Triggers of Students’ Efficacious Interaction in Collaborative Learning Situations

Abstract

This article presents a case study that investigated primary school students’ social interaction while working in small groups in science. The aim was to identify what characterizes and triggers students’ efficacious interaction in collaborative learning situations. This was done by exploring and analyzing students’ and groups’ task involvement and the quality of their activity. The micro-level analysis proceeded first by identifying episodes of group task involvement and evaluating the quality of these interaction episodes. Next, the transitions between episodes were explored by identifying what triggered the shifts between task involvement levels. Ten hours of video observation data captured fourth-grade students, aged 9 to 10, in two groups of 3 students studying “the vital conditions of life” for 5 weeks. The main findings indicated that efficacious interaction demanded collaboration between group members and required active participation and productive on-task working. Three types of triggers were found to cause changes in students’ activity, of which the group progress trigger was the most powerful for increasing, and the contextual trigger the most powerful for decreasing the activity. These findings shed light on certain aspects of efficacious interaction that will help us to identify details of efficacious interaction in future studies.

Does training in how to regulate one’s learning affect how students report self-regulated learning in diary tasks?

“…We use the term regulation of learning, as opposed to self-regulated learning when referring to training because students do not work and regulate their learning alone (self-regulate) in a classroom environment, but in collaboration with others (i.e. co-and shared regulation) (Järvelä and Hadwin 2013;Määttä et al 2012). Hence, in this study we use the term self-regulated learning when we refer to students' reports and reflections of their own functioning.…”

Involving children in reflective discussions about their perceived self-efficacy and learning experiences

“…The starting point for the analysis was our previous study, where we identified prerequisites for efficacious activity in video observation data (Määttä, Järvenoja, and Järvelä 2012). In the first phase of the analysis, the video observation data were coded either into the off-task or on-task classroom activity episodes.…”

Personal and Contextual Contributors to Young Children's Activity-Based Perceived Self-Efficacy

“…As SE is a situation-and task-specific construct (Bandura, 1997;Pajares, 1996), it was assumed that children's SE perceptions would vary according to different types of learning activities. For example, a capable but not very confident child might perceive high SE when working in a social learning situation where teacher and peer support might facilitate the child's task involvement and understanding of the task requirements (Bong & Skaalvik, 2003;Määttä, Järvenoja, & Järvelä, 2012). However, in independent learning situations, the same child might perceive lower SE because of the lack of encouragement and support (Määttä & Järvelä, 2013).…”