Web Crossing: A Context for Mentoring.

Web Crossing, an Internet/intranet server application offering online conferencing solutions through discussion forums and chat rooms, provided a context for the interaction of graduate and undergraduate students conducting educational research. The two researchers examined strands of conversation to see how concepts were constructed, shared, and adjusted. The Web environment offered some unique features of learning. By singularly focusing on our students' written words, the researchers had an unobstructed view into the linguistic expression of their thinking and the construction of knowledge that was taking place. Within the space of Web Crossing, students, deprived of the nonverbal aspects of language, managed to construct a social community by using informal phrases and greetings that mark informal face-to-face conversations. This relaxed atmosphere encouraged the exchange of impressions, thoughts, and knowledge. The Web was not only a viable and meaningful learning context for our students but also offered educational researchers a significant medium for studying learning and learning theory. "O! this learning, what a thing it is." After beginning her article "On Two Metaphors for Learning and the Danger of Choosing Just One" with this apt quotation from Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, Sfard (1998) went on to note that: Theories of learning, like all scientific theories, come and go. Some innovations reach deeper than others. Occasionally, theoretical changes amount to a conceptual upheaval. This is what seems to be happening right now in the research on learning. (p. 4) By digging out two metaphors that underlie current theories of learning, Sfard argued that metaphors play not only an explanatory role but also a constructive one, leading theorists and researchers to different ways of thinking and to different activities. This article explores two such metaphors that helped explain and construct a learning activity for two groups of university students. We have long been fascinated with the practice and theory of learning. As preschool teachers, we each created situations in our different classrooms, which stimulated children to take in new facts and to construct new concepts that helped make sense of their surroundings. As graduate students, we explored theories of learning; as researchers, we have looked more closely at people learning something new; as teacher educators, we have extended our interests to include exploring contexts that will help adults construct new ideas. Recently we found ourselves teaching classes that focused on educational research. Martha's group of graduate students was designing action research projects to carry out in their classrooms; Dee's group of undergraduates was just beginning to sketch simple action research projects of their own. We wondered whether we might find a way to bring the two groups of students together so that the more expert graduates might help the novice undergraduates understand the process more fully, deeply, and completely. The classes met at different times and places; we decided to design a virtual place on the Internet where they might exchange ideas. USING THE METAPHOR OF ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE Underlying our initial conversations was a metaphor of learning as acquisition. The acquisition metaphor suggests that: "Concepts are to be understood as basic units of knowledge that can be accumulated, gradually refined, and combined to form ever-richer cognitive structures" (Sfard, 1998, p. 5). With this metaphor as a foundation, we speak of transmitting knowledge, building knowledge, and passing it on. We are led to consider instruction as a process of packaging concepts in a way that they can be delivered to the learner. The learner will then unpack the concepts in some way to make them his or her own. We consider technology as part of the packaging: chalk marks on a board package ideas so that they can be delivered into a learner's notebook and, perhaps, into the learner's mind; a Powerpoint presentation packages ideas with fancier paper and more colorful ribbons; the World Wide Web (WWW or Web) provides conduits of delivery that contribute to an exchange of information between teachers and learners who may be disconnected in space and time. …