This research was partly supported by the CPU project, a pedagogy development & dissemination project supported by NSF grant # ESI 9454341.

Many thanks for invaluable help from Fred Goldberg, Janet Bowers, John Batali, Valerie Otero, Cody Sandifer, Elsa Feher, Jim Monaghan, and many others.

This poster describes results of a research project, and does not describe the CPU pedagogy that was used in the course or the outcomes of the course. The focus is instead on a method of making sense of recordings of student discussions. Preservice teachers were the research subjects, which made the analysis of discussions easier. For more information on the pedagogy used, please visit the CPU website. To get copies of the CPU materials, contact the Learning Team.

Abstract

The constructivist view of learning problematizes communication because it assumes that knowledge can't be transferred from one person to another. If we take this view, then we have to explain how different individuals can develop new - and apparently similar - understandings of physics ideas. The knowledge development process warrants scrutiny in its "natural setting" of day to day classroom conversations. This poster reports on a study in a physics course for pre-service teachers. The students' sense-making discussions - which were guided and supported by course materials - resulted in new and valuable understandings of magnetic interactions and materials. This poster will describe categories of small-group interactions that accomplished both the development of new ideas, and the coordination of understandings among members of a group. These categories may aid classroom observations and research on learning processes, and inform the development of new course materials for preservice teachers and others.

Preservice elementary teachers present special challenges and opportunities to physics educators. While their understandings of science upon entering a physics class are sometimes very limited, they often are able and willing to express ideas verbally. This can be used to advantage in a physics classroom. For the same reason, preservice teachers are valuable physics education research subjects, because their discussions with peers tend to make certain kinds of analyses easier than with more reticent students.

This is not meant to imply that analyses of discussions are not also important in physics courses with other types of students such as prospective engineers, only that such research might be more challenging with less expressive students. We believe that students' conversations, in whatever amount and form, are very important to their learning.

The topic of interest in this study was the identification of candidate links between students' discussions and learning about static electricity and magnetism. The research literature on discourse and social interaction suggests that such links exist and are of critical importance. See the References section (next) for examples.

 This page is included to suggest a few interesting books and articles that provide foundations for the theoretical perspective behind this analysis. Each claim or topic listed on this page can be supported by many important references, but only a few are listed here.

Talk is closely linked to learning.

Lemke, J. L. (1990). Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values. Norwood NJ: Ablex Publishing Corp.

Meanings are not transferred between people.

von Glasersfeld, E. (1983) "Learning as a constructive activity" In J. C. Bergeron & N. Herscovics (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, (Vol. 1, pp. 411-469) Montreal: PME

 

(Researchable) meaning is an interactively constituted social product

 "Meaning arises in the interaction between people. The meaning of a thing for a person grows out of the ways in which other persons act toward the person with regard to the thing. . . . Thus, symbolic interactionism sees meanings as social products, as creations that are formed in and through the defining activities of people as they interact." - Blumer, 1969

Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic Interactionism. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall

 

Maintenance of meaning is constrained by social sanctions

 In every conversation. . . . "much that is being talked about is not mentioned, although each [member of the conversation] expects that an adequate sense of the matter being talked about is settled." (Garfinkel, 1963)

Garfinkel, H. (1963) A conception of, and experiments with, "trust" as a condition of stable concerted actions In O. J. Harvey (Ed.), Motivation and Social Interaction, (pp. 187-238) New York: Ronald Press

Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell Inc.

Meaning-making is supported by social structures and representations:

Cobb, P., & Bauersfeld, H. (1996). The Emergence of Mathematical Meaning: Interaction in Classroom Cultures. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum

Meira, L. (1995). The Microevolution of Mathematical Representations in Children's Activity. Cognition and Instruction, 13(2), 269-313

Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1979). Laboratory life - the social construction of scientific facts. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications

 The goal of this research was to understand "what goes on in group discussions." We felt this was important because we saw that students were developing valuable physics ideas as a result of their work in the course and we wanted to be able to understand how that happened. This research hopefully serves as a start to helping develop that understanding.

The students videotaped were in a:

• CPU guided inquiry course.

• Groups of three preservice teachers.

• Conceptual focus of materials and instructor

• Students worked at computers or drew on whiteboards

• Experiments done next to computer.

• Groups developed the main ideas of the course

• Topic was static electricity and magnetism.

 

 

The students spent a great deal of time working in groups of three at computers. Part of their time was spent in whole class discussions as well. 

Groups were videotaped while they worked. Videos of groups were transcribed and analyzed for both physics content and conversation types. Only part of the videos was analyzed in depth.

Response construction focus Not all of the group discussions were analyzed, only those that took place while the group was working on a responses to requests in the computer document. This was done because these discussions seemed particularly rich areas to consider. Typical requests were "predict what will happen," "explain your reasoning" or "record your results below." Anything that asked the students to write or draw on the document was considered a request. Times when groups worked on responses were called "response construction episodes." The goal of this analysis was to create a set of categories of group discussions that captured important aspects of the discussions, that seemed meaningful, and that could account for practically all of the discussions. The categories were intended to answer the question:

Creating categories

After transcribing the videos, an initial set of categories was created. These categories were used in attempts to code the video. As additional data demanded, categories were redefined, split, eliminated, combined, and new categories were created. Each new set of categories was tried out again. This iterative process continued until practically all of the response construction episodes could be fit into at least one category. This is called a "typological analysis" (Lecompte & Preissle, 1993). Reference on typological analyses: LeCompte, M. D., & Preissle, J. (1993). Ethnography and Qualitative Design in Educational Research. (Second ed.). San Diego, CA: Academic Press, Inc. The rectangles "A, B, and C" in the diagram represent the different categories assigned to the different episodes in the group discussion.

 About 16 categories of activity were developed to reasonably characterize the discussions in the groups. These categories fit into the four major categories of logistics, checking responses, comparing within the group, and extending ideas. Interestingly, the first two major categories seem consistent with Lemke's "school talk" and the latter two major categories seem consistent with what Lemke called "science talk."

We propose that engaging in all of the major categories of talk is essential for the success of collaborative groups. We should not try to stop students from engaging in logistical discussions because they need to arrange and agree upon what they are doing. Rather, we hope that they don't spend a lot of time on logistics, but also talk extensively and in detail about their ideas.

Some of the categories are illuminated (a little) by examples that follow.

Logistics and following instructions

Recording experimental results	Result is clear and not controversial. Just typing or drawing.
Dealing with technical issues	How to layout drawings, who does the work, how to operate the computer.
"Moving on" while the typist finishes	Some group members address the next task or question while the typist finishes a non-controversial statement.
Getting group members "on the same track"	Explaining to one group member what the other two are doing.
Satisfying specifications	Answering the question "What kind of answer do they want here?"

Checking

Quiet monitoring of a response	Students appear to quietly watch as one student types or draws. Not necessarily passive.
Spoken checking & joint typing	Reading over what has just been written, or speaking along with or before the typed text as it appears.
Error detection and correction	If the group members seem to agree on ideas but typing or drawing is not consistent with the ideas.

Comparing within the group

Discovering similarities in thinking	Students talk about their ideas and find they are similar, and the researcher (watching later) agrees.
Discovering differences in thinking	Students talk about their ideas and find they are different.
Failing to acknowledge differences in thinking	As seen in video, students appear to express different ideas, but continue to talk as if the ideas are similar. Determined by researcher.

Extending ideas

Negotiating a common response from different starting points	Groups discover differences and try to forge an acceptable response.
Constructing an explicit statement from talk	Group has talked about a new idea in general terms, and works out a concrete statement.
Extending an idea into a new issue or area	Course materials or a student's question leads to discussion of something not discussed before.
Exploring ideas that might be plausible	Considering alternatives. Different idea may emerge in discussion, not put into opposition as in "different starting points."
Joint construction of a new idea	Probably rare. Group's model or current way of thinking and talking is faced with difficulties and the group collectively fashions a new explanation.

"Joint typing" happened sometimes when the group was typing a response or drawing diagrams. It was characterized by very close interaction with the screen. Students used the emerging text or diagram on screen as a part of their discussion. The following example occurred when one student was drawing a picture of an unmagnetized nail by placing N and S symbols to look evenly mixed within the nail.

Notice that by saying "Okay, now, Ss?" Anne made her drawing work open to the other group members, and they responded by making suggestions about placing N and S letters. Something happened that Anne didn't intend, so Marge asked whether that thing (whatever it was) could be deleted. The developing picture on the computer screen supported the conversation and can be seen as another kind of member in the conversation, by presenting a changing representation to which the students responded. The students also responded to each other's spoken statements, of course.

The group was drawing a "separation model" of magnetism which was common at this point in the course. The picture below is typical.

 At times, group members figured out that they indeed had different ideas. Talking about what they wanted to put for a response sometimes led to the recognition that they were saying different things. In the example below, two students explained the attraction of metals to a wool rubbed straw by saying that the straw was positive and metals were negative. They found out that their fellow group member didn't think that way:

 Such discoveries of differences may have come about because the group had to construct a single response, and they felt some obligation to represent ideas that all three group members could accept.

 In the process of considering a question, group members often came to agreement on the general points of a prediction or explanation. However, they still had to formulate a concise and meaningful statement or diagram, which required further effort. Group members sometimes had to work hard to type meaningful sentences that described their thinking reasonably well. This work was called "contructing an explicit statement."

At one point on Day 2, the group was asked to explain how they made their predictions of static electric behavior. The group members seemed to have been drawing on prior experience, but they had not explained to each other how they made predictions. Donna read the instructions first:

 Notice how, as each student contributed phrases, their statement became more concrete and more in a form that they could type. The students were trying to use what they felt was appropriate language, and the phrase that they eventually came up with was more meaningful than what they said at first.

 These discussions happened when the computer documents raised a new issue, or when a student simply had a new idea, for whatever reason.

In this example, a students' own curiosity led to new thinking. Donna was watching Anne draw N and S symbols inside a diagram of a nail. Consistent with the group's separation model, Anne was placing N and S letters at opposite ends of the nail picture. Donna suddenly asked:
Donna	- - think there's a space in the middle of the nail?
Anne	I dunno
Donna	Do you think like the south - they just butt up.
Anne	Just meet at each other.
Donna	You know what I'm saying?
Anne	Yeah
Marge	We didn't test anything for the middle of it, I don't know what happens
Donna	I mean just based on our model, do you think, because we're drawing a picture of what we think's happening, do you think that Ss come right up to the Ns?
Donna	or do you think there's a space in the middle of it?
Marge	I don't know. It'd be interesting to take a magnet and
Donna	Put it in the middle
Marge	yeah, and go up and see when it changes.

The "extending ideas" category represents processes of gradual development of ideas by students. While this particular example doesn't show students moving directly towards an acceptable "magnetic domains" model, it does show that students engaged in the types of issues that 17th and 18th century scientists grappled with extensively. The students did eventually develop a model similar to the "magnetic domains" model, and this example shows a point along their path to that model.

Hopefully, these categories can provide terminology for researchers to talk about learning/model development issues in group conversations.Of course, we need to check additional data from different groups in different settings for possible additional categories. Outstanding questions include:

• Do different groups spend similar amounts of time in the different types of discussion?
• Can these categories be used to qualify different styles of physics courses?
• Can we compare time spent on different categories to learning success?

Andy Johnson
andyjohnson@bhsu.edu