backup:adfs::0.$.chap5
25th October 1993
Chap 5: COLLABORATIVE INTERACTIONS *IN RELATION TO* COMPUTERS
The form of interaction I shall discuss in this Chapter is not the one
that first comes to mind as being "collaborative". I am not
intending to conjur up the image of pupil and teacher engaged together
in a sustained interaction around some computer task. Such intimate
interaction is a relatively rare luxury in most classrooms. So,
teachers and pupils in focussed and protracted collaboration at
computer-based problems is not my present interest. Instead, I will
be concerned here with another sense in which pupils and teachers
interact in the presence of computers. This is the more commonplace
sense in which pupils are engaged in some activity involving their
teachers but where those teachers' contributions are more indirect, or
mediated, or deferred. That is, they make only intermittent contact
with the task or refer to it on occasions when it is not actually in
progress. These are still encounters that are conceived to support
pupils' learning. The joint involvement with teachers arises because,
to varying degrees, teachers will define, interpret or intervene in
what is going on, or in respect of what has previously happened. This
is a loser sense of teacher-pupil-task interaction but it is typical
of children's normal classroom experience and is properly considered
one sense of joint "interaction" in relation to, or inspired by, some
activity.
My plan for the discussion of such circumstances is as follows. In
the first section below, I shall describe one experience of my own
involving the implementation of a primary school computer activity.
The point of this example is to identify certain problems that
surface when we focus upon teacher-pupil-task interaction of the kind
defined above. This example prompts consideration of just what it is
that might be done or said by teachers in support of their pupils'
computer-based experiences. I will suggest that what gets said in the
course of such supporting talk is something that matters. Moreover,
we should understand more about it. Yet, the analysis of
instructional talk that guided our consideration of interacting *with*
computers turns out (at first sight) to be less helpful to a
consideration of situations where the interaction is *in relation to*
them. The crux of the problem is that the processes invoked in
theorising about ZPD encounters are too intimate: they assume a degree
of person-to-person interaction that may not be so easily promoted in
the situations that I wish to consider next. This shortfall prompts a
return to theory in the final sections of the chapter: conceptions of
instructional discourse are extended to encompass categories of
classroom talk that reach beyond the contexts of intimate tutorial
exchanges.
Briefly, my argument will be that, through analysing zones of proximal
development, cultural psychology has furnished useful insights into
the character of instructional interactions. However, this analysis
may be too focussed upon interactions of the traditional tutorial
kind. In practice, much real instructional discourse is, instead,
embedded in a more open-ended and communal kind of interaction. Thus,
it is not as intimate as ZPD conceptions suggest. For example,
instructional talk is often concerned with linking the current
activity to previous events that the participants have jointly
experienced. So, it is not simply concerned with supervising
the actions that might effectively complete some current problem
solving task - although the jigsaws and puzzles of much ZPD research
might encourage this image.
In order to address these senses of instructional interaction among
pupils and teachers, I shall refer to a further concept that aims
to systematise classroom talk. This is the discourse principle
discussed by Edwards and Mercer (1987) and referred to by them as
"common knowledge". Their work will prove a useful basis for
integrating accounts of instructional exchanges that refer to a wide
range of classroom circumstances. What I shall suggest is that this
framework is one that leads us again to recognize the central
importance of intersubjectivity. That conclusion, again, urges upon
us the need to locate computer-based learning in a context of
interpersonal support.
INTERACTING IN RELATION TO COMPUTERS: AN EXAMPLE
Teachers could be forgiven some irritation with cultural psychology -
at least, insofar as it seems to foreground the zone of proximal
development as a framework for instruction. That characterisation of
instructional talk may not seem in tune with the reality of classroom
life. When this zone is realized for empirical purposes it will
usually be a rather peaceful place. It will not be densely populated,
the participants will tend to be mutually engaged, and the action will
be allowed to proceed relatively undisturbed. Most formal education,
however, does not permit any abundance of such relaxed encounters. As
Tharp and Gallimore (1988) comment in discussing ZPD interactions as
*classroom* phenomena: '..conditions in which the teacher can be
sufficiently aware of the child's actual, inflight performance, simply
are not available in classrooms organized, equipped, and staffed in
the typical pattern.' In short, the opportunity for dedicated and
focussed interaction around a task is something of a luxury.
Teacher-pupil ratios mitigate against such pleasures; pressure to
sustain order may do so also. Thus, the model of instructional
interaction promoted within cultural theorizing may seem too remote
from what routinely can be achieved within the realities of
classrooms.
There is certainly some discrepancy to be confronted here, but the
mismatch is not as dramatic as I have sketched it. There is no reason
why devices identified within studies of more intimate tutorial
encounters should not be reproduced in the busier context of class
instruction, albeit with less intensity. Newman et al (1989)
illustrate this in their development of the appropriation concept for
ZPD activity: their studies were successfully grounded in whole
classroom settings. Nevertheless, if these (ZPD) theoretical concepts
are claimed to play a significant role in systematising educational
practice, they may need some elaboration - in order quite clearly to
include the organization of discourse under the normal and busy
conditions of classroom life. As it happens, I believe the concepts
of intersubjectivity and socially-shared cognition prove valuable in
helping us bridge this gap - one between instruction as it gets
modelled for theory building and instruction as it often gets
practised in institutionalized settings.
To demonstrate the kind of social encounter that we must consider
under the present heading, I have chosen to dwell on an example of the
implementation of one (primary school) computer programme that I
have designed and observed myself. The programme is modest in its
aims. It is in the drill and skill tradition but can claim some of
the engaging properties illustrated in the estimation/harpooning
example praised by Scott et al (1992) and discussed in Chapter 1. It
is therefore likely to hold some appeal within primary school
settings. It was conceived in response to discussions with teachers
regarding the problem of moving children towards understanding
multiplication in relation to repeated addition.
Children have to guess the number of squares making up the snake
figure (using the screen pointer to select a number from an array at
the top of the screen). The programme generates number targets by
randomly selecting a value between 2 and X, the value of X increasing
after each correct choice. The task is difficult because not only do
the numbers get bigger, but the snake is constantly repositioning its
starting point and then uncurling again. Such a cycle involves the
snake uncurling into each of a sequence of N x M rectangular matrices,
where N and M are factors of the current target number, T. Sometimes
a number, T, will allow only one such matrix (a prime number: 1 x T).
For other numbers, there may be several matrices according to the set
of its factors. All the possibilities are illustrated for the case
of T=12 in the schematic diagram of Figure 3.1. During the activity
itself, they would be displayed successively and not simultaneously as
pictured here. The leading square has a face drawn upon it. This
cycle of repositioning and unfolding the various factor matrices for a
target number, T, continues until the guess is made.
-------- Insert Figure 3.1 about here --------
The speed at which these cycles occur can be set in advance but it
would be such as to make a simple 1-2-3... counting strategy soon
prove too limited. The child has to start finding estimating
strategies to keep the game going (a score can be incorporated to
motivate this: it is calculated as the sum of correctly guessed
targets so far and it is zeroed when the activity is restarted after
an incorrect guess). Six and seven year olds will quite quickly adopt
repeated addition strategies to cycles where a single row or column of
a matrix can be counted - 4+4+4 giving 12 for example. However, the
achievement of special interest is that whereby they move from
generating a solution by repeated addition to the more economical and
powerful one based upon multiplication of columns and rows - 3 x 4
giving 12.
This programme has been observed in three classes of 7 year-old
children (Crook, 1986), all at a stage where they are studying factors
and gaining multiplication table knowledge. I would like to extract
from these observations two (related) points concerning the use of
this programme. The first is expressed in Figure 3.2 which
illustrates changing performance on the activity with experience: it
shows changes in the average highest number that was correctly guessed
in successive sessions.
--------- Insert Figure 3.2 about here ---------
The curves show results for children working singly (S) and working as
pairs (P). At two points indicated, all children had a session of the
activity alone. The curve appears to have reached a ceiling. Because
some of these children were working together, it was possible for the
observer to gain more insight into their strategy - as it might
sometimes be articulated within their conversations. It was apparent
that, for these children, making the move from repeated addition
(which works quite well here up to about T=15) towards multiplication
did not occur naturally. This was surprising, because the format of
the task seemed well suited to affording that move: repeated trials
should serve to highlight the point where an existing strategy tended
to break down. Moreover, there was no time pressure forcing hasty and
unreflective decisions - the snake keeps moving repetitively until the
pupil is ready to make an estimate. There is also little doubt that
the children seemed highly motivated to improve on their last effort.
This limit on progress illustrates the first point I wish to make:
creating an *occasion* for extracting some new understanding may not
be enough. This is a point that has been most effectively elaborated
by Perkins (1985) in relation to classroom activities more generally
(but especially those based on computers). He cautions against too
easily assuming 'the opportunity does the teaching by itself' (p. 13).
The conception of the present programme exposes (in myself) a certain
naive faith in this principle. On some definitions the activity is a
drill. It confronts the pupil with a succession of discrete problems
converging on no particular creative endpoint. However, we suppose it
might offer more than the chance for sheer practice: the scheduling of
the problems and the visual representations used might encourage the
pupil to "stumble" into a firmer conception of multiplication.
Unfortunately, it seems they do not.
From some teachers' point of view this might be an attractive
programme: it is engaging and can be offered without the need of
supervision or support. Yet, this independence of operation is both
its strength and its weakness. Reluctantly, I concluded that in some
classrooms where it was used with enthusiasm it might as well not have
been used at all.
This brings us to a second observation about this programme. In two
of the classrooms, it was deployed intermittently in the computer
corner over a period of two school terms. It was judged to offer an
agreeable activity for the pupils, one that invited them to use number
skills in a playful manner. In the third class, its presence was more
conspicuous. On the walls were pictures of matrix-like patterns and
bendable snake-like models had been constructed from empty food
cartons. In discussing number topics with the class, it was not
unusual for the teacher to make use of blackboard illustrations that
echoed those in the computer activity. The difficult concept of a
prime number was referenced to the children's familiar (and
frustrating) problem of making a good guess for those long snakes that
only ever uncurled into one straight (1 x T) line. In short, for
these children, their experience with this simple computer activity
was drawn into the wider context of classroom life. There it was
mobilized to support the public discussion of number and to inform
various other creative activities.
The children in this class made greater progress on the computer
activity itself - although we can not make too much of this
observation as the difference in treatment was not a planned one in an
experimental sense. However, it is surely a persuasive idea that such
widespread classroom appropriation of the procedure and imagery of a
computer activity would make a difference to its impact. So, we
should be wary of our faith in the 'opportunity doing the teaching by
itself': with computers in particular, this faith may cause us to
neglect the effort of integrating the task into the public life of the
classroom.
Lest in Chapter 1 I appeared too tolerant of drill and skill computer
activities, this present discussion identifies my own reservations
about computer-as-tutor. It is not that this software is
intrinsically suspect on the basis of some common design
characteristic. Nor that the principle of dense practice in some
problem domain must necessarily be avoided. The limitation of this
form of computer implementation is that it may cultivate a faith in
the self-contained effectiveness of such activity. Of course, this is
a species of criticism that might be applied to the support of any
classroom activity that is allowed to lose its context. However, it
does seem that this possibility might be especially real for the case
of activities supported by computers.
I am using this simple example to develop a point of view about
computer-supported learning: namely, that it is necessary to
incorporate it carefully into the collaborations that characterise
organized learning. Moreover, I believe that this is important to get
right, because many computer-based resources offer something quite
distinctive (and potentially powerful) as educational resources. So,
even the very simple activity described above exemplifies the
possibility of fashioning a rather novel experience. It allows a
rather distinctive kind of encounter with number: one that is hard to
reproduce in other media. The visual representation of number that is
achieved is actually no different to that which children may encounter
with standard classroom materials (Cuisinere blocks). However,
something distinctive is added by the incorporation of simple
animation and the opportunity for pupil interaction (number selections
and their evaluation). The number matrices move at a pace that
invites the discovery and exercise of new strategies for enumeration.
This, in turn, will periodically confront the pupil with the need to
make informed guesses (to estimate) - something that, traditionally,
is hard to cultivate in the early years of mathematical experience.
So, there is often something distinctive and powerful about the
experiences that computer-based activities can offer. The present
example illustrates this possibility within the most modest of
formats. However, it also illustrates another feature of computer use
in educational settings; namely, the danger of their dislocation from
a main stream of educational discourse (cf. Pelgrum et al 1990).
Pupils' enthusiasm during work on computers may easily mislead us into
thinking learning is proceeding in pace with engagement. So, in this
case, there was a notable discrepancy between some teacher's
judgements of what the children were doing (namely that it was a
helpful activity with which they were making progress) and the
researcher's finding which was that, often, it was of no apparent help
at all. The researcher has detailed records of what pupils were
actually doing - the trial by trial choices and estimates were
captured and stored by the software as part of a research exercise.
These records were not so easily extracted by the teacher and the time
needed to study them might not be available. Indeed, such feedback is
not normally incorporated into the design of commercial software and
teachers have, therefore, to rely on more informal glimpses of what is
happening with an activity.
This example should illustrate the broader sense of teacher-pupil-task
interaction that I am considering in this section. This is not the
intimate interaction that might occur in a sustained encounter between
a teacher and pupil(s) - as the latter worked at a particular
computer-based task. Much instructional communication is not so
intense as this. It comprises instead the reflection, review and
integration that teachers impose upon children's activities; this may
be done intermittently as those activities progress, or
retrospectively when closure on them has been reached (Edwards and
Mercer, 1987).
Such communication is more extended in that it can embrace larger
numbers of participants than is typically implied by
culturally-influenced research on ZPDs. It is more extended in that
it may come and go across a longer period of time: the social
interaction that organizes some particular learning activity in class
need not be restricted to the tidy closed session-like encounters
that often characterise research modelling of instructional discourse.
In our modest concrete example above, the teachers could interact
*in relation to* the computer in the more extended sense of them
explicitly drawing shared knowledge of a program into the community
life of the classroom. The computer activity then becomes (for some
classes) a resource that organizes discussion intermittently in time
and, perhaps, requiring talk that involves large groups or the whole
class. Surely, much social interactional work that is done in
classrooms is necessarily done at this level - albeit complemented by
the more intimate tutorial contacts that psychological commentators
are more comfortable with from their research traditions.
My concern in this section has been to illustrate what might be
necessary to create an effective teacher-pupil-technology
interaction: a social interaction *in relation to* technology. The
example suggests the potential of computer-based experiences when they
are fully assimilated into this social dynamic of classroom
interaction. It also cautions a limitation in what might be achieved
when the pupil-technology component of the exchange is isolated from
this dynamic. Much more empirical work is necessary to determine the
force of this caution. In the absence of such research, I shall take
a different approach. This will entail reviewing more general
arguments for the potency of classroom discourse: the proper
management of computer-based experiences might be inferred from
observations of talk organized around *other* kinds of learning
activity as it has been documented in research.
MEDIATED TALK BETWEEN TEACHERS AND PUPILS
I shall discuss two perspectives on the mediating role of
teacher-organized talk. In each case a form of *continuity* is being
created for the participants. Firstly, there is a kind of lateral
continuity. This is required in respect of pupil activities that
might otherwise be left isolated as practical experiences - where, in
reality, they are conceptually related in significant ways. What is
addressed here is the problem of achieving transfer of learning:
allowing pupil understandings to generalize in important ways to new
situations. Secondly, there is a kind of longitudinal continuity.
This might be described as the creation of a kind of narrative state:
furnishing a recognized platform for the next set of explorations. It
arises in talk which is used to knit together the sequences of
disparate actions and observations that constitute some learning
exercise. Sometimes, such experiences may have been organized over
quite extended periods of classroom time and the integration is a
substantial responsibility. This form of continuity may be implicated
in transfer also, but it is more implicated in the empowerment of
fresh instructional talk.
In the two sections that follow, I will expand upon both of those
senses of the social basis of learning: the creation of both lateral
and longitudinal continuities. In doing so, I shall make references
to how computers might enter into such communications and, thereby,
become effective resources for the support of teacher-pupil
interaction. In the first of these sections, I shall consider more
closely the grounds for viewing transfer of learning as a
socially-organized achievement. This identifies the lateral
continuity that must be created. In the second, I shall consider
longitudinal continuity: the creation of an integrating "common
knowledge" within a learning community.
(1) Creating lateral continuities: transfer of learning
In discussing cultural psychology in the last chapter, we noted that
it was a theory emphasising the situated nature of human
understanding. Learning becomes, in Vygotsky's words, 'the
acquisition of many specialized abilities for thinking' (1978, p.83).
We also noted a price to be paid for doubting that generalized
thinking skills should have a key role in theorising: some other basis
is required for explaining how learners manage to transfer their
knowledge from one situation to another - for undoubtably they do.
The first thing to be said about transfer is that we may intuitively
exaggerate how easily it is achieved: reviews of research into
spontaneous transfer suggest it does not readily occur (D'Andrade,
1981; Detterman, 1993; Lave, 1988; Pea, 1988; Perkins and Salamon,
1987; Resnick, 1987). So, we must discover more about what has to be
done to make transfer happen. Current accounts of transfer are
strongly cognitive, their focus being upon the mediating influence of
private, mental structures. A recent example is one proposed by
Hatano and Inagaki (1992). They suggest that contextualised knowledge
is "desituated" (transfers) when the learner synthesises a certain
kind of abstract representational device: a mental model of the
relevant domain. This synthesis is made possible when learners have
enjoyed a particular range of encounters with the domain. But what
precipitates such mental modelling? Although a mental model may prove
a helpful way for us to conceptualise part of the process, the idea
must be complemented by some account of the origins of such models.
That is, some account of how children's concrete experiences in a
domain are best organized to facilitate the proposed representational
synthesis - the supposed basis of the transfer.
Some of what matters may reside in the structure of tasks that are
offered to encourage learning (for example, the pace or
predictability of action, or the nature of feedback). However, it may
be hard to judge whether a highly differentiated and flexible task
environment is better described as contributing to a single rich model
in the learner - or to the cultivation of a greater variety of
situated responses. One more straightforward kind of significant
supportive experience comes from the social environment of learning.
Understandings may be enriched in the sense proposed by cognitive
psychologists (and, thus, transfer more readily) if learners enjoy a
certain pattern of tutorial interaction with other people. One
pattern might involve pressure to articulate knowledge to others (see
Chi, Bassock, Lewis, Reimann and Glaser (1989), and see also further
discussion of peer processes in the following chapter). However,
another pattern of potentially useful social relations is closer to
the concerns of the present discussion. It arises from the supportive
intrusions into our activity that are made by those who are more
expert than us: occasions where teachers and other experts act to
impose a certain interpretative framework on our actions. This is a
proposal more actively pursued by some working in the tradition of
cultural theorising.
Rogoff and Gardner (1984) develop this point to help characterise the
very earliest learning experiences. They show how adult guiding
participation within infant and preschool problem solving can serve to
identify for a child links between contexts of novel and familiar
problems. The same point is made within the Laboratory of Comparative
Human Cognition's discussion of more formal learning settings (LCHC,
1983). They propose that the key to transfer will often lie in how
other people (who are more knowledgeable) do and say things that
identify the links between contexts (cf. Pea, 1989). Organized
environments for learning (say, classrooms) will expose us to an
interpretative layer of discourse that is imposed upon our activities
- teacher talk. Educational practice involves the provision of
distinctive tasks around which this is arranged. Within these tasks,
action can be organized and, then, tutorial interventions serve to
indicate for learners the overlap among them. Pea (1988) has
elaborated this view and juxtaposed it with traditional psychological
theories that suppose transfer is mediated by "common elements" within
the material contexts implicated. Pea argues that such "sameness" is
not intrinsic to things, and detected by us as such; sameness is a
sociocultural concept. It lies within category types the thinker has
appropriated in the course of socially-organized activity. Expert
participants in this activity contribute interventions that serve to
achieve this.
This conception of transfer invites more research in which such
proposed social processes can be properly exposed and understood.
Some movement in this direction is exemplified in the recent studies
of Newman, Griffin and Cole (1989): here an attempt is made to analyse
the sense in which the "same task" can be encountered in new
situations. Their conclusion is that socially-mediated processes are
central to how we discover this continuity: in particular, they
highlight the significance of teacher-mediated appropriations of pupil
activity.
A perspective of this kind may be appealing to practitioners, for it
identifies a crucial ingredient of educational experience as being
within their hands. It also has a special significance in relation to
the use of computers. I have argued above that this is a technology
with properties that allow it to be easily dislocated from classroom
life. If this happens, then the valuable concrete experiences that
computers provide may not be referenced within the discourse that
helps mediate transfer. I argued in the last chapter that the nature
of computer-based tasks readily *encourages* this marginalization.
How often is this actually the fate of computer activity in
classrooms?
Probably too often - given that the opportunity for children to use
the technology independently is seen as a favourable property. Some
commentators will remark positively on classroom computers because of
the opportunity they can provide to release a teacher's time and
attention (Clements, 1987; Fraser, Burkhardt, Coupland, Philips, Pimm
and Ridgeway, 1988; Lepper and Gurtner, 1989). These observations
relate to work in schools; the same approving view of computers is
expressed in relation to undergraduate teaching (Hague, 1991). From
extensive classroom observation, Eraut and Hoyles (1989) comment:
'..assigning pupils to work on computers allows the teacher to attend
to the rest of the class in peace, and to give more individual
attention to those pupils who are not working on computers'. Yet
Eraut has reflected elsewhere (1991, p. 203) that this is an
unfortunate trend: computer work, he argues, needs a great deal of
planning in relation to other activities. This is very much my own
point. Limited planning of work - and the loss of talk that exploits
the continuities and connections thereby created - may undermine the
breadth of learning that is supported by computer-based activities.
This possibility gains credibility when we think again of the
particular case of Logo projects. The vision of transferable skills
arising from Logo work appealed to many practitioners but its
realization has been elusive. There have been some reports of
effective transfer (eg., Clements and Gullo, 1984) but the consensus
is that such achievements are not easy (Simon, 1987). Pea and Kurland
(1987) have interpreted these difficulties in terms that refer to the
social context in which Logo is experienced. They propose that there
has been a serious neglect of the role that teachers must play in
organizing and interpreting the children's activity. They argue that
the impact of the Logo experience is correlated with the extent to
which there is an external participation of this kind. Others who
have reviewed research in this area have endorsed the idea that adult
intervention is important (Keller, 1990; Krendl and Lieberman,
1988; Noss and Hoyles, 1992) The history of Logo is one that alerts us
to the difficulty with which learning experiences generalize - without
social resources to bridge contexts. Logo pioneers may not have
denied the relevance of a culture of use but until recently
(Papert, 1987; Harel and Papert, 1991) this was never a dominant theme
in the promotion of the activity. As Hoyles (1992) notes, this
impressive resource typically risks being compartmentalised in at
least two senses. Bureaucratically, it risks being bolted onto the
curriculum; Psychologically, it can become an experience for pupils
that is unnaturally separated from a mainstream of classroom-based
learning.
Regarding the collaborations of teachers and pupils *in relation to*
computers, what has been said so far may be summarised as follows.
The technology has characteristics that allow its use to be easily
separated from the mainstream of class activity. To some extent,
this might be viewed as liberating: a self-contained quality that
allows teachers to focus their energies more intently elsewhere.
However, we should be wary of this seductive strategy for deploying
computers. In the present section, I have identified the role of
social interaction in promoting the "lateral continuity" of schooled
achievements: helping the transfer between different situations of
practice. The Logo experience reveals that even the most engaging and
ingenious computer environment can fail to penetrate pupils learning.
At least, this is what seems to happen for young children when more
experienced collaborators (i.e., teachers) are not quite closely
involved with the activity.
Moreover, Ryan's (1991) evaluation of a full range of computer-based
learning interventions identifies "teacher pretraining" as the most
significant predictor of the outcomes. This must also hint at the
central importance of teachers being able to cross-reference
computer work with other experiences: such options will not be
so readily available to teachers who are not themselves
confident with the focal activity.
There is much useful research to be done that clarifies the role of
classroom talk in the sense that I have framed it in this section.
We must surely accept that that social processes have *some*
importance in creating continuity between disparate activities: I
would submit that they are of central importance to this continuity.
In which case, computer-based learning is vulnerable to remaining
highly context-bound - unless more is done to integrate them into the
mainstream of classroom talk. One programme of empirical research
that lends further credibility to these conclusions (while not
explicitly addressing the same issues) is summarised in the next
section. There, I consider the social-discursive creation of more
longitudinal continuity. This research described is the work of
Edwards and Mercer (1987) who have studied and documented talk in
primary school classrooms. They demonstrate the extent to which such
settings are indeed saturated with interpretative, sense-imposing
teacher talk. However, they frame its significance more in terms of
what I am calling longitudinal continuity - rather than the lateral
continuity I have discussed here as constituting the achievements of
transfer.
(ii) Creating longitudinal continuities: common knowledge
Common knowledge, as it will be defined here, is closely tied to the
pivotal concept of intersubjectivity. This is the concept that helped
us in the last chapter to identify a recurrent theme within cultural
accounts of instructional processes: namely, the human capacity for
projecting and interpreting mental states in others. In that
discussion, I argued that the potency of instructional talk
depends upon its exploitation of intersubjective understandings. In
what follows, I discuss more of what lies behind this achievement. In
particular, I consider how effective instructional communication is
facilitated by the prior construction of common ground. For
researchers, it is a challenging empirical task to determine how and
why we construct such mutual understandings; to determine what makes
us curious about uncovering common ground, and motivated to act in
ways that exploit its potential. So, just how this is achieved in the
special case of instruction is my special concern in the present
Section.
Outside of educational research, the study of common grounding is often
approached through attention to the management of conversations at the
moment-to-moment level (cf. Clark and Brennan, 1991; Clark and
Schaefer, 1989; Schegloff, 1991). For these researchers, uncovering
the nature of a shared context will involve studying something that is
done with language as it is used on the fly - talkers creating
continuity by reacting to whatever circumstances happen to arise as
their interaction unfolds. Extensive participation in routine
conversation equips us with resources that make these achievements
seem natural and spontaneous (see Forrester (1992) for a perspective
on how children master this during development). However, in the
circumstances of teaching, this is only part of what must go on. It
is the part that was discussed in the last chapter. The creation of
common ground for instructional purposes must be much more of a
contrivance: something constructed across sustained and orchestrated
patterns of talk. It is something that depends upon a conscious
investment of discursive effort; this effort being exercised over
extended periods of shared time and space. The consequent
achievements only become visible if we research beyond the
moment-to-moment level of conversation; if we concentrate on more
protracted structures of social exchange.
In the case of instruction, understanding the creation of common
ground may require particular attention to the more material context
of communication: the special environments within which problem
solving and learning gets organized. In other words, structured
interaction with material resources may provide participants with
important mutual reference points for their common grounding efforts.
This may be especially the case where joint problem solving is located
within media with distinctive structural properties - such as
computers, perhaps. In any case, to discover more of how mutual
understandings are typically created in classrooms, we must look at
the patterns of conversation that have been documented to occur within
them. I will turn to this next.
The empirical study of classroom talk is a relatively recent research
interest (see Cazden (1986) for a systematising review). If there has
been some neglect of the topic, this might reflect the
learning-through-*activity* emphasis of much contemporary educational
theory. In commenting on this situation, Edwards (1990) identifies a
common attitude that he sees exemplified in the dictums of the
(British) Nuffield Maths project: 'I hear and I forget...I see and I
remember...I do and I understand'. These are principles offered in
a spirit of defining good classroom practice. Edwards regrets the
prioritising of the experiential, activity-centred ideal. However,
this may not be a assessment of what the Nuffield scholars are
promoting. Are they implying that the words of teachers are good only
for hearing - and then forgetting? That gloss on the Nuffield
philosophy may be an exaggeration of orthodox views on talking versus
acting. Nevertheless, the orthodoxy may still need examining. There
may well be grounds for arguing that educational theory has downplayed
(not denied) the significance of things that get "heard" - teacher
talk - in the interests of prioritising the impact of pupils' "doing".
Perhaps some prejudices regarding instructional talk arise because of
a stark contrast conjured up between "telling" and "doing". In this
contrast, talking is framed as something indirect; a substitute for
the real thing. The real thing is acting to discover for oneself.
Certainly, wherever teaching is being organized, there may be a
tension of this kind to be identified and addressed. However, very
little routine instructional talk seems to be easily forced into this
simple contrast. In reality, such talk gets organized in *relation*
to pupil activity - not in contrast with it. Which is not to imply
that the reality of classrooms is one of always talking within
intimate tutorial dialogue (perhaps in the formats reviewed in Chapter
4). Yet, typically, actual talk may share the contextualisation of
those occasions and yet may not need to be analysed in exactly
the same terms. Some talk that is not part of an intimate verbal
dialogue may still be organized to enter into potent (dialogic)
relations with things that pupils are *doing*. Or it may be organized
to operate back upon such prior activity. In this manifestation, talk
that seems merely "heard" may still be playing an active part in
pupil's constructions of knowledge.
This idea is central to Edwards and Mercer's (1987) discourse analytic
work in primary classrooms. Theirs is particularly important research
to mention here. For, it reinforces our concerns regarding the need
for teachers to be *in contact with* pupils and computers. But it
also serves further to bridge the gap between the intimate tutorial
setting of typical ZPD research and the more diffuse circumstances of
classroom teaching.
Edwards and Mercer's approach is distinguished by its concern to
characterise classroom talk in terms of its role in defining
"context". Their approach to this is a timely one. Students of
language-in-use have only recently come to terms with the
incorporation of context into their analyses (Cazden, 1986). However,
in "contextualizing" an utterance, researchers may often appeal only
to features of the physical situation in which the talk is organized,
or to details of what has very recently been said. Context in this
sense is concrete and accessible. Indeed, this is convenient for
those researchers who are armed with audio and video recording devices
and who may be preoccupied with capturing the here-and-now.
Unfortunately, such professional conveniences may distract researchers
from considering whether what they capture is what they need; whether
what they capture allows them properly to situate the dialogue. The
understanding of what gets achieved with talk may require researchers
to access contextual information that simply is not included within
here-and-now records of this kind.
Specifically, what Edwards and Mercer propose is that we should
recognize the context of talk as incorporating *intermental*
achievements. Context is not just stuff-out-there, directly
accessible to all the participants and available for action replay in
our research recordings. It incorporates mutual understandings:
intermental by virtue of arising from whatever history of joint
activity is common to the conversants. If we now seek to understand
what guides the momentary formulation of particular utterances, we
must do so through attention to this backlog of "common knowledge".
The intimate nature of these context-building achievements might seem
to make them inaccessible to interpretative research. However, this
context of talk need not be private in the sense of being impenetrable
to understanding from outside. If it is possible to record
conversational strategies for creating and referring to shared
understanding, and if those strategies allow some systematization,
then we may make useful progress. An appeal of Edwards and Mercer's
formulation is that it focuses on the actual discursive moves
involved in creating common knowledge - particularly as such moves
might be exercised in more ritualized settings of communication. So,
in the setting of a classroom, we might identify the dialogue devices
that typically are invoked for this purpose; or we may be able to
reveal the ways in which such talk is most effectively interlaced with
pupil activity. Those aims are very much the concern of Edwards and
Mercer's own empirical work.
In situations such as classrooms, groups of individuals regularly
interact over extended periods of time. Their achievements may depend
on how effectively a sense of overlapping, compatible understanding is
constructed: Edwards and Mercer refer to this in terms of the creation
of "continuity". Continuity is the intermental context that is
developing through time. Their own empirical contribution is then
twofold. Firstly, they demonstrate the extent to which teachers *are*
actively engaged in creating such continuity: talk is relentlessly
deployed for that purpose. Secondly, they illustrate some of the
commonly used discourse devices that serve this purpose.
Regarding their first achievement, it is valuable to have documented
how much of teacher talk is invested towards the active construction
of joint understanding. Edwards and Mercer point out one
straightforward reflection of this agenda: their teachers were
generally reluctant to admit into class talk too much personal
material from pupils' own outside lives. Wertsch (1991a) has also
noted how instructional settings generally restrict discourse to
experiences that are bounded within them. The image that dominates
this research is of teachers actively commenting upon, elaborating and
posing questions around what their pupils have experienced as a
community. There is certainly plenty of pupil *activity* in these
classrooms and that is the feature that the teachers themselves were
most anxious to highlight and cultivate. What is easier to miss from
within the participant's perspective is how far this activity is
filtered through an interpretative and teacher-regulated discourse.
This takes us to Edwards and Mercer's second achievement: cataloguing
and evaluating the discourse devices that are put to work in this way.
These include techniques of organized recapping that allow the
creation of a shared *memory* of what had happened when pupils had
done things (cf. Edwards and Middleton, 1986). Also included are
techniques of cued elicitation that served to solicit an agreed
account of what was currently happening. As an observer, there may be
a natural inclination to judge this scene as one in which pupils are
merely having their dormant knowledge innocently extracted from them.
However, a more coherent account of events stresses that what matters
about this talk is the active creation of an agreed, shared
understanding of what the community experienced. The teacher is
summarising, challenging, questioning and so on, in ways that both
check current positions and update the evolving shared context - the
backlog of "common knowledge". This common knowledge is generative:
it becomes the platform for new understandings and new connections to
be made. A teacher's contribution towards the progress that can be
realized in a classroom depends in an important sense upon being able
to exploit this intermental creation.
Edwards and Mercer do not use this formulation directly to
address transfer of learning, in the way that the issue was discussed
above in relation to computer work. However, a distinction they make
between ritual and principled knowledge makes contact with the problem
of forcing understandings to go beyond the immediate settings of their
acquisition. *Principled* understandings are those that do apply
widely across settings and lead to greater reflective self awareness.
Edwards and Mercer's analysis highlights discourse practices that may
be more likely to cultivate such understanding: this analysis is
consistent with the hope that we may make progress on the transfer
problem through considering how classroom talk is related to the
organization of pupil's classroom experience.
In short, this is an analysis that both demonstrates the natural
penetration of teacher talk into pupil activity and also furnishes a
conceptual vocabulary to understand its strategic management.
Nevertheless, I feel there are two limitations to this account and
they each matter for our interest in educational technology.
Firstly, Edwards and Mercer's inspiration is to conceptualise the
context of classroom activity in terms that incorporate the
intermental achievements of conversation. This challenges our
inclination to prioritise the immediate and material setting of action
as being what mainly comprises its "context". Yet, their shift of
emphasis may have led them, in their own research, to swing the other
way: effectively neglecting how talk is contextualised within
material circumstances. Thus, they do demonstrate organizing
principles of teaching talk in relation to the conduct of specific
classroom tasks. However, there is little consideration given to how
the format of those tasks serve to constrain or facilitate the
particulars of the talk that emerges - how the talk is materially
situated. So what is documented in the research is not itself
contextualised in this spirit. It is one insight to note that the
institutionalization of social relations in the form of schools
encourages certain styles of sense-making talk. But that insight
needs to be elaborated: capturing how particular formats of activity
afford particular realizations of this talk. Such a focal orientation
to settings themselves is rare within the literature. (One example is
evident in the work of Cook-Gumperz and Corsaro (1977). They have
made a clear case for attending to the physical (play) environment as
creating or denying discourse possibilities involving children and
adults in preschool.)
I have tried to make this point elsewhere in relation to computers as
artefacts within children's social, rather than cognitive, development
(Crook, 1992a): suggesting that we could begin more of our analysis
from "things themselves" and consider what kind of social interactions
they afford. Here, I am suggesting that the same strategy could apply
in our thinking about interactions organized to support learning. The
key question might be: What interactions can arise between teachers
and learners if they chose to interact around the particular contexts
of computer-based activities? I suggest this is a point of entry for
empirical work: research that might characterise a social context for
computer use incorporating pupils, teachers and computers themselves.
This entails defining the possible collaborative interactions of these
participants *in relation to* the technology. There is very little
observation organized in this tradition; although an example might be
one study of secondary mathematics teaching that shows how the
presence of computers can create a less teacher-led, more discursive
style of class interaction (Fraser, Benzie, Burkhardt, Coupland,
Field, Fraser, and Phillips, 1984). This finding is rather welcome -
in view of my second concern regarding Edwards and Mercer's
formulation.
This second concern is captured in a critique of the work by Cazden
(1990). Edwards and Mercer's account dwells on the teacher-dominated
character of classroom talk. In highlighting the frequently directive
nature of this talk, it fails to present a sufficiently constructive
alternative agenda. Their analysis dwells on identifying limitations
in the way discourse is deployed: they are particularly concerned with
discursive moves used by teachers to *control* the development of
continuity and context; or with teachers' efforts to maintain the
"fiction" of extracting what children already know; or with their
management of the dilemma of respecting self-discovery while ensuring
the curriculum is "properly" learned. Edwards (1990) comments about
these observations: 'Typically this dialogue turns out to be no simple
negotiation between equals but a process that is dominated by
teachers' concerns and aims and prior knowledge'. In short, the
emerging picture is a somewhat gloomy one. It is thin on examples of
what might be considered effective or creative practice.
The implied shortfall concerns how far understandings are "negotiated"
within talk. If Edwards and Mercer's summary picture is persuasive,
then one cause for concern will be its demonstration that teacher talk
is often reinforcing a model of knowledge that implies a ready-made
"grown up" version: this is the one to be learned. Teacher discourse
is frequently oriented towards creating a common knowledge that
reflects an "official" story. Faced with a perceived obligation of
this kind, the challenge teachers may feel is one of working out how
the official versions may be discretely precipitated from joint
activity. Unfortunately, the interventions that might be necessary to
achieve such innocent extractions can sometimes form a poor
representation of how knowledge is actually developed and negotiated
in investigative contexts outside of the school. So, even work in
natural science (which might seem the most straightforward area in
which to promote official versions) should enjoy careful discursive
management. Steps might be taken to ensure it is experienced as
knowledge derived in an atmosphere of conjecture, debate and argument.
This version of the *activity* of science was rarely witnessed within
the discourse of Edwards and Mercer's classrooms.
We, therefore, have an account of classroom talk that offers us the
useful framework of common knowledge and its creation, but which
presents a cautionary view on current practice. Edwards (1990)
suggests one way of advancing from this situation. He reiterates
Piaget's observations regarding the cognitive developmental
possibilities of talk among peers. Because of the equality of status
between pupils themselves, pupils working with their peers (rather
than their teachers) can create certain richer possibilities. They
can create arenas for the precious experiences of motivated argument
and reflection. Such situations of collaborative learning might
represent better conditions for acquiring the rhetorical skills of
knowledge-building than the conditions normally experienced within
teacher-dominated talk.
The notion of common knowledge will be an influential one in what
follows. I have expressed two limitations to the account arising from
Edwards and Mercer's (1987) work. Concern about both of them will
inspire empirical work to be described in subsequent chapters. There
I shall give more consideration to how the structure of computer tasks
constrains or extends the discourse organised in relation to them. I
shall also consider the particular issue of peer interaction
as it is mediated by computers - hoping that within such arenas we
might reveal interactions that allow learning through a more
negotiated form of discovery. This respects Edwards' own suggestion
for dealing with the more constraining nature of teaching discourse -
the tendency for official versions of knowledge to be imposed through
such talk.
Common knowledge and intersubjectivity
In the last Chapter, I reviewed some ways in which Psychologists
have characterised instructional talk - considering whether those
perspectives implied it might be simulated by technology. I suggested
that the various devices prominent in such talk could be integrated by
reference to the concept of intersubjectivity. So, success within
an intimate, tutoring style of discourse seems to depend upon the
participants cultivating an intersubjective attitude. In the present
chapter, the discussion of instructional talk has shifted towards
considering a more diffuse version of this activity. Here we have
considered exchanges that are not necessarily so closely coordinated
with activity-in-progress. They are likely to refer to prior events
and experiences. They are often communal in nature: directed towards
groups of pupils rather than individuals. I suggest that such talk
may also be understood by reference to the concept of
intersubjectivity. The point of such a move is to consolidate an
argument for firmly associating learning with the deployment of
intersubjective attitudes. If this association is granted, then it
must limit how far computers can be expected to reproduce the
interpersonal dimension of educational practice.
The key to the intersubjective nature of classroom talk (in those
formats characterised above) is its natural achievement of common
objects for attention: shared resources that the participants
understand to be shared, and which can serve as platforms for their
further communication. Edwards and Mercer's characterisation of this
achievement for classrooms is a novel and useful contribution to our
understanding of the discourse of learning. However, their
formulation of the common knowledge idea is not entirely novel. The
technical terminology is borrowed from established work on meaning and
human communication (eg., Lewis, 1969). I shall identify briefly
those parallel traditions of theorising that are relevant to my
concerns here. This will allow us to acknowledge that the "level" at
which Edwards and Mercer's research is directed remains distinctive:
it is a level particularly appropriate to the understanding classroom
practice and, thus, provides a good model for future research.
The conversational analysts Clark and Brennan (1991) capture the
spirit of what has been said above about classrooms in their general
observation: 'All collective actions are built upon common ground and
its accumulation' (p.127). However, common grounding activity -
within instruction or within any form of discourse - is not a unitary
phenomenon. It can be said to be managed at more than one "level", or
by the use of more than one set of communicative resources. This
notion is well captured within distinctions made by Krauss and Fussell
(1991). Firstly, they identify resources that may be available in
the form of knowledge about social category memberships. This
comprises existing beliefs and expectations about others that are
derived from general understandings of relevant social status or
social practices (eg. that which might follow from understanding that
someone is "a New Yorker"). Secondly, there is a further level of
resource; one that arises from the flow of direct, ongoing interaction
with a conversant. This is information gathered and exchanged "on the
fly". Conversational analysts have studied this second level of
communicative resource as it is created and discovered within everyday
talk (Clark and Schaffer, 1989; Sperber and Wilson, 1986). My own
discussion of the management of instructional discourse (Chapter 4)
addressed this same phenomena in the particular context of teaching
and learning.
The level at which Edwards and Mercer's research is pitched seems
somewhere in between those identified above - and one peculiarly
significant to organizational life such as that which arises within
classrooms. Their research defines communication that depends on
direct experience of social interaction (rather than abstracted social
category knowledge). Yet what is being deployed in this communication
does extend into a history of the conversants interaction; one that
goes beyond the momentary events of the present conversation. In
other words, the common knowledge analysis concentrates on a
longer-term continuity: a more protracted (but interpersonal)
construction of shared understandings. The analysis also helps us to
see this processes as an achievement motivated and guided by a
particular purpose - in this case, the management of learning. Thus,
within that important context of education, we may start to identify
the particular conversational resources that are available to make
communication effective.
Whatever the level research is pitched at, the idea of capturing the
control of communication in terms of mobilising intersubjectivity
seems appropriate. However, attending to an orchestrated setting like
a classroom may alert us to the case for framing communication in
terms of a dynamic, interactive achievement. I believe this is more
helpful than metaphors that tend to reify what is involved (such as
"common *grounding*" (Clark and Brennan, 1991) or "an
interpsychological cognitive *object*" (Newman et al, 1989), or even
"common knowledge". Such metaphors tend to reify the achievement.
They may even cultivate speculation about programming data structures
that might represent these cognitive objects. Whereas the real
problem for simulation is not one of reproducing some static cognitive
entity. It is a problem of capturing the sensitivity, empathy,
projection and improvisation that constitutes communicative
*interaction*. And that, as has been argued for instruction at the
more momentary level of conversation (Chapter 4), is an unlikely
achievement.
This discussion of common knowledge indicates how human
intersubjectivity may be regarded from two perspectives when we
consider educational settings. On the one hand, it resides within the
prompting, monitoring, intruding talk that makes up
instruction-in-progress. On the other hand it resides in talk and
action that serve to create that which becomes held in common - and
known by the participants to be held in common. How might the impact
of access to such resources be optimised? Our answers are likely to
be framed in both motivational and cognitive language. Learners must
be *motivated* to adopt intersubjective attitudes. This may be a
question of cultivating links to their spontaneous goals and
priorities as they may be formed elsewhere; it may also involve
creating more equable opportunities for them to contribute to (or
negotiate) common knowledge. The more *cognitive* dimension to
optimising these resources requires us to study carefully the way
discourse and activity is coordinated within authentic instruction -
as exemplified in some of the socio-cultural empirical work discussed
here. In either case, there is a challenge to integrate new
technology with these practices, rather than allowing it to be
subverted by it. This is a challenge requiring us to attend to the
particular manner in which computers can become an activity setting in
relation to which common knowledge is effectively negotiated.
SUMMARY COMMENTS ON COMPUTERS AND INSTRUCTIONAL COLLABORATIONS
In this chapter and the previous one, I have considered two senses in
which computers might enter into the social fabric of educational
activity. In Chapter 4 I evaluated the idea that interaction with a
computer might be programmed to reproduce the social character of a
face-to-face tutorial dialogue: social interaction *with* computers.
This plan seemed too ambitious. We feel this as soon as we reflect on
the nature of the human conversation deployed during instruction.
Thus, I dwelt upon characterising such instructional talk; arguing
that it is grounded in the distinctively human capacity for
intersubjectivity - and that teaching involves the organized
management of that intersubjectivity.
Such management is partly a question of timely intrusions into
learning-in-progress. I invoked Suchman's analysis of "situated"
action to characterise the necessarily improvisatory and versatile
nature of this achievement; arguing that it is unlikely to be
simulated by computers. However, the management of intersubjectivity
entails a further set of discourse resources; these being concerned
with the more protracted building of socially-shared cognition. Such
a proposal arose from arguments developed within the present Chapter,
where social interactions *in relation to* computers have been
discussed. This involved acknowledging that the meaning of some
teaching utterance is rarely to be located in, or made manifest
through, its simple surface features - as if such meaning were
something to be generated by a rule-bound system of the sort that
computer programmers would seek to construct. Effective instructional
talk will be contextualised. Indeed, its utterances will derive their
impact from the skill with which speakers build upon mutually (perhaps
laboriously) constructed shared understandings. This richer,
intermental sense of "context" as defined for instructional
communication is not something to be captured in computer programs.
(Perhaps the intellectual work that tutorial language must be made to
do in order to create and exploit this context is at the root of what
can often make "teaching" such a peculiarly tiring activity.)
Unfortunately, there are grounds for fearing that computers remain
vulnerable to exclusion from this enterprise. I have drawn attention
to features of the activities they support that encourage this
dislocation from the classroom community. In particular, computers
have design features that readily encourage a pattern of use whereby
the activity is dissociated from the core of classroom life - and
where teachers may less readily engage with what pupils are doing.
This is a real problem, given important ethnographic claims that
discursive interventions within (other) pupil work are a persistent
feature of what teachers normally achieve (Edwards and Mercer, 1987).
Such interventions serve the important function of creating continuity
of experience. This continuity constitutes a "common knowledge" that
forms the platform for yet more new discourse and new activity.
Teacher-pupil collaborations in this sense may be less easily fostered
in contexts of computer work.
Because relevant research is scarce, there is still little to be said
on the question of how best to integrate teachers, pupils and the
particular settings created by computers. To pursue this theme here
would demand rather piecemeal considerations of particular
computer-based activities and their potential for incorporation in
class talk. This would make our discussion veer too much in the
direction of curriculum issues of a rather specialist nature.
However, I do intend to return to the themes raised here regarding the
pupil-teacher creation of socially-shared cognition. The discussion,
in a later chapter, will consider how computer-based activities can
offer some *generic* support to such efforts: how the technology can
offer an infrastructure within the classroom that underpins the
creation of various useful continuities - rather than undermines it.
This will involve us in considerations of how communication can be
mediated *through* computers rather than simply *with* them or *in
relation to* them. I shall outline a configuration of computers that
goes some way towards avoiding the breakdown of community-based mutual
knowledge - as it might otherwise occur in relation to computer work.
First, however, I wish to consider the other important sense in which
social exchange can be organized to involve this resource. This
discussion will centre on classroom "collaboration" as more
traditionally understood. Pupils may be invited to interact with each
other around computers: this technology may support peer-based
collaborative work. In fact, we shall see that the arrangement of
peer interaction *at* computers has attracted considerable
practitioner and research interest. Moreover, our discussion of
teacher-pupil talk in the framework of common\n knowledge did converge
on a claim by Edwards (1990) that classroom peer interaction should be
seen as a promising solution to some of the more problematic aspects
of teacher-led discourse. It might prove to be the forum in which the
*processes* of intellectual discovery and investigation are most
naturally modelled and made accessible to learners.
In the next chapter, I shall first introduce the literature that does
exist on this topic. I shall then review existing theoretical
frameworks for making sense of this literature. My own preference is
to emphasise the conceptual vocabulary of intersubjectivity that I
have introduced above. In a subsequent Chaper, I shall present some
class observations of my own to help develop that theoretical
approach.