Children's Thinking During Collaborative Computer‐based Problem Solving

Social Interaction During Computer-based Activities: Comparisons by Number of Sessions, Gender, School-level, Gender Composition of the Group, and Computer-child Ratio

“…In contrast to findings from studies by Underwood and colleagues (Underwood et al 1993(Underwood et al , 2000; see also Fitzpatrick and Hardman 1994;Light et al 2000) and our own hypothesis, however, collaborative behaviors did not significantly differ across mixed-gender and same-gender groups with the elementary school children. It may be that having a same-gender peer in each of the mixed-gender groups offset the typical disadvantage found with elementary school girls in mixed-gender groups.…”

“…For example, Underwood et al (1993) found in a UK sample of elementary school children that mixed-gender groups engaged in more disagreements in comparison to same-gender groups (see also Lockheed and Harris 1984), even when the children were instructed to cooperate with one another. Furthermore, Light et al (2000) found that elementary school girls in the US participated more actively in a computer context when in same-gender versus mixed-gender groups (see also Fitzpatrick and Hardman 1994;Underwood et al 1994, Underwood et al 2000.…”

Collaboration and discourse while programming the KidSim microworld simulation

“…Our earlier studies have investigated the relationships between computer-based work, the nat~are of co-operation, and the gender composition o f the groups [3][4][5][6][7], and although the present study did not set out to look for gender differences there were some striking differences and similarities in the work produced. We allowed the children to form their own work groups when they p r o g r a m m e d with KidSim, and so there were no formal observations of differences in their work style or in their performance.…”

“…A study of young children's programming with a floor turtle found a different pattern of results, however, with girl/girl pairs at a disadvantage [5]. This leads to the suggestion that the task is also an important variable, and when Underwood, Underwood i and Turner [6] observed the same children with TRAY and with a floor turtle there were indeed differences in the nature of co-operation during performance. A difference in the nature of interactions was also observed in our early study, with boy/girl pairs not co-operating as mu~h as single gender pairs [3], and Howe et al [4] report a similar problem for boy/girl pairs failir~g to communicate during a physics problem solving task.…”