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...
moreSome 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 faceto-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-toface and online environments are uncovered by linking these analyses to the unique affordances of the learning environments. Studying Human Interactions in Learning Sciences In the Industry Age where a large number of students goes through educational institutions to become economically productive citizens, the efficiency-driven instructionist approach makes sense (Papert, 1993). But in the 21 st Century, life-skills like problem solving skills, creative and critical thinking skills, and collaboration and communication skills become critical (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 2003). A new science of learning, now known as learning sciences, began to emerge to investigate the inadequacies of instructionist approach of teaching. The instructionist approach is deemed inadequate by many learning scientists as it ignores the social and situated nature of learning. This is evident by comparing school learning with professional practices. For example, scientists work in teams or communities which are engaged in similar themes of research so that new contributions can build on existing research findings. In contrast, students learn individually and are assessed for individual achievement in many schools. In communities of scientists, newcomers learn the trade by starting as peripheral members of a community, and gradually proceed to the core community through prolonged engagement in the culture and practice of the community (Wenger, 1998). That means newcomers learn in the context of professional practices. On the other hand, traditional instructional design models for classroom instruction have advocated an analytical and decontextulaized approach where contents are divided into logically sequenced chunks and units for the learners (see Dick & Carey, 2005). This contradiction prompted many educational researchers and theorists to start taking a socio-cultural perspective to learning which believes that knowledge is constructed through social interaction and is context dependent (Bedner, Cunningham, Duffy & Perry, 1992; Roschelle, 1992). From this perspective, learning takes place because the individual interacts with the environment and with the surrounding people. These interactions are crucial for the progression of one's knowledge of the world and also for one's personal development. The conceptualization of socio-cultural theory of learning draws heavily on the work of Vygotsky (1962/1986), as well as later theoreticians such as Wertsch (1991). A key feature of this emergent view of human development is that higher-order cognitive functions develop out of social interaction (Tharp and Gallimore, 1988). Vygotsky (1962/1986) held that learning is embedded within social events and learning occurs as a child interacts with people, objects, and events in the environment. Vygotsky was of the view that mental functioning in the individual can be understood by examining the social and cultural processes from which it is derived. This involves an analytical strategy that may appear somewhat paradoxical: it requires the researcher to analyze the mental processes of the individual by going outside the individual, into his learning environment. In other words, methodologically, to understand the learning process, we need to analyze the interactions between the learners and the people or the environment. Our lives within institutions like schools and their associated communities serve to give us the tools for making sense of our environment and to interact with those around us. These tools include languages, pictorial conventions, belief systems, value systems and specialized discourse and practices. With the advent of network technology, current educational practices also see an increasing trend in using networked computers as tools to foster online interaction within a community (Kirschner, Martens, & Strijbos, 2004). Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) is one field of study that focuses on online collaboration and interaction. In CSCL environments, individuals can be physically separated but their thoughts, ideas and convictions can still be communicated through the help of a mediating tool, in this case, the computer software. Network learning environments like chat, threaded discussion boards, or scaffolded forums like Knowledge Forum are some CSCL environments that are commonly studied. Likewise, interaction among the learners, as captured in the transcripts of the discussion, becomes the object of investigation to unravel the collaborative learning process. In classrooms or in CSCL environment, one of the most common mediation tools for interaction is text. Analysis of the text becomes an important methodological issue. Quantitative Content Analysis (QCA) is a common technique used to systematically and objectively describe the manifest content of communication (Berelson, 1952). However, QCA is plagued with several methodological issues, including accuracy, reliability of procedures, and validity of the coding (Valcke & Martens, 2005). While QCA struggles with the psychometric issues of coding and quantifying mental constructs through text, in this paper, we argue for the use of Conversation Analysis (CA) as a grounded qualitative approach to understand the interactions among learners and instructors. The CA approach is not dependent on psychometric quantification of mental constructs and it is thus not susceptible to the validity issue of performing inference statistics on interpreted and quantified mental constructs (Riffe, Lacy, & Fico, 1998). The CA approach also takes into consideration the contextual information of the learning environment, which could be crucial in understanding learning from socio-cultural perspective. In the following sections, we first review CA as a method, then illustrate how CA can be used to illuminate interaction processes and phenomenon in a face-to-face context and a computer-mediated interaction. Conversation Analysis Every one of us lives in a world where we experience different social encounters. Social interaction is the basis through which business of the social world is transacted. Here, identities of the participants involved in the interaction are formed, shaped, affirmed or denied and cultures in which interactions take place are also renewed and modified. Social interactions can either be in the form of face-to-face contact or mediated contact through a tool. These tools can be in the form of language of the culture or in the form of technology aid like mobile phones and computers. The act of conversation is one of the oldest forms of socio-cultural interaction. Talk is thought made both visible and social and hence through analyzing conversation the thoughts of students and teachers can be 'seen'. Through analyzing talk, the complex interaction through which knowledge is transmitted, displayed, impeded or avoided can be examined. The fundamental assumption of CA is that the act of conversation is not simply developed spontaneously, but rather, it follows a set of rules, which is different in different culture and context (Sacks & Schegloff, 1974; Garfinkel, 1967). CA is interested in how social orders are produced and how societies reproduce these social orders. CA seeks to place 'a new emphasis on participants' orientation to indigenous social and cultural constructs. It seeks to describe the underlying social organizationconceived as an institutional substratum of international rules, procedures, and conventions-through which orderly and intelligible social interaction is made possible.' (Goodwin & Heritage, 1990, p 283). From the 1970s, CA is applied to institutional contexts like schools. Here, conversation is redefined to move beyond two participants to involve multiple participants. Conversations can take place between the students and teachers, between different groups of students and between the teacher and selected students in the class. The ecology of interaction that takes place in the classroom for learning is complex, yet has achieved levels of success for a long time. This web of interaction through conversations that takes place, once understood, will reveal the essence of multi-party conversations that allow for learning to take place. Linguists, sociolinguists, ethnographers and communication ethnographers, and later, researchers such as Sinclair and Coulthard (1992), Mehan (1979) and Cazden (1986) have carried out investigations into talk especially in classrooms to examine how talk has been 'institutionalized'. Through detailed analyses of actual interactive events of how teachers and students in classrooms use talk and other resources to accomplish learning, the practices and phenomena that have usually taken for granted can be explicated and understood. In order to analyze social interactions, it is important to integrate the analysis of action, mutual knowledge, and social context. As such in our analysis, we look for 'procedural bases for reasoning and action through which actors recognize, constitute, and reproduce the social and phenomenal world they inhabit' (Goodwin & Heritage, 1990). While CA has been used to analyze classroom talks, its application in online environment is limited. In this paper, we argue that it is also valuable to use the art of CA to examine the features of 'conversations' that take place in an online...
