On learning that could have happened: The same tale in two cities

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Highlights

  • In both studies, the dyads’ interactions displayed a lead-follow pattern.

  • The dyads did not benefit from learning opportunities afforded by the participation structure.

  • The asymmetric power-relations might be regarded as inappropriate for peers.

  • The two cases displayed important similarities across time and geographic locations.

  • The similarity supports the claim on generalizability of findings in commognitive case studies.

Abstract

In this commognitive study, we take a close look at the interactive problem-solving by two middle-school students’ dyads, one of which participated in research conducted in Montreal, Canada in 1992, and the other, 25 years later, was a part of a classroom investigation in Melbourne, Australia. The present study was inspired by the second author’s impression of similarity between the two cases. Our analyses, conducted with the help of special constructs, participation profiles, participation structures and roles-in-activity, brought two types of results. First, striking likeness was identified between the two cases in the characteristics of interactions that could be responsible for the production and utilization of learning opportunities. Role conflict likely experienced by the participants emerged as a factor undermining the effectiveness of learning-in-peer-interaction. Second, the confirmation of the similarity, combined with a theoretically supported analysis of mechanisms of interaction, corroborated the claim about generalizability of findings in commognitive case studies.

Section snippets

The context: From MAP and SELP investigations to the Déjà vu study

In this section, a brief description of MAP and SELP is followed by a presentation of those of their data that have been considered in the Déjà vu study.

Conceptualization: How to compare learning interactions?

Any two cases of learning interaction may appear similar or different in multiple ways. In this section, we introduce the construct of participation profile with which to encapsulate those characteristics of students’ actions and of their dyadic interactions that may impact the effectiveness of the dyadic learning. Since learning-shaping features are those that researchers are usually looking for, they were likely to be the ones that the second author attended to and that produced her sense of

Questions to guide the Déjà vu study

The first step in our analyses will be to answer the following question:

Q1: What was common to the participation structures of the MAP and SELP episodes?

While answering Q1, we hope to capture those public, but difficult to see aspects of the MAP and SELP events that could be held responsible for the second author’s sense of their striking similarity of the two cases. In addition, it will give us an unconventional look at opportunities for learning that arose in the participants’ interactions.

Method of analysis

In operationalizing the constructs of individual participation profile and of dyadic participation structure we drew on MAP’s conceptualization and methods of analysis, which we were now able to refine thanks to our additional, quarter-century worth of experience in commognitive research.

As a preparation to data analysis, an interaction diagram was to be built to visually represent the interactions in each episode. This kind of diagram, a case-specific elaboration of Fig. 4, was to be a more

Method of analysis

Opportunities for learning faced by a student in the course of dyadic interactions depend on the part she or he plays in mathematizing. Any given situation may constitute a learning opportunity for one partner, but not for the other; or it may be an opportunity for a different type of learning for each one of them. We will thus conduct our analyzes with the help of the notion of role in mathematizing, the construct that captures those aspects of persons participation that shape different

Method of analysis

The Vygotskian conviction that interacting with “a more capable peer” is particularly conducive to learning rests on the tacit assumption that those with a better command of the discourse will implement their role of leaders-in-mathematizing in full, and this means, among others, that they will take responsibility for the partner’s learning. Similarly, those in the role of followers are expected to act in such a way as to make the other student’s discourse genuinely their own. Thus, in the

Summary and discussion: Why do student miss opportunities to learn from a “more capable” peer?

To summarize the above responses to our three research questions, all the interactions considered in this study revealed the same participation structure, with one participant leading-in-mathematizing, but following-in-inter-personal-communication, and with his or her partner playing the complementary roles. This participation structure provided the followers-in-mathematizing with many learning opportunities. Many factors may be responsible for the fact that the students did not benefit as much

A glance from above: The contribution of the Déjà vu study to research on learning-in-peer-interactions

As stated in the introduction to this article, we hoped that the Déjà vu study would further our understanding of learning-in-peer-interactions, while also showing generalizability, thus usefulness, of theory-guided case studies. We conclude this article with reflection on the question of whether, and to what extent, these expectations have been fulfilled.

The query about an innovative contribution is particularly pertinent in the view of the fact that much of what has been done in the Déjà vu

Note

The authors dedicate this paper to the memory of David Clarke, the leader of the Social Essentials of Learning project (SELP).

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interests with any institution or individual.

Acknowledgements

The Social Essentials of Learning project (SELP) was supported under the Australian Research Council's Discovery Projects funding scheme [Project number DP170102541]. We would like to thank the students, parents, teachers, and school staff for their invaluable support of the project.

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