HOW TO DESIGN CLASSROOM PRACTICES FOR COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY? Minna Lakkala Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki Inquiry Learning, building bridges to practice, May 2006

Introduction Classic models of instructional design are not very applicable to collaborative inquiry because they mainly concentrate on individual processes of learning and are based on the strict pre-structuring of content and activities. The pedagogical design of collaborative inquiry is more like establising the elementary preconditions for the inquiry culture to emerge. Like ”indirect design” of CSCL (Jones & al. 2006) --> Designing pedagogical infrastructures for inquiry (Sfard, 2000; Bielaczyc, 2001; Paavola & al., 2002; Lipponen & Lallimo, 2004; Guribye, 2005).

Pedagogical infrastructures for collaborative inquiry COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY PROCESS Students’ participation & Teacher guidance Technical infrastructure Social infrastructure Epistemological infrastructure Cognitive infrastructure Forward

Features shaping the technical infrastructure Providing of the technology and technical advice for the members of the learning community. Organizing the use of technology and situations in which the technology is used. The diversity and nature of tools provided. Back

Features shaping the social infrastructure The explicit arrangements to advance and organize students’ collaboration and social interaction. Openness and sharing of the process and outcomes. The integration of face-to-face and technology-mediated activity. Back

Features shaping the epistemological infrastructure The conception of knowledge that the practices reflect. Explicitness of knowledge-creating inquiry in the process. The role of knowledge sources used in the course. Students’ and teachers’ role in creating and sharing knowledge. Back

Features shaping the cognitive infrastructure Explicit modelling of the strategies of inquiry. Guidance provided for the students. Methods used to promote metacognitive thinking. Cognitive scaffolding for collaborative inquiry embedded in tools. Back

Case: 10 Secrets – Progressive inquiry in history The idea was to interpret historical pictures from various time periods to understand history. Two classes from the same school conducted similar units and collaborated. Subject domains: history, native language Grade: 5th grade in a Finnish elementary school Age of students: years Number of participants: students & two teachers Duration: 8 weeks, 4 to 8 hours per week Context: The project was carried out during the international ITCOLE project funded by European Union (Innovative Technology for Collaborative Learning and Knowledge Building,

Progressive Inquiry as a pedagogical model in the project (Hakkarainen, 2003) Setting up research problems Creating the Context Constructing Working Theories Critical Evaluation Searchin Deepening Knowledge Constructing New Working Theories Shared expertise Generating Subordinate Questions

Collaborative technology used: FLE3 ( Open Source and Free Software; The pedagogical model of Progressive Inquiry is embedded in the FLE design; Knowledge building (KB) module threaded discourse forums labelling of notes by a category of inquiry scaffold; Virtual WebTops for storing and sharing documents; Jamming for sharing and structuring the versions of elaborated, shared artefacts.

FLE3’s Knowledge Building area

Examples of historical pictures Database

Related publications Lakkala, M., Lallimo, J., & Hakkarainen, K. (2005). Teachers' pedagogical designs for technology-supported collective inquiry: A national case study. Computers & Education, 45(3), Lakkala, M., Muukkonen, H., & Hakkarainen, K. (2005). Patterns of scaffolding in computer-mediated collaborative inquiry. Mentoring & Tutoring, 13(2), 281–300. Lakkala, M., Ilomäki, L., & Palonen, T. (in press). Implementing virtual, collaborative inquiry practices in middle school context. Behavior & Information Technology.