Different leaders: Emergent organizational and intellectual leadership in children’s collaborative learning groups

Abstract

This paper presents two studies that examine emergent leadership in children's collaborative learning groups. Building on research that finds that leadership moves are distributed among group members during learning activities, we examined whether there were patterns in the distribution of moves, resulting in different types of emergent leaders in groups. Study one examines individual groups working with a teacher, on the same task either with paper or multi-touch tables. Study two examines groups of students in a multi-touch classroom. Results from study one indicated that the leadership was distributed among the students; the distributions aligned with classifications of intellectual leadership moves and organizational leadership moves for about half of the groups. There were no differences in emergent leadership between the multi-touch and paper conditions. These results were explored in more detail in a multi-touch classroom study, exploring emergent leadership in 22 groups of students across six classes. Again, leadership was distributed among group members, and specific roles of intellectual and organizational leader, taken on by two different students, could be identified in half of the groups. These results suggest that attention should be paid to how students are engaging in collaborative learning tasks to ensure all students participate in the intellectual as well as organizational demands of the task. Additionally, the pattern of the distribution of roles suggests that care should be taken to specify behaviors if the role of leader is assigned to collaborative groups.

Automated classification of collaborative problem solving interactions in simulated science tasks

“…Kersey et al (2009) focus on knowledge co-construction in peer interactions. Mercier et al (2014) describe a coding scheme that focuses on leadership skills in CPS. Lu et al (2011) describe a coding scheme of discourse moves in online discussions.…”

Observe, interact and act: teachers’ initiation of mini-plenaries to scaffold small-group collaboration

“…By focusing on the role of the teacher, this article complements the other work done in the project exploring student-centric issues: the complexity of student reasoning in collaborative activity (Higgins, Mercier, Burd, & Joyce-Gibbons, 2012), adaptive expertise in collaborative mathematics challenges (Mercier & Higgins, 2013), the effect of room orientation on group performance during collaborative tasks (Mercier, Higgins, & Joyce-Gibbons, 2014) and emergent leadership behaviours among students working in groups (Mercier, Higgins, & da Costa, 2014).…”

Exploring synchronous, remote collaborative interaction between learners using multi‐touch tables and video conferencing in UK primary schools

“…In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the educational potential of multi‐touch tables, where multiple users jointly control and interact with each other on the same screen using touch, instead of a traditional mouse control. In this context, “the table surface acts both as the screen and provides shared control” (Mercier, Higgins, & Joyce‐Gibbons, , p. 505) and “when working in a group around a multi‐touch surface, there is no longer the need to negotiate who has access to the content through a single interaction point.” (Mercier, Vourloumi, & Higgins, , p. 164). The use of large multi‐touch surfaces (tables) was explored in the SynergyNet project (funded jointly by the ESRC and EPSRC, two of the UK’s national research councils) and, after developing innovative teacher orchestration software, established that they did indeed support effective interaction between pupils (Higgins et al , ).…”

“…When compared to the outcomes of paper‐based group activities conducted prior to using the multi‐touch tables, equivalent activities undertaken on multi‐touch tables resulted in greater uptake of ideas (Mercier et al , ) and more engagement in sophisticated reasoning, with more time being spent on problem‐focused, rather than procedural talk (Higgins et al , ). Furthermore, data from these studies highlighted the importance of the division of roles and different patterns of leadership (Mercier, Higgins, & Da Costa, ), the development of adaptive expertise among group members (Mercier & Higgins, ) and the potential of the tables for structuring representations of reasoning processes (Mercier & Higgins, ). In addition, data from teacher observations highlighted differences in how teachers made decisions when moving between group and whole class dialogue (Joyce‐Gibbons, ).…”