A Micro-View on Children's Shared Thinking on Questions Forming

A Micro-View on Children’s Shared Thinking on Questions Forming Peilan Chen (crossingthebartw@yahoo.com.tw) Institute of Curriculum Studies, National Chung Cheng University, 168, University Rd., Min-Siung, Chia-Yi, Taiwan Wolff-Michael Roth (mroth@uvic.ca) Applied Cognitive Science, University of Victoria, MacLaurin Building A548, V8W 3N4, Victoria, BC, Canada Yuhtsuen Tzeng (ttcytt@ccu.edu.tw) Center for Teacher Education & Institute of Curriculum and Instruction, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan Keywords: microgenetics; interaction analysis questions forming process; Introduction When individuals ask questions, they really are performing speech acts in social contexts. A theory of questioning in naturalistic settings therefore must address this pragmatic level of discourse (Graesser & Murachver, 1985). In the current study, we take a close look at children’s collective processes of generating questions as a form of task designed to lead to deep learning and understanding. Such a theory should allow us to increase the ecology validity of theory of questioning. Shared Editing of Final Questions Shared editing of the questions children ultimately construct serves as a context that scaffolds children in their thinking, provides explanations to exchange individual understanding, and promotes children to justify or rethink candidate questions that should go on record. Discussions Research Design Questioning Derives from an Assumption That Leads Individual to Make Cognitive Decision Constraints offer a way of decreasing the cognitive load of individuals and facilitate children’s engagement in the search and identification of relevant knowledge. Questioning Functions as Accommodation/ Assimilation The videotaped interactions of the shared production of questions provide empirical evidence for demonstrating children’s agency in learning and represent how individual conducts accommodation and assimilation to extend their knowledge. Questioning Is an Evolutionary and Reciprocal Social Process Questioning is not a linear process. It is a social process similar with other cognitive process (e.g. designing, Roth, 2001). The dynamics of questioning reflect on children’s social editing, which promotes children concept evolution and creates a concise product. Research Context and Data Sources Enacting the precepts of a microgenetic method (e.g. Kuhn, 2002), we videotaped 2 nd , 4 th , and 6 th grade children’s interactions in questioning generating tasks over multiple sessions to observe the question generation. Data Analysis Children’s conversations were transcribed preliminarily to conduct interaction analysis (Jordan & Henderson, 1995). After reading the transcripts, we make a tentative claim, and then we discussed and reviewed other episodes to check whether our claims represent our data. Based on continually check, discussion and revision, we formulate current three claims representative of our data. Acknowledgements Results National Science Council in Taiwan Activating Questions Constraints Children on their own and with their peers construct constraints to allow some types of questions and exclude others. Activating constraints not only avoids group members’ thoughts deviating from chosen central focus, but also implies hidden assumptions about some specific perspective. Creating Candidate Questions Our study reveals that the point inconsistent or comparable with what children know is a possible start to create a candidate question. References Graesser, A. C. , & Murachver, T. (1985). Symbolic procedures of question answering. In A.C. Graesser & J. B. Black (Eds.), The psychology of questions (pp.15-82). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Jordan, B. , & Henderson, A. (1995). Interaction analysis: Foundations and practice. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 4, Kuhn, D. (2002). What is scientific thinking and how does it develop? In U. Goswami (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of childhood cognitive development. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Roth, W. -M. (2001). Modeling design as situated and distributed process. Learning and Instruction, 11, 211-239.