Students' Meaning-making of Socio-scientific Issues in Computer Mediated Settings: Exploring learning through interaction trajectories
Titel:
Students' Meaning-making of Socio-scientific Issues in Computer Mediated Settings: Exploring learning through interaction trajectories
Auteur:
Furberg, Anniken Ludvigsen, Sten
Verschenen in:
International journal of science education
Paginering:
Jaargang 30 (2008) nr. 13 pagina's 1775-1799
Jaar:
2008-10
Inhoud:
This article reports on a study concerning secondary school students' meaning-making of socio-scientific issues in Information and Communication Technology-mediated settings. Our theoretical argument has as its point of departure the analytical distinction between 'doing science' and 'doing school,' as two different forms of classroom activity. In the study we conducted an analysis of students working with web-based groupware systems concerned with genetics. The analysis identified how the students oriented their accounts of scientific concepts and how they attempted to understand the socio-scientific task in different ways. Their orientations were directed towards finding scientific explanations, towards exploring the ethical and social consequences, and towards 'fact-finding.' The students' different orientations seemed to contribute to an ambivalent tension, which, on the one hand, was productive because it urged them into ongoing discussions and explicit meaning-making. On the other hand, however, the tension elucidated how complex and challenging collaborative learning situations can be. Our findings suggest that in order to obtain a deeper understanding of students' meaning-making of socio-scientific issues in Information and Communication Technology-mediated settings, it is important not only to address how students perform the activity of 'doing science.' It is equally important to be sensitive with respect to how students orient their talk and activity towards more or less explicit values, demands, and expectations embedded in the educational setting. In other words, how students perform the activity of 'doing school.'
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