Relating students' personal frameworks for science learning to their cognition in collaborative contexts

Abstract

This study examines relationships between students' motivational and epistemological perspectives—called their “personal frameworks” for science learning—and their cognitive engagement with peers during collaborative knowledge-building tasks in two science classrooms. Twelve eighth graders' perspectives on self, learning, and knowledge were discerned through interviews, and their collaborative cognition was judged through analysis of their discussions during a 12-week unit on building models of the nature of matter. A number of analytic categories that depict students' perspectives and high and low sociocognitive engagement patterns are described. The dimension of students' personal frameworks that most closely mirrored their patterns of sociocognitive behaviors were their learning-referenced perspectives. One implication of this finding is that a more explicit metacognitive focus in science classrooms might help students develop flexibility in adopting perspectives on learning that are most productive for their current learning tasks. An implication for research is that individual differences in perspectives should not be ignored as we widen our analytic lens to examine community knowledge building in science classrooms. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed 83:1–32, 1999.