Browsing by Subject "tutkiva keskustelu"
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(2016)The aim of the study. In preschool, children talk daily with peers and educators. This study examines the children's thinking and communication skills mainly through the concepts that Neil Mercer and his colleagues have defined. In light of earlier studies on the subject, an exploratory talk is especially meaningful in developing children's social and cognitive skills. In an exploratory talk, the children talk together using different methods to find agreement. This kind of discussion means they are thinking together. The aim of the study was to find out how children in early childhood education think together. The earlier study focused mainly on the school context; therefore, this study focuses on the early childhood education context. The main questions in the study are the following: what are the factors that make thinking together possible and what is the role of an educator? Methods. The research material consists of 25 episodes that were chosen from material filmed in two groups of 5-year-olds, with two days per group. In all of these episodes, there is interaction between the children and between an adult and the children. The episodes were categorised in groups depending on the way the children talked during the discussions. The main focus was on the exploratory talk. The main results. Three things made thinking together possible: the conversational culture in the group, the disagreements in conversations and problem solving, and a calm space for playing and immersion in the discussions. The role of the educator was incoherent. Either the educators were not present in the discussion events or they mostly interrupted them. The main problem was the quality of interaction. The questions the educators asked were simple right or wrong kinds of questions. When the children asked more thoughtful and open-ended questions when talking to each other, it led them to think together. These results are important, because transferring them to practice in early childhood education may support children's interaction, discussion and thinking skills, as well as developing a conversational culture in preschools.
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(2007)Participation and social modes of thinking - An intervention study on the development of collaborative learning in two primary school small groups This study explores the thinking together -intervention programme in three primary school classes. The object of the intervention was to teach pupils to use exploratory talk in small group collaboratory learning. Exploratory talk is a type of talk in which joint reasoning is made explicit. Research has shown that exploratory talk can improve mathematics and science learning, argumentative skills and competence in reasoning tests. The object of this study was to investigate the theory of social modes of thinking which the intervention program is based on. I tried to find out how the thinking together -intervention programme suits the Finnish context. Therefore my study is part of an international research project of interventions that have been implemented for example in Great-Britain and in Mexico. One essential drawback in former research made on thinking together -approach is that the nature of participation has not been studied properly. In this study I also examine how the nature of participation develops in small groups. In addition to that I aim to develop a theoretical framework which includes both the perspectives of the social modes of thinking and the nature of participation. The perspective of this study is sociocultural. The research material consists of video recordings of collaborative learning tasks of two small groups. In groups there were pupils of age groups 9 - 11. I study the nature of participation using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Quantitative methods include for example IR-analysis method and counting of turns at talk and words. I also use qualitative content analysis to analyze both the nature of participation and social modes of thinking. As a result of my study I found out that the interaction of the other group was leadership based and in the other group the interaction was without leadership relations. In both groups the participation was quantitatively more symmetrical in the end of the intervention. In the group in which the interaction was leadership based the participation of the pupils was more symmetrical. Exploratory talk was found more in the group without leadership relations, but in both groups the amount of exploratory talk was increased during the intervention. Leadership based interaction was further divided into interaction of alienating and inclusive leadership according to how symmetrical the participation was in the dialogue. Exploratory talk was found only when the leadership was inclusive or the interaction was without leadership relations. The main result of the study was that the exploratory talk was further divided into four subcategories according to the nature of participation. In open and inclusive exploratory talk all group members participated initiatively and their initiatives were responded by others. In closed and uneven exploratory talk some group members couldn't participate properly. Therefore it cannot be said that exploratory talk guarantees symmetrical participation. The nature of participation must be investigated separately.
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