Creating contexts for productive peer collaboration

Amanda HarrisIDEAs Lab

University of Sussex

Outline

• Children as collaborators• Achievement goal theory• Empirical studies

• Achievement goals• Observational studies

• Goal-oriented learner profiles• Goal-oriented scaffolding

Collaborative activity in the classroom

Peer interaction can have positive effects on children’s

learning

Quality of collaborative discussion tends to be poor

Computer-mediated collaboration

The computer is a commonly shared resource

Gender

Ability

Task

Group Size

Collaboration as a subjective experience

• Research has focused on structural context• Gender, ability, group size, type of task

• Children’s cognitive and affective responses to collaborative learning have been largely ignored

Achievement goal theory

Goal orientation: A set of beliefs and goals which characterise an individual’s approach to learning

Mastery orientation Performance orientation

Cognition

Behaviour

Affect

Understanding new material

Developing competencies and mastering skills

Remains positive in the face of failure

Seeks challenging tasks

Persistence and effort

Deep-level learning strategies

Demonstrating ability

Gaining favourable judgements from others

Reacts negatively to failure

Mistakes = low ability

Seeks easy tasks

Gives up easily

Surface-level learning strategies

Study 1 – Joke City• 22 children (7 – 9 years; M = 8;7)

• 11 same-gender (3 male; 8 female), mixed-ability pairs

• 3 collaborative sessions (± 25 minutes)

• Videotaped and transcribed

• Individual participation coded for: collaborative, non-collaborative and metacognitive contribution

Utterance type Description Examples (from transcripts)

Metacognitive Meta, self: Verbalisation or assessment of own knowledge or understanding. Meta, other: Verbalisation or assessment of partner’s knowledge or understanding, including questioning.Meta, joint: Verbalisation and assessment of pair’s knowledge or understanding.Re-engage: Identifying off task or ineffective discussion and drawing attention back to the task.Think Aloud: Either explicitly expressed or implied verbalisation about internal thoughts, includes talking to oneself, repeating questions asked by software.

‘I get I’, ‘I don’t understand this one’

What do you think it is?’ ‘you got that one right’‘We knew that one, it was easy’ ‘come on, we’ve got to do the next one now’‘I’m thinking’ ‘Umm, humm’ ‘erm, why do birds always agree’

Collaborative Describe: Descriptive and procedural comments about the taskGuess: Guesses/suggestion indicating a joke answer or task action without any justification. Justify: Provides guess or suggestion with a reason or justificationCheck: Seeks agreement with partner before proceedingAgree: Indicates agreement with other child where understanding is apparent. Disagree: Challenging or disagreeing with other child’s suggestion which includes a reason for doing so or counter suggestion

‘we’ve got to click this one now’‘lets try woolly’ ‘that one maybe’‘because he’s woolly and he jumps so its woolly jumper’ ‘Shall I click this one?’ ‘Woolly jumper, yeah?’‘oh yeah of course woolly jumper’‘no, its woolly because you only wear woolly clothes’

Non-Collaborative

Command: Explicitly instructing partner what to do or insisting on an action/answer with consultation.Submit: Defers to the other child or gives in without demonstrating understanding.Dismiss: Either ignores or dismisses partner’s suggestion. Off task: All comments specifically off task

‘That one, click that’ ‘read’ ‘yes’ ‘ok, that one’‘no, it won’t be that’ ‘don’t be stupid’‘Are we going swimming after this?’

General Reading: All reading from the screenComputer-response: Specific responses to the software prompts not related specifically to discussion of jokes.Comment: Comments on the task not specifically related to discussion of jokes.Other:All inaudible comments, comments relating to problems with the software and comments directed to the experimenter.

‘yes, next screen’ ‘worksheet time’‘I liked that one’ ‘ha-ha, that’s funny’‘Its got stuck on this screen’ ‘I clicked the wrong one’‘how long have we got left’

Study 1 – Joke City• 22 children (7 – 9 years; M = 8;7)

• 11 same-gender (3 male; 8 female), mixed-ability pairs

• 3 collaborative sessions (± 25 minutes)

• Videotaped and transcribed

• Individual participation coded for: collaborative, non-collaborative and metacognitive contribution

• Achievement goal orientation

• Teacher-rated questionnaire adapted from PALS (Midgley, 2000)‘This child will persevere when trying to work out challenging tasks’ (mastery)

‘Doing visibly better than other members of the class is important to this child’ (performance)

• Mastery and performance score for each child

Results• Mastery and performance scores were correlated with

the frequency of utterances of each language type

Mastery Goals

Positively related to frequency of

disagreements

(r = .58, p = 0.007)

Negatively related to frequency of

submissions

(r = -.38, p = 0.04)

Performance Goals

Positively related to metacognitive

comments relating to the self

(r = .51, p = 0.02)

Negatively related to metacognitive

comments relating to the other child

(r = -.49, p = 0.02)

Results contd. • Mastery and performance scores were similar

• Mastery mean = 3.14 (SD.72)• Performance mean = 2.9 (SD .46)

• Slight tendencies do not account for differences in the behaviour

• Are goals situated in the individual or the context?

Study 2 – Achievement goal stability

• Measured the consistency of achievement goal adoption across different learning contexts

• Presented children with context specific scenarios • 6 learning contexts (group composition and perceived-ability)

• Choice of mastery or performance response

• 106 children (61 girls, 45 boys) (7-10yrs)

ResultsStrength of achievement goal orientation

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

Strong Moderate Weak Weak Moderate Strong

MASTERY NEUTRAL PERFORMANCE

Achievement goal stability

No

. o

f p

arti

cip

ants

69% = neutral or weak goal orientation

21% = moderate

10% = consistent achievement goal orientation

Study 3 – ZoombinisA game of logical reasoning

Neutral instructions: shown how to navigate the game and told to work together to solve the puzzles

Mastery instructions: object of the game is to work out effective strategies Performance instructions: to get as many zoombinis as possible to safety

Neutral (34) Goal-oriented (14)

4 mastery pairs

3 performance pairs

8 mastery-instructed pairs

9 performance-instructed pairs

All pairs played zoombinis once for about 25 minutes

Coding the zoombinis sessions

Problem solving – simple / complex

Help-seeking –task-focused Metacognitive awareness – positive / negative

Metacognitive control – turn-taking/evaluation of task difficulty

Togetherness – I / we

Persistence – positive / negative

89% inter rate reliability

Kappa coefficient = .88

ResultsProblem-solving (discussion)

6.5

46.1

11.6

45.9

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

Simple Complex

mea

n pe

rcen

tage

of u

tter

ance

s

mastery

performance

Both group used simple problem-solving language

f(1, 32) = 6.58, p = 0.02

In addition the mastery group engaged in complex problem-solving discussion

Simple: ‘try that one’, Complex: ‘Try that one because we’ve already done the others’

Help-seekingTask-focused or External

No difference between groups in task-focused help

The performance group requested external help significantly more than the mastery group

(x²(1) = 7.56, p = 0.006)

External help Mastery Performance Total

YES 4 13 17

NO 12 5 17

Conclusions

• Achievement goals influence collaborative behaviour in distinct ways

• Very few children are disposed towards a particular goal-orientation

• The rest appear very responsive to goal-oriented cues

Goal-oriented learner profiles

A Mastery profile

Joint engagement

Willingness to disagree

Complex discussion

A Performance profile

Focus on self

External support

Simple discussion

Scaffolding achievement goals

• Scaffolding might be a way of encouraging a more mastery-oriented approach

• Performance reassurance increased confidence emphasis on understanding task mastery independence

Thank you