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
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