Advances in Quantitative Ethnography by Brendan Eagan & Morten Misfeldt & Amanda Siebert-Evenstone

Author:Brendan Eagan & Morten Misfeldt & Amanda Siebert-Evenstone
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030332327
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Fig. 6.ENA difference graph for conversations in groups with a rather high learning outcome (red) and a rather low learning outcome (blue). (Color figure online)

4 Discussion

The ENA results presented in this paper are a relevant contribution and extension of previous PF research. More specifically, our findings offer empirical evidence for the often hypothesized but rarely supported notion of collaborative problem solving being important for the effectiveness of PF. Our quantitative and qualitative contrasting-cases analyses demonstrated that PF groups that had generated high-quality solution ideas (HQ groups) evaluated, discussed, and elaborated on each other’s proposals and attended to canonical components of the targeted learning concept. PF groups that had generated low-quality solutions (LQ groups) elaborated on task-pursuance actions and on contents stated in the worksheet. In contrast to HQ groups, LQ groups’ conversations were less featured by debates (i.e., evaluations of proposals) on canonical content. The collaboration pattern that characterizes the HQ groups (i.e., debating and elaborating on canonical contents) is in line with the following three mechanisms hypothesized to underlie the effectiveness of PF [2]: (1) activation of prior knowledge, (2) awareness of knowledge gaps, and (3) recognition of the deep features of the canonical solution. It is likely that elaboration processes during collaborative problem solving help students in a PF setting to activate more prior knowledge than during individual problem solving [7]. Moreover, debating on each other’s ideas may lead to socio-cognitive conflicts, uncover misconceptions, and trigger PF students’ awareness of knowledge gaps [9]. Both, elaborating and debating on different solution ideas might support PF students to attend to the deep features of the canonical solution [4]. It is likely that all three mechanisms evolved during the collaborative problem solving of the HQ groups as they (in contrast to LQ groups) elaborated and debated on each other’s proposals which related to canonical content. As a consequence, they were seemingly enabled to develop group solutions with a higher quality and, thus, to reach a higher learning outcome on the knowledge test. It would be interesting to investigate whether facilitating certain collaboration processes would promote students’ learning in a PF setting. Then, it would be interesting to match the individual’s talk during collaboration to their individual learning outcome. This was not possible in the current study, which, nevertheless, revealed interesting insights into the role of collaborative problem solving for the effectiveness of PF.

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