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Journal Articles

Triggers of Students’ Efficacious Interaction in Collaborative Learning Situations

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.

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Detail Information
Series Title
Small Group Research: An International Journal of Theory, Investigation and Application
Call Number
-
Publisher
Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications.,
Collation
p. 497-522
Language
English
ISBN/ISSN
1046-4964
Classification
-
Content Type
-
Media Type
-
Carrier Type
-
Edition
Volume 43 Number 4, August 2012 p. 497-522
Subject(s)
Interaction analysis
collaborative learning
efficacious interaction
triggers of interaction
Specific Detail Info
-
Statement of Responsibility
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