Tan, Seng Chee

This forum paper offers alternative insights into Pei-Ling Hsu’s “It’s a magic circle”! Using cogenerative dialogues to create a safe environment to address emotional conflicts in a project-based learning science internship. In her paper, she presented how cogenerative dialogues can be used to create an emotionally safe environment for conflict resolutions in a project-based science internship program. She examined the emotions during the cogenerative dialogues using the polyvagal theory. Here, we continue the discussion by raising alternative perspectives to view the events, particularly the “Lucy incident” that was described. We suggest the use of emotional regulation strategies such as situation selection, situation modification, attention deployment, cognitive change and response modulation as a means to enhance the way cogenerative dialogues could be carried out. The main argument on this commentary is that strong emotions cannot be dismissed if cogenerative dialogues are used as a means to resolve conflicts. Rather, participants in cogenerative dialogues need to apply specific emotional regulation strategies so that they can contribute and participate in cogenerative dialogues more constructively.

While justifications have been made for emerging technologies’ transformative potential in STEM education, the roadmap for their eventual implementation in schools is underexplored. To this end, we review research works in artificial intelligence (AI) and immersive technologies which have been applied to facilitate STEM learning. Through a systematic literature search, we identified 82 papers and analyzed them for three aspects—(1) types of emerging technologies used, (2) science education goals, and (3) implementation value. Our findings indicate that augmented reality and natural language processing are common technologies used to enhance students’ learning experiences. These technologies helped students build conceptual understanding as well as epistemic practices in science. On the other hand, mixed reality and computer vision were the least popular technologies, which may be indicative of the low maturity of these technologies. Of all the science education goals, social aspects were the least commonly tackled through emerging technologies. Moreover, 58.9% of technological applications transformed science teaching and learning through automated ways of providing individualized feedback to students involved in argumentation and reasoning activities. Finally, based on our findings, we derive three research agenda that we believe would further the eventual implementation of emerging technologies in schools.

Scardamalia (2002) discussed the knowledge building notion as one which is built on social cognitive principles of learning. She proposed 12 principles focusing on collaborative knowing among students gearing toward building a community of learners in classrooms. However, how teachers become the key mediator for fostering knowledge building in classrooms is not fully explored. This study aims to contribute to the knowledge building research in terms of teacher professional development. Set in Singapore, where the dominant pedagogy is teacher centred and routinised (Luke, Cazden, Lin & Freebody 2005), this paper examines the journey taken by two biology teachers trying to reform their classrooms by incorporating knowledge building principles. In one of our email exchanges with a teacher, she was exasperated with her attempt to bring knowledge building into her classroom. After a few sessions, she exclaimed “But I have not started teaching!” This prompted us to seek answers to the research question “What are the factors that will impact knowledge building efforts in a Singapore science classroom?” Interviews and transcript analysis of classroom lessons are used as data and interpretive methods of data analysis are used in this paper. The beliefs of the teachers are elicited through a semi-structured interview which takes the form of a post-lesson dialogue in this paper. The results of this study revealed three key areas of concern in adopting knowledge building principles, namely, renegotiation of institutional authority, changing beliefs about teaching, and learning and building students’ capacity for epistemic agency. In order for teachers to transform their practices in the classroom, there needs to be a structured and concerted understanding of these factors.

This paper examines the use video playback technology coupled with the use of blogs and wikis in developing the reflection skills of 22 pre-service science teachers. Specifically, this paper illumines what pre-service teachers notice and subsequently make sense of teaching as they watch video segments of teaching taking place. It is found that pre-service science teachers primarily took notice of teaching skills and then used that as a primer to reflect upon classroom management, students’ learning need, the learning environment and how teachers plan their lesson. The use of videos and reflective blogs offers a systematic and structured way from evidence-based reflection of teaching for pre-service teachers.

This paper examines pre-service teachers' reflection on teaching after participating in an online course using videos of micro-skills coupled with self reflection and group blogs. Data sources included 137 online blog entries collected from 26 participants as well as semi-structured interviews with the participants at the end of the course. Larrivee's (2008) four levels of reflection (pre, surface, pedagogical and critical) were used to code the online reflections and content analysis of the participants' views of teaching was carried out with the interview transcripts. Analysis of online reflections showed that 67% of the reflection by pre-service teachers' falls in the pedagogical category and 2% in the critical category. These findings show that these pre-service teachers are capable of engaging in reflection beyond a surface level even with limited classroom experience. The resources that these pre-service teachers used to make sense of teaching are (1) their knowledge of learning theories; (2) their ideas of teachers' roles and responsibilities; and (3) their existing ideas of what makes good teaching. The pre-service teachers' reflection upon their learning showed evidence of willingness to incorporate the learnt ideas of good teaching in their future classrooms teaching. The use of micro-skills videos and reflection allowed them to restructure their pedagogical knowledge through identification, comparison, modification and synthesising.

This paper tracks the learning experiences in science of three students using Knowledge Forum. We examine the interaction process, in particular the seeking patterns that result as the three students explore and build the knowledge of convection current. Using micro-analysis of contribution on Knowledge Forum and principles of analysis of electronic interaction and discourse proposed by Zhu (1989), this paper analyses the forms of participation a student can assume, focusing mainly on the different forms in which students seek information as they navigate through the sea of information posted online. Using a grounded approach, we characterize two different ways in which students seek for information in an online environment, which we labeled as interpersonal seeking and collaborative seeking. We believe that the seeking behavior, albeit subtle, is instrumental in directing learning and directing the courses of ‘discussion’ and the quality of the knowledge that is built.

Some learning scientists are beginning to investigate social and cultural aspects of learning by examining the interactions between a learner and the environment as well as with other people in the learning environment. This paper proposes Conversational Analysis (CA) as a tool to analyze interactions between learners and instructors in face-to-face and online environments. It illustrates the potential of CA to enhance our understanding of the social aspect of learning by comparing analysis of transcripts in two distinct situations. Through the analysis, distinct characteristic interactions in face-to-face and online environments are uncovered by linking these analyses to the unique affordances of the learning environments.

Scardamalia (2002) discussed the knowledge building notion as one which is built on social cognitive principles of learning. She proposed 12 principles focusing on collaborative knowing among students gearing toward building a community of learners in classrooms. However, how teachers become the key mediator for fostering knowledge building in classrooms is not fully explored. This study aims to contribute to the knowledge building research in terms of teacher professional development. Set in Singapore, where the dominant pedagogy is teacher-centred and routinised (Luke, Cazden, Lin & Freebody 2005), this paper examines the journey taken by two biology teachers trying to reform their classrooms by incorporating knowledge building principles. In one of our email exchanges with a teacher, she was exasperated with her attempt to bring knowledge building into her classroom. After a few sessions, she exclaimed “But I have not started teaching!” This prompted us to seek answers to the research question “What are the factors that will impact knowledge building efforts in a Singapore science classroom?” Interviews and transcript analysis of classroom lessons are used as data and interpretive methods of data analysis are used in this paper. The beliefs of the teachers are elicited through a semi-structured interview which takes the form of a post-lesson dialogue in this paper. The results of this study revealed three key areas of concern in adopting knowledge building principles, namely, renegotiation of institutional authority, changing beliefs about teaching, and learning and building students’ capacity for epistemic agency. In order for teachers to transform their practices in the classroom, there needs to be a structured and concerted understanding of these factors.

Research on argumentation has increased our understanding of knowledge construction, group learning, and scaffolding structures in CSCL although analyses of argumentation pose many difficulties. This could be due to the many theoretical positions that can be taken when approaching discourse data. In this paper, we use three popular analytic methods (interactional, content-specific, and linguistic) to compare the same fragment of scientific argumentation by Grade 4 children in Singapore. We show the complementary emphases and strengths of each disciplinary position as well as their weaknesses. The results imply that analytic methods arising from different disciplinary positions can potentially broaden our overall understanding of using argumentation in CSCL.