Published as: Kleine Staarman, J., Aarnoutse, C. & Verhoeven, L. (2003) Connecting
discourses: Intertextuality in a primary school CSCL practice. International Journal of Educational Research 39, 807-816.
Pre-published draft of: Connecting discourses: Intertextuality in a primary school CSCL practice Judith Kleine Staarman*, Cor Aarnoutse and Ludo Verhoeven University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands
*Corresponding author:
[email protected] Abstract
This article investigates the multimodal discourses taking place in a primary school computer supported collaborative literacy environment, in which face-to-face talk in pairs
is combined with computer-mediated communication. Following a socially mediated model of education, we have taken into account the collaborative process of the
participants over time, the privileging processes to the discourse afforded by the tasks and
tools, and the classroom culture. We describe the contextualized nature of interaction of children in a CSCL learning environment, by focusing on the intertextual connections
that were made between different discourses. This paper highlights in particular the intertextual connections between written texts, face-to-face discourse and classroom culture.
Introduction
This paper presents findings from an on-going research project aimed at developing,
studying, and supporting collaborative activities in technology supported literacy
practices. One of the studies in the project focused on understanding the interaction of children when engaged in collaborative activities in which face-to-face talk and written 1
Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) were combined. Though children’s
interaction processes around and through computers have been widely studied, most of the research focuses on the effects of the interaction or on the structural features of the
collaborative practice (Crook, 2002). Besides, it remains unusual for research in Computer
Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) to focus on the way the interaction is shaped
by the culturally-based contextual system in which the interaction takes place (Mercer, 1993, 2000).
While analysing the discourse of participants in our study, we found that much of their
discourse was shaped by the social and cultural context of the activities. In order to reveal the reflexive nature of students’ talk, we decided to focus on the intertextual connections between different discourses of participants. With intertextuality we mean a view of
reflexivity that ties together different moments in time, identified by the juxtaposing of other texts to the current discussion (Gee & Green, 1998; Pappas, Varelas, Barry, & Rife,
2002). Thus, this paper focuses specifically on intertextual connections in discourse of students in pairs around the computer while creating written contributions in a shared
database. We assume that the interaction of primary school students around the computer is to a large extent shaped and mediated by the task goals, the classroom culture and previous personal experiences of the students. Theoretical framework
From a socio-cultural perspective learning is a process of participating in cultural practices
(Lave & Wenger, 1991) and the learning activities can never be seen separately from the context in which they take place (Sfard, 1998) and the artefacts that mediated them
(Säljö, 1995). From this perspective, the learner is seen as an integral part of the social
environment. Therefore the creation of meaning can not be regarded as a process that
takes place solely in the mind of the learner must be seen as both an interpersonal and intrapersonal process, mediated by cultural tools and artefacts (Kumpulainen & Mutanen, 1999; Mercer, 1996).
In CSCL practices, much of the interaction, collaboration and co-construction of
meaning takes place through a computer network. This means that both the computer 2
mediated communication system and the ideas from other participants influencing one’s
own thinking can be regarded as mediating tools (Gunawardena, Lowe, & Anderson, 1997). An easy way of implementing CSCL in classrooms is through the use of a Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) tool (Guzdial & Turns, 2000; Kleine
Staarman, 2003; Veerman, Andriessen, & Kanselaar, 2000). CMC affords a new genre of interaction, characterised by sequences of turns, each of which contains an extended, fully developed and explicit, and uninterrupted utterance (Wertsch, 2002). They also offer the opportunity for students to take time to consider work in depth and to revise notes before
contribution to the communal database (Mercer, 2000). According to Wegerif (1998),
CMC can blend different types of thinking, since quick responses can be combined with
the possibility of a slower and often more creative process, “in which thoughts nag away at the back of your mind and new connections are forged” (Wegerif, 1998, pp. 48).
As any other mediating tool, written language in CMC discussion forums is heavily contextualised by a physical and implicit context (Mercer, 1993). Aspects of the physical context may include the given task, the role of the teacher and the electronic learning
environment itself. The implicit context consists of aspects such as shared knowledge and culture and the specific speech genre. Following a dialogical perspective to discourse implies that CMC contributions cannot be seen as monologic pieces of writing, but are linked in a chain of other contributions, building on what has gone before and
anticipating further response (Haneda & Wells, 2000; Vološinov, 1986). Mercer (2000)
argues that particular speech events are episodes of “long conversations”, in which
participants have created a shared history and context to which they can refer implicitly or explicitly. To gain some insight into the ‘long conversation’ between participants in a
CSCL practice and the reflexivity of CMC discussions in this study, we used a microethnographic approach. We analysed not just the CMC discussions, but also face-to-face
discussions of children while writing these CMC contributions, interviews with the teacher and students, and field notes made by the researcher during observations. The study
In the present study, primary school children were working in a literacy environment with several modes of communication working together to support learning and reflection 3
processes. The children’s collaborative activities consisted of face-to-face and computer-
mediated communication and classroom conversations with the teacher and other children. Our inquiry was guided by the following research question: Which kinds of
intertextual connections were made between classroom discussions, children’s face-to-face interaction in pairs and their subsequent CMC contributions? Description of the learning situation
The data presented in this study are derived from a Dutch sixth grade primary classroom
literacy project on horror stories of one class with 28 students, and 1 teacher. The average age of the students (14 boys and 14 girls) was 11.1 years. The students worked in pairs
around computers in two different dedicated areas of the school. For this project 18 students were heterogeneously paired, each pair consisting of either one low and one
average achieving child or one average and one high achieving child. A national monitoring system for reading comprehension (Verhoeven & Vermeer, 1994) and a teacher assessment of students’ oral skills, indicated on a 5 point Likert scale (rating from
very poor to very good) were used as a control for this pairing. The other 10 students worked individually during the project but for the purpose of this paper, their work has
not been used in the analysis. The duration of the whole project was eight weeks, with one or two 45- minute lessons per week. In the first four lessons the children discussed the concept of horror stories with the help of a CMC discussion tool. The instructional goals of these discussions were to familiarise the students with the genre of horror stories, to create common knowledge regarding this topic, and to make them aware of the different
strategies used by authors to make a story scary and exciting to read. After the four discussion lessons, the students had to write their own horror story.
To support and sustain the discussions in the first four lessons, a CMC tool called Knowledge Forum© (KF) (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1992) was used. This meant that
written contributions of pairs of students were saved in a communal database for the rest of the class to read and comment on. In KF, students write their contributions in an individual window before contributing it to the shared main database. The software includes several integrated features to support children’s argumentation and reasoning
process. Unlike the more commonly threaded CMC discussions, the version of KF used 4
in this study represents contributions to the database in a non-hierarchical web-like
structure (Fig. 1). By representing the contributions in this non-hierarchical way, it is argued that responding to earlier written contributions becomes easier and students can
group contributions sharing a common theme or subject (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1992).
The students had been using KF in other projects, and thus were very familiar with the software.
Figure 1. Web-like discussion structure in Knowledge Forum Before and during the project, the teacher tried to make the children more aware of collaborative processes in Knowledge Forum. In classroom discussions with the children she evaluated the collaborative process, focusing on questions such as “How can we
improve our work in Knowledge Forum?” In these evaluative sessions the children
discussed and made agreements for working in KF, loosely adapted from the ‘Thinking Together Skills’ approach (see Dawes, Mercer, & Wegerif, 2000; Wegerif, Mercer, & Dawes, 1999).
Data collection procedures
The data for this study were collected during the first four lessons of the project, since
these lessens involved a combination of face-to-face and computer mediated collaborative
activities. The face-to-face interactions of four focal pairs were recorded on mini-disk and transcribed verbatim. For this paper, 6 of these recorded face-to-face interactions were 5
analysed. The pairs were chosen in order to represent best the participants in the study,
varying in gender and ability of the children. Analysed data also included all written contributions to the database (N=95) and field notes. Introduction to the analysis of the discourse
The methodology in this study draws on an ethnographic approach to discourse analysis. This approach implies taking into account the reflexive nature of interaction and action. It signifies the examination of participants’ choices, words, and actions, while engaging with
each other across time and other classroom events. Moreover, the discourse (both oral and written) is analysed from an insider’s perspective (Gee & Green, 1998). The analyses were
undertaken with an inductive approach to the data which means that though the researcher might start with a number of global pre-conceptions, in the course of the
analysis the focus is more on patterns and key themes that are found in the data. Subsequently these key themes are examined, interpreted and connected to theoretical
insights (Eisenhardt, 2002; Wester, 1987). The analyses were realised with the help of the qualitative data analysis program NVivo (QSR International, 2001). Results
In order to answer the research question (Which intertextual connections were made between classroom discussions with the teacher, children’s face-to-face interaction in pairs and their subsequent discussions in the CMC learning environment?) a categorisation of
intertextual connections as presented by Pappas, Varelas, Barry, & Rife (2002) was used as
a pre-conception for our analysis. Reading through our data, we noticed that students often referred to written texts as part of their social discourse. But since the collaborative
process was emphasised during the project, we also wanted to observe if the students referred to any of the evaluative sessions or whether they made any implicit or explicit
references to the classroom culture, which could serve as an indication of collaborative awareness. Two types of intertextual connections were found in the data:
Type 1: Intertextual connections to explicitly shared texts. This type includes previously
connections to written contributions to the database, the task, and other texts, such as
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books and films. Also included are explicit references to classroom discussions and to previous discussions between students.
Type 2: Implicit intertextual connections, which include more ‘implicit’ references to the classroom culture or to students’ previous experiences.
In the episodes presented below, we set out to illustrate how intertextual connections
emerged in the discourse between students and how these were subsequently taken up by other students. Unfortunately, due to space constraints it was not possible to include longer trajectories of events or more examples. Type 1: Intertextual connections to written texts
Since the students had to discuss several features of horror stories, it came as no surprise
that most of the intertextual connections were references to books they had read (or films they had seen) and to other written contributions. Examples of these are shown in
Episode 1 (intertextual link to book) and Episode 2 (intertextual link to a written contribution). The intertextual connections are indicated in bold. Episode 1: Harry Potter 4 (written contribution from pair 4) by: pair 4
Opinion: Our favourite horror story is Harry Potter part 4
Reason: It is very thrilling especially at the end. But it is also funny. And you can really immerse yourself in it. Besides, we think it is fun when there is always something that happens when you don’t expect it. And that it has to do with magic.
Episode 2: Fluffy (face to face talk of pair 3) 1
2 3
Sanne: Harry Potter part 4, that’s not very scary, isn’t it? Which scary things are
happening in it? It might be exciting but surely it’s not horror? I mean, there are no monsters or vampires in eh… Pieter: … Yes, Fluffy…
Sanne: Dead bodies in it – yes, right, that’s a three-headed dog, but he hardly has a role, only a small one. Alright, but there are no vampires, corpses, killings, 7
eh.. all kinds of other things don’t happen in it, so then it’s surely not scary? What
are you doing? You’re allowed to give your opinion, aren’t you? OK, so.. but it is a really exciting story in the end.
This example of an intertextual link to a book was taken up by Sanne, as she responds to a
contribution that they have been reading from pair 4. She claims that Harry Potter is not
very scary since there are no monsters and vampires in it. Pieter responds that the book does feature a three-headed dog called Fluffy, but even though Sanne acknowledges this,
she remains with her original idea of the book not being very scary since the role of Fluffy is only minor.
These kinds of references were often made during the lessons. Students’ ideas presented their written contributions were in many cases afforded by the books and films they had read or seen. Furthermore, the talk of the students around the computer was in many cases afforded by the contributions from other pairs. The ideas that were presented in the
written contributions were often taken up for further discussion, such as in Episode 3, where the notion of ‘grumor’ (a combination of gruesome and humor) was further discussed at the end of the lesson. Episode 3: Grumor 1
Sanne: Ireene, you wrote to us that you didn’t think humor is so scary
3
Sanne: Grumor are gruesome things
2 4 5 6
Ireene: yes, what is grumor?
Ireene: Yes, it doesn’t make sense but ok .. Sanne: Yeah, that’s what I said
Ireen: Yeah but I think that’s not true at all
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Sanne: Well, that’s what Pieter said, I don’t know, I just said you have to do
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Ireene: grumor
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gruesome things
Sanne: Yes, but it’s not humor, it’s gruesome.. Pieter, what actually is grumor? (Calls to Pieter)
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In this Episode Sanne questions a contribution that was written by Ireene. Ireene uses this intertextual link to question the word ‘grumor’, which, in turn, was put forward in a contribution from Sanne and Pieter (Pair 3). Presumably, the meaning of the word
‘grumor’ is not entirely clear for both of the girls since they discuss the meaning of the word and eventually call in the help of Pieter to explain the term. Type 2: Implicit intertextual connections
Apart from the explicit intertextual connections that were made between shared texts and discourse, there were also more ‘implicit’ references that were not explicitly identified. These intertextual connections refer more implicitly to the classroom culture and to
previous experiences of the students. Even though these references are difficult to analyse,
they offer an insight in way in which the participants draw on past practices to construct present texts (Gee & Green, 1998).
In Episode 3, we see an implicit intertextual reference to a students’ previous experience,
when Sanne comments: “Alright, but there are no vampires, corpses, killings, eh.. all kinds of other things don’t happen in it, so then it’s surely not scary?”. Apparently, she has previous
experiences with horror films or books that she found scary, which featured vampires,
corpses and massacres. This led to her conclusion that she did not think Harry Potter was a horror story as such, but just an exciting story to read. Another example of implicit intertextual connections is given in the following trajectory of events in which two
written contributions from pairs 1 and 3 are followed up by two responses by the same pairs to each others contributions.
Episode 4: Goosebumps or Buffy? (Written contributions from pair 1 and 3) 1
By: Pair 1
Opinion: Our favourite horror story is: Goosebumps
Reason: Because it is exciting, there is always something scary happening. You can really put yourself in it and imagine how scary it is for the person with whom something is happening.
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2
By: Pair 3
Opinion: Our favourite horror story is: Scary but true
Reason: Because it is about that there are ghosts haunting and children are investigating this and then they see things moving and that kind of stuff 3
Opinion about your bit from pair 1 by: Pair 1
Other opinion: We think Buffy is much nicer because exciting things happen and
sometimes it seems that you are experiencing it yourself. What you have written is unclear you only write what it is about and not what you think of it. 4
Why?????
By: Pair 3
Opinion: Why do you say that you think Buffy is nicer when you have chosen
Goosebumps and scary but true is much scarier because you also really live in it so our opinion is our opinion
In written contributions 3 and 4, two implicit intertextual references were made. In contribution 3, which was written as a response to contribution 2, Pair 1 refer implicitly to the task and to the classroom discussions with the teacher, by stating that Pair 3 only
write what the story is about and not about their ideas regarding the scary elements of the
story. In classroom discussions and evaluations with the teacher it was emphasised that the children should not only give examples but would have to try to write down their
ideas and reasons for their ideas. Presumably, this is what the children of Pair 1 meant when they wrote ”you only write what it is about and not what you think of it”. Following up on this, another intertextual reference is made by Pair 3 in their response to this critique.
In this contribution they write “our opinion is our opinion”. This is an implicit reference to classroom discussions they had with the teacher, in which an important topic of
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discussion was the question if it was allowed to have another opinion. The students argued that it was allowed, providing that reasons were given for their opinions.
Other implicit intertextual connections the students made included references to their
notion of the task goals, indicated by statements such as “we should do more” or “my theory is what we should do” and implicit references to general experiences, indicated by statements such as “that is always scariest when it is very quiet and there is nobody around”. Conclusion
The aim of the paper was to describe the different intertextual references that were made
by the students, in order to show the reflexive nature of students’ talk in a CSCL practice. We focused on two different types of intertextual connections, namely explicit connections to shared texts (including oral texts and other media) and implicit
connections to classroom culture, personal experience and prior classroom discussions. In some cases the intertextual references functioned as a starting point for further discussion,
while in other cases they were used to encourage or validate contributions and ideas. The intertextual references gave an insight in the way in which students tried to make meaning of issues that arose during previous discussions and evaluations with the teacher.
A substantial amount of the intertextual references made by the children originated from
the fact that the topic of discussion was horror stories. This topic gave the children an
unfamiliar chance to explicitly draw on personal experiences during a classroom activity, combining a specific educational genre of discourse with their own, more spontaneous
and informal genre. Anchoring teaching with such connections to different texts can provide conceptual, linguistic and experiential resources for both teachers and learners
(Pappas et al., 2002). In this study, it elicited students’ discussions and provided a basis for the writing of their own stories.
Focusing on reflexivity in language in CSCL practices highlights the contextualised
nature of student’s learning activities in these practices, and the mediating role of artefacts. It may offer us a broader insight in how meaning in CSCL practices is culturally
constructed and how children make learning activities in these practices meaningful 11
(Stahl, 2003). In turn, it may also help us to develop new practices for meaningful learning and teaching with CSCL technology. References
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