Studying real-time teacher-student interaction provides insight into student's learning processes. In this study, upper grade elementary teachers were supported to optimize their instructional skills required for co-constructing scientific understanding. First, we examined the effect of the Video Feedback Coaching intervention by focusing on changes in teacher-student interaction patterns. Second, we examined the underlying dynamics of those changes by illustrating an in-depth micro-level analysis of teacher-student interactions. The intervention condition showed significant changes in the way scientific understanding was co-constructed. Results provided insight into how classroom interaction can elicit optimal co-construction and how this process changes during an intervention.
Educational institutions and vocational practices need to collaborate to design learning environments that meet current-day societal demands and support the development of learners’ vocational competence. Integration of learning experiences across contexts can be facilitated by intentionally structured learning environments at the boundary of school and work. Such learning environments are co-constructed by educational institutions and vocational practices. However, co-construction is challenged by differences between the practices of school and work, which can lead to discontinuities across the school–work boundary. More understanding is needed about the nature of these discontinuities and about design considerations to counterbalance these discontinuities. Studies on the co-construction of learning environments are scarce, especially studies from the perspective of representatives of work practice. Therefore, the present study explores design considerations for co-construction through the lens of vocational practice. The study reveals a variety of discontinuities related to the designable elements of learning environments (i.e. epistemic, spatial, instrumental, temporal, and social elements). The findings help to improve understanding of design strategies for counterbalancing discontinuities at the interpersonal and institutional levels of the learning environment. The findings confirm that work practice has a different orientation than school practice since there is a stronger focus on productivity and on the quality of the services provided. However, various strategies for co-construction also seem to take into account the mutually beneficial learning potential of the school–work boundary.
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When children learn in a group context they also co-construct knowledge (Thelen & Smith, 1994). This means that, rather than undergoing parallel learning processes, we conceive knowledge as emerging between two or more individuals. In this presentation, we aim to demonstrate the process of knowledge co- construction situated in peer interaction.The child utterances from the two video fragments were first coded based on their complexity level of reasoning, using a coding scheme based on Fisher’s SkillTheory (Fischer, 1980). This is a cognitive developmental theory that categorizes scientific knowledge into three increasingly differentiated tiers of complexity (Fischer &Bidell, 2006). Next, the moment-to-moment codes were smoothed using a LOESS technique. This allows us to visualize the real-time dynamics of co-constructedknowledge. We examined the data for two peers separately as well as for the whole interaction as one process. With this distinction, we aim to highlight characteristics ofthe co-construction of knowledge (i.e., how do key individuals co-construct knowledge), and characteristics of the emergent knowledge (i.e., how does the general level of complexity emerge over time?).Results show that, as a group, the students reached a relatively high level of complexity over the course of the interaction and that, when zooming in on the interaction between two specific students (L1, L3), the utterances of one student (L3) often followed those of another (L1). In the presentation, we will discuss how these process characteristics contribute to our understanding of problem-solving processes, as well as advantages and disadvantages of using time series
