Both students’ learning behaviour and social functioning proved to be related to time perspectives and orientation.
Psychology students’ interest in subject-matters and perceived instrumentality: What relationship?
Pietro Boscolo, University of Padova, Italy Laura Del Favero, University of Padova, Italy
The study to be presented is aimed at analyzing the relationship between interest in subject-matters and perceived instrumentality of Psychology students in two different moments of their curriculum. Recent studies in future time perspective have investigated the relationships of perceived instrumentality of school activities and disciplines, on the one hand, and various motivational variables, on the other, such as goal orientations, school investment, self-regulation, delay of gratification, and persistence in study. However, few studies have considered students’
individual interest in a discipline among these variables. We posed two main research questions:
How is interest in a subject-matter related to perceived instrumentality? What is the role of stored
knowledge and value component of interest in perceived instrumentality? Does this relation change across different moments of the Psychology curriculum? One hundred and forty Psychology students enrolled in the second/third year of the curriculum and one hundred forty-six enrolled in the fourth/fifth year, were asked to identify in their curriculum four subject-matters according to the 2x2 framework (High/Low Utility x High/Low Interest). For each of the selected subject-matters, they had to fill in a questionnaire with ratings and open-ended questions regarding, interest in each discipline, self-perception of competence, goal orientation, use of study skills and strategies, persistence and reaction to failure. It emerged that for older students interest in a subject-matter tended to enhancing perceived instrumentality, whereas low interest tended to decreasing it. In particular, whereas the cognitive aspects of interest (e.g., will to know more on the subject) seemed to have a weak relationship to perceived instrumentality, the value-related aspects (e.g., the importance of feeling competent, appreciation of the cultural and scientific relevance of the subject-matter) were more closely related to instrumentality.
Connecting with the future: Measuring future time perspective in science and engineering students Jenefer Husman, Arizona State University, USA
Jonathan Hilpert, Arizona State University, USA Christa Lynch, Arizona State University, USA Wonsik Kim, Arizona State University, USA Mary Anne Duggan, Arizona State University, USA Wen-Ting Chung, Arizona State University, USA
Some of the most important steps students take toward an Engineering career are choosing the right coursework, experiences, and mentors to get them there. To help students choose career paths in Engineering, and persist in the face of inevitable difficulties and disappointments, we need to understand how they conceptualize their futures. The concepts and processes involved in this conceptualization make up a person’s future time perspective (FTP). To facilitate research in science and engineering contexts, valid measures of FTP need to be established. The goal of the study presented here is to present evidence of predictive and convergent validity of a measure of FTP. Two hundred and eighty nine undergraduate students, one hundred of which are engineering majors, were surveyed. Preliminary analysis indicates that two measures of FTP, the FTPS and the Perceptions of Instrumentality Scale have moderate to strong reliability and construct validity.
Additionally, both measures demonstrate the hypothesized relationships with strategy use and self-efficacy.
The developments in students’ future time perspectives on different life domains, school investment and achievement
Thea Peetsma, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands Ineke van der Veen, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands
Time perspectives can be seen as good predictors of students’ learning behaviour and academic achievements. For the well-known decline in motivation and achievement from the start of secondary education, different explanations can be found. Besides a lack of ‘person-environment fit’, that is poor integration of young adolescents in the school environment, the developments in students’ time perspectives might be of influence. Shifts in the relevance of life domains of students in secondary school have been found: time perspectives on school and professional career becoming less important while perspectives on domains of life, like leisure time and social relations, growing in importance or staying stable during the school period. For students from the lowest school level of secondary education motivation for school is often low. More understanding