M. Beatrice Ligorio

Dialogical Relationship between Identity and Learning

This paper highlights some connections between cultural psychology, educational psychology, and identity psychology. This aim is pursued through the constructivist view of conceptualized learning as building knowledge. It is contended that identities should explicitly be considered as part of this process. Useful approaches to explore the relationship between learning and identity are the Dialogical Self Theory (DST) and the Communities of Learning model (CoL), both of which demonstrate a shared interest in dialogue and constructivism. DST defines the self as being composed of a set of I-positions, which are constantly in dialogue and in movement. The CoL model conceptualizes the classroom as a set of cultural contexts where dialogues permit the analysis of context and also shape it. Empirical examples of how relevant concepts related to learning, such as motivation and sense-making, can be viewed as innovation of the self are discussed.

Dialogical Positions as a Method of Understanding Identity Trajectories in a Collaborative Blended University Course.

Recent learning sciences literature proposes to conceive learning as changes in the learner’s identity trajectory. In this paper, we use the analysis of dialogical positioning as a method to track down and understand shifts in identity trajectories. The Bakhtinian concepts of “polyphony” and “chronotopes” are considered as dialogical indicators of the identity positions, and are the basis of our method. A qualitative/quantitative nature is featured in this method, which is composed of three steps: a) reading of the data; b) definition of a tailored list of dialogical indicators; c) quantitative analysis. A highly collaborative, blended university course, drawing on socio-constructivist principles, was used as the context to test the method. Indeed, we believe such a course would foster dialogical identity development. All the notes posted online during the course by two selected students were used as the corpus of data. The students were selected because of their diversity in terms of level of participation and initial technology propensity. The application of the method revealed the uniqueness of the trajectories, the correlations between indicators, and their sensitiveness to the activities of the course and to the students’ personal circumstances.

Investigating chronotopes to advance a dialogical theory of collaborative sensemaking

The aim of this paper is to highlight the contribution offered by the dialogical approach in understanding the interconnectedness of the situated sensemaking and situation-transcending processes occurring during the collaborative finalization of a product. We propose a dialogical theory of sensemaking based on the concepts of chronotope, voice and artefact mediation, aimed at investigating how multiple space–time frames are interconnected in collaborative sensemaking. We argue that this analysis is complementary to both the semiotic and the institutional analyses of sensemaking, which constitute the basis of our theorizing. To concretely illustrate our proposal for a chronotopic analysis of collaborative sensemaking, we qualitatively discuss an excerpt taken from a meeting of a multidisciplinary professional team working on the finalization of a web platform meant for enterprises.

Mobile Phones to Enhance Reflection Upon Collaborative Problem-Solving

This paper presents a small-scale study where the use of a mobile-phone is proposed as part of an educational strategy, namely collaborative problem-solving. The study is viewed through the lens of cultural psychology and aims to develop an understanding of participants’ points of view in order to foster metareflection and meaning sharing. A class of 20 students from a Pedagogical Lyceum (average age 17) was involved. Students were asked to use their mobile phones to record moments they considered representative of their problem solving performance whilst working in groups. Seven videos were collected and analyzed by two independent researchers. The videos were segmented into 12 meaningful episodes and four categories were extracted. A few weeks later the groups who had produced the videos were required to watch, categorize, and comment on them. A fairly good overlap between students’ and researchers’ interpretations as well as those generated between groups was retrieved. Therefore the four categories could be considered as representing students’ perceptions of collaborative problem-solving strategies. Furthermore, information about students’ meta-reflection was gathered.