Classroom activities using an inquiry approach often feature students working in small groups to reduce teacher-centeredness and maximize student autonomy. Within science classrooms, group work may mirror modern scientific research: successful interaction among team members (social/relational) that engages probing questioning and creativity (cognitive/content) with emotional attachment to their work (affective). Previous research on small group work in school science focused either on single dimensions of group work—mostly on needed cognitive resources, e.g., knowledge and skills for understanding and addressing the problem—or on the interplay between cognitive and social resources (e.g., science knowledge and capacity to foster group interactions), while the role of affects is relatively unexplored. We propose that group work demands the collective construction of a “triple problem solving space” in which all three dimensions—cognitive/content (the problem to be solved), social/relational (the challenges based on social interactions within the group), and affective (the emotional life of the group)—are developed on a moment-by-moment basis. Assessing whether and to what extent students collectively construct a positive triple problem solving space, we videotaped small groups’ interactions (3–4 students per group) during inquiry-based activities in three ninth grade science classes. Results showed that when a group collectively positions itself positively in terms of social and affective dynamics, it tends to engage effectively in the cognitive aspects of the assigned tasks. The qualitative analysis further highlights the socially-shared regulation processes that involve an ongoing negotiation between intra- and inter-individual resources and which are the result of each group member deploying individual resources along each dimension, monitoring and evaluating their peers’ processes, and adjusting their processes accordingly through integration of information from self and others.

中文翻译：

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在高中科学教室探索小组学习的框架：三重问题解决空间

使用探究方法的课堂活动通常会以小组形式工作的学生为特色，以减少以教师为中心的情况并最大限度地提高学生的自主权。在科学教室中，小组工作可能反映了现代科学研究：团队成员之间的成功互动（社会/关系），使探究提问和创造力（认知/内容）与对工作的情感依恋（情感）融为一体。先前对学校科学中的小组工作的研究要么集中在小组工作的单个维度上，要么主要集中在所需的认知资源（例如，用于理解和解决问题的知识和技能）上，或者集中于认知与社会资源（例如，科学知识）之间的相互作用以及促进小组互动的能力），而情感的作用相对而言尚未得到充分挖掘。我们建议小组工作要求集体构建一个“三重问题解决空间”，其中必须包含三个维度：认知/内容（要解决的问题），社会/关系（基于小组内部社交互动的挑战）和情感（团队的情感生活）是在瞬间的基础上发展的。评估学生是否以及在多大程度上共同构建了一个积极的三重问题解决空间，我们在三个九年级科学课的基于探究的活动中录制了小组的互动（每组3-4个学生）。结果表明，当一个团队在社交和情感动态方面集体地处于积极的位置时，它倾向于有效地参与所分配任务的认知方面。