Students' informal inference about the binomial distribution of "Bunny hops": A dialogic perspective

This is the final version of the article. Available from IASE / ISI via the DOI in this recordThe study explores the development of 11-year-old students’ informal inference about random bunny hops through student talk and use of computer simulation tools. Our aim in this paper is to draw on dialogic theory to explain how students make shifts in perspective, from intuition-based reasoning to more powerful, formal ways of using probabilistic ideas. Findings from the study suggest that dialogic talk facilitated students’ reasoning as it was supported by the use of simulation tools available in the software. It appears that the interaction of using simulation tools, talk between students, and teacher prompts helps students develop their understanding of probabilistic ideas in the context of making inferences about the distribution of random bunny hops.This research was supported by a Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship within the 7th European Community Framework Programme. We would also like to acknowledge the generous support of the school, teachers and students who worked with us in this study

Investigating and promoting trainee science teachers’ conceptual change of the nature of science with digital dialogue games “InterLoc”

The purpose of this study is to explore how an online-structured dialogue environment supported (OSDE) collaborative learning about the nature of science among a group of trainee science teachers in the UK. The software used (InterLoc) is a linear text-based tool, designed to support structured argumentation with openers and ‘dialogue moves’. A design-based research approach was used to investigate multiple sessions using InterLoc with 65 trainee science teachers. Five participants who showed differential conceptual change in terms of their Nature of Science (NOS) views were purposively selected and closely followed throughout the study by using key event recall interviews. Initially, the majority of participants held naïve views of NOS. Substantial and favourable changes in these views were evident as a result of the OSDE. An examination of the development of the five participants’ NOS views indicated that the effectiveness of the InterLoc discussions was mediated by cultural, cognitive, and experiential factors. The findings suggest that InterLoc can be effective in promoting reflection and conceptual change.InterLoc was developed by a team led by Andrew Ravenscroft with funding from the UK JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) 'e-learning tools' programme, and from the JISC Capital Programme

Metafora: A Web-based Platform for Learning to Learn Together in Science and Mathematics

This paper presents Metafora, both a platform for integrated tools as well as an emerging pedagogy for supporting Learning to Learn Together in science and mathematics education. Our goal is to design technology that brings education to a higher level; a level where students not only learn a subject matter, but also gain a set of critical skills needed to engage in and self-regulate collaborative learning experiences in science and math education. We first discuss the core skills we hope students will gain as they learn to learn together. We then present our design and implementation that can achieve this goal; a platform and pedagogy we have developed to support the learning of these skills. Finally, we present an example use of our system based on results from pilot studies that demonstrates interaction with the platform, and potential benefits and limitations of the tools in promoting the associated skills

Buber, educational technology, and the expansion of dialogic space

Buber’s distinction between the ‘I-It’ mode and the ‘I-Thou’ mode is seminal for dialogic education. While Buber introduces the idea of dialogic space, an idea which has proved useful for the analysis of dialogic education with technology, his account fails to engage adequately with the role of technology. This paper offers an introduction to the significance of the I-It/I-Thou duality of technology in relation to opening dialogic space. This is followed by a short schematic history of educational technology which reveals the role technology plays, not only in opening dialogic space, but also in expanding dialogic space. The expansion of dialogic space is an expansion of what it means to be ‘us’ as dialogic engagement facilitates the incorporation, into our shared sense of identity, of aspects of reality that are initially experienced as alien or ‘other’. Augmenting Buber with an alternative understanding of dialogic space enables us to see how dialogue mediated by technology, as well as dialogue with monologised fragments of technology (robots), can, through education, lead to an expansion of what it means to be human

Developing responsible leadership through a 'pedagogy of challenge': An investigation into the impact of leadership education on teenagers

This paper proposes a new model for understanding education through ‘responsible leadership’ – a term which draws on the models of distributed and authentic leadership and on a dialogic understanding of responsible action. It defines ‘dispositions for learning’ as different forms of the single quality of ‘openness to learning’. A ‘pedagogy of challenge’ is proposed as a way of developing these dispositions. The model is tested through a small-scale investigation into the effect of a two-day leadership education course on five 14-year-old students which conforms to the proposed model. This suggests a link between the students' participation and their dispositions for learning; in addition, it suggests change in their attitude towards, and perceived performance in, their academic subjects over a four-month period. It also highlights potential conflicts between promoting responsible leadership and curricular, assessment-focused learning. Larger-scale studies are recommended

The role of social networks in students’ learning experiences

The aim of this research is to investigate the role of social networks in computer science education. The Internet shows great potential for enhancing collaboration between people and the role of social software has become increasingly relevant in recent years. This research focuses on analyzing the role that social networks play in students’ learning experiences. The construction of students’ social networks, the evolution of these networks, and their effects on the students’ learning experience in a university environment are examined

Analyzing collaborative learning processes automatically

In this article we describe the emerging area of text classification research focused on the problem of collaborative learning process analysis both from a broad perspective and more specifically in terms of a publicly available tool set called TagHelper tools. Analyzing the variety of pedagogically valuable facets of learners’ interactions is a time consuming and effortful process. Improving automated analyses of such highly valued processes of collaborative learning by adapting and applying recent text classification technologies would make it a less arduous task to obtain insights from corpus data. This endeavor also holds the potential for enabling substantially improved on-line instruction both by providing teachers and facilitators with reports about the groups they are moderating and by triggering context sensitive collaborative learning support on an as-needed basis. In this article, we report on an interdisciplinary research project, which has been investigating the effectiveness of applying text classification technology to a large CSCL corpus that has been analyzed by human coders using a theory-based multidimensional coding scheme. We report promising results and include an in-depth discussion of important issues such as reliability, validity, and efficiency that should be considered when deciding on the appropriateness of adopting a new technology such as TagHelper tools. One major technical contribution of this work is a demonstration that an important piece of the work towards making text classification technology effective for this purpose is designing and building linguistic pattern detectors, otherwise known as features, that can be extracted reliably from texts and that have high predictive power for the categories of discourse actions that the CSCL community is interested in

Designing a fashion driving forces website as an educational resource

Electronic educational resources support search activities and manipulate information effectively in learning environments, thus enhancing education. This paper discusses the development of an electronic timeline database that classifies design and fashion details; technological developments; socio-economical influences; availability and popularity within fashion trends; marketing and distribution; and influential people including designers, in a manner that facilitates ease of cross referencing events at the same point in time for a rich analysis of fashion. The study focuses on the driving forces of fashion during the 1920s as a starting point for a much larger database. The data is presented in the form of a website allowing students to better understand fashion trends with macro-environmental and marketing strategies. The electronic resource is a useful tool for fashion, textile and marketing students as an educational interface providing design, production and marketing data for fashion-related products particularly useful for the analysis of fashion trends

Exploring the ontological dimension of dialogic education through an evaluation of the impact of Internet mediated dialogue across cultural difference

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.It has been claimed that dialogic education implies a direction of change upon an ontological dimension from monologic closed identities in the direction of more dialogic identifications characterised by greater openness to the other and greater identification with the process of dialogue. This paper recapitulates that theory and then provides an empirical illustration of what it looks like in practice. In order to do this a methodology for researching the impact of dialogic education is outlined and applied to the evaluation of the impact of a programme designed to promote greater dialogic open-mindedness: the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change’s Generation Global Project (GG) supports schools in over twenty different countries to engage in dialogue with each other through videos and blogs. The methodology put forward argues that the understanding sought by educational research is dialogic in that it emerges from the dialogue between inside and outside perspectives. The findings offer some clear evidence of a shift in identifications resulting from dialogue through the analysis of changes in online language use supported by interview evidence. This study suggests that a pedagogical intervention can produce identity change in the direction of becoming more dialogic and shows that it is possible to evaluate this change.The empirical aspect of this paper reports on research funded by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change