Shared meaning, Common Ground, Group Cognition

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Chapter 17

• Shared meaning, Common Ground, Group Cognition

Eirik Molnes, 08.06.2007
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Overview

• Critical look at the concept of Shared Meaning
• Critical look at the concept of Common Ground
• Virtual Math Team Empirical study of how Group
  Cognition is constituted in practice

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Group Cognition defining the CSCL paradigm of
research

• Prior to CSCL
• It is the individual who learns and thinks
• CSCL perspective
• It is the collaborative group who learns and
  thinks (Koschmann 1999)

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Theory of Shared Meaning

• Meaning
• Exists in the intersubjective world, and can be
  interpeted from personal perspectives.
• Group meaning
• Constructed by the interactions of the individual
  members

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Problem of Shared Meaning

• Common practice to assume that when a person
  express an opinion, he utteres a preconceived
  meaning
• This reveals a conflict
• If meaning is socially constructed and shared,
  why do we feel compelled to treat it as a private
  property?

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Problem of Shared Meaning II

• Shared Meaning
• Important in situations where knowledge is shared
• Shared Knowledge, three situations
• Similarity of indivuduals knowledge
• Knowledge that gets shared
• Group Knowledge

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Two paradigms

• Ambiguity of Shared Knowledge corresponds to two
  different paradigms of viewing group interaction
  (Anna Sfarn)
• Acquisition Metaphor
• Participation Metaphor

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Acquisition Metaphor

• Thinks of education as a transfer of knowledge
  commodities and their subsequent possession by
  individual minds

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Participation Metaphor

• Locates learning in intersubjective, social or
  group processes and views the learning of
  individuals in terms of their changing
  participation in the group interactions.

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A Conflict of Paradigms

• Collaborative learning tendency to construe
  learning as something taking place in the
  individual mind.
• CSCL 02 conference, Koschmann
• Talk about knowledge as a thing that can be
  acquired should be replaced with discussion of
  meaning making in the context of joint activity

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Conflict of Paradigms II

• Stahl solution
• Make explicit when one is referring to individual
  subjective understanding, and when one is
  referring to group intersubjective understanding
• Problem
• Hard for most people to imagine how a group can
  have knowledge

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The Range of Views

• Many different views on how learning takes place.
  (page 351)
• Theories that focus on the group as a possible
  unit of knowledge construction (page 352)

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Theory of Common Ground

• Used to explain how collaborative understanding
  is possible
• Grounding
• Mutual understanding
• Clark and Brennan 1991 (CA)
• Grounding is a collective process by which
  participants try to reach mutual belief
• CSCL-Common Ground
• Concerned with short-term negotiation of common
  ground during interactions

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Critique of Clarks common ground

• Operating Room (Koschmann and LeBaron)
• Argues that the notion of belief that contributes
  to a common ground, is not useful to
  understanding the construction of shared
  understanding.
• Vygotsky
• Individual developmental level vs. social
  developmental level.
• Indicates that group interactions cannot be
  reduced to individual behavior.

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Empirical Inquiry into Group Cognitive Practives

• Virtual Math Teams (VMT)
• Drexel University
• Goal Can knowledge sharing in community
  contexts, construct group knowing and shared
  meaning that exceeds the knowledge of the groups
  individual members?

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Virtual Math Team

• Collaborative online math program
• Chatrooms (4 persons)
• Solve a problem in 1 hour
• Logged interaction
• Analyzed groups and individuals over a long
  timespan
• Adult feedback, but not while solving the
  problems

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Virtual Math Team II

• Analyze student interaction to find out how they
  build Shared Knowledge
• Try to document concrete situations where groups
  can have knowledge that is disctinct form the
  knowledge of the group

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Virtual Math Team III

• Overcome the AM/PM paradigm conflict?
• Clarify meaning making in the context of joint
  activity
• Individual vs. Group Knowledge
• Issues for further investigations
• Page 360

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Questions?