Collaborative Dialogue Research Articles

A university's response to people with disabilities in Worcester, Western Cape.

BackgroundThe call for institutions of higher education to foster interaction with communities and ensure training is responsive to the needs of communities is well documented. In 2011, Stellenbosch University collaborated with the Worcester community to identify the needs of people with disabilities within the community. How the university was engaging with these identified needs through student training still needed to be determined.ObjectivesThis study describes the engagement process of reciprocity and responsivity in aligning needs identified by persons with disability to four undergraduate allied health student training programmes in Worcester, Western Cape.MethodA single case study using the participatory action research appraisal methods explored how undergraduate student service learning was responding to 21 needs previously identified in 2011 alongside persons with disability allowing for comprehensive feedback and a collaborative and coordinated response.ResultsStudents’ service learning activities addressed 14 of the 21 needs. Further collaborative dialogue resulted in re-grouping the needs into six themes accompanied by a planned collaborative response by both community and student learning to address all 21 needs previously identified.ConclusionUndergraduate students’ service learning in communities has the potential to meet community identified needs especially when participatory action research strategies are implemented. Reciprocity exists when university and community co-engage to construct, reflect and adjust responsive service learning. This has the potential to create a collaborative environment and process in which trust, accountability, inclusion and communication is possible between the university and the community.

A Patient-Physician Tool to Improve CoMMunication in Relapsed Refractory Multiple Myeloma (RRMM)

Multiple myeloma (MM) patients and their physicians often have conflicting treatment goals. Patient-centered communication (PCC) and shared decision making (SDM) can encourage collaborative dialogue and help the physician better understand and incorporate patient needs, preferences, and goals in treatment planning. Here, we describe the development of a tool to aid physicians in improving PCC and SDM in treatment selection for RRMM using literature review, multi-disciplinary advisory boards, and a national survey of physicians and patients.

Unsustainable Science

Unsustainable Science

Universidades Corporativas e o ensino para a sustentabilidade

Este artigo tem por objetivo verificar como universidades corporativas promovem a educação para a sustentabilidade de seus colaboradores e stakeholders externos de forma a integrar esta temática nas estratégias organizacionais. Para esta pesquisa qualitativa, a técnica de coleta de dados escolhida foi a entrevista semiestruturada, realizada com 16 Gestores de universidades corporativas sediadas no Estado de São Paulo. Os resultados apontam que, embora a sustentabilidade seja um componente estratégico presente no discurso organizacional, é praticamente inexistente modelos específicos e ações educacionais, relacionados propriamente com o tema. Destaca-se a falta de uma cultura para a sustentabilidade efetiva nas organizações e concentração do conhecimento relativo ao tema nos departamentos específicos de sustentabilidade, que contribui para um aprendizado fragmentado e pontual, dificultando a apropriação deste conhecimento nas demais unidades organizacionais e a incorporação da temática na estratégia das organizações pesquisadas. O principal desafio encontrado se refere à construção de diálogo colaborativo entre as universidades corporativas, áreas de sustentabilidade e demais setores organizacionais que facilite um processo formativo efetivo nas organizações, conciliando objetivos econômicos, ambientais e sociais.

Examination of connectivist theory in English language learning

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of technology and online communication platforms in English language learning based on connectivist theory. Design/methodology/approach Questionnaire and checklist were used to examine the role of online communication tools in the learning process. The data analysis was done with SPSS. Findings Results showed that being involved in collaborative learning and dialogue increases connectivist knowledge, reflection and negotiation. Online communication tools can be used as an effective supplementary material for learning. Research limitations/implications The limitation of this paper is that the number of participants was limited to 27. Practical implications This paper gives insights on the use of language and technology integration. Social implications New way of learning and language learning become essential for the pedagogy and learner in the higher education. Originality/value The paper is original in its research context and gives a value to contribute new way of learning based on approach.

Poetic habits of mind in TESOL teacher preparation

This paper examines the possibility of viewing TESOL teachers’ identities through the metaphor of ‘poet-teachers’, viewing second language teachers as creative and collaborative meaning-makers. We analyzed interviews, poems and classroom discourse among 16 Chinese, Vietnamese and English L1 speakers who participated in poetry writing course as a component of their TESOL teacher preparation curriculum. We identified three qualities related to poetic habits of TESOL teacher identity. Firstly, creative (l)imitation which enhances their identities as connected to and expanding from past structures, yielding new future selves. Secondly, the practice of surprising oneself in and through an L2, shifting scripted perceptions of language learning toward improvisational play. Lastly, teaching poetry illuminated the ways in which the language classroom becomes a site for dialogic collaboration, two-way exchanges where creative meaning-making can occur for both teacher and student alike. The results suggest imitation, surprise, and collaboration can create emotionally and linguistically rewarding experiences, encouraging the TESOL educator to identify as co-learners and to grow as interactive producers of meaning, not just passive instructors and receptors of language form.

Mentoring positioning: perspectives of early childhood mentor teachers

ABSTRACT Research on early childhood mentoring has recognised the importance of collegial, productive and high-quality relationships between early childhood mentors and mentees. This research study adopts a cultural–historical approach to understand the different positions taken by mentors when relating with international pre-service teachers (PSTs). The concept of position relates to the place of mentors and mentees in a system of social relationships across different social spaces. Ten mentor teachers were purposefully selected because of their openness to mentoring international PSTs. They participated in two focus group sessions held during a collaborative dialogue event at the university. Data were analysed using a cultural–historical “positioning” framework, which highlighted the complex set of relationships experienced by the mentors and mentees. These relationships were conceptualised as empathetic, supportive of initiatives and collaborative mentoring positioning. The implications of this research indicate the value of collaborative mentoring approaches in which mentors are empathetic to newly-arrived international PSTs.

The integral as accumulation function approach: A proposal of a learning sequence for collaborative reasoning

Learning mathematical thinking and reasoning is a main goal in mathematical education. Instructional tasks have an important role in fostering this learning. We introduce a learning sequence to approach the topic of integrals in secondary education to support students mathematical reasoning while participating in collaborative dialogue about the integral-as-accumulation-function. This is based on the notion of accumulation in general and the notion of accumulative distance function in particular. Through a case-study methodology we investigate how this approach elicits 11th grade students’ mathematical thinking and reasoning. The results show that the integral-as-accumulation-function has potential, since the notions of accumulation and accumulative function can provide a strong intuition for mathematical reasoning and engage students in mathematical dialogue. Implications of these results for task design and further research are discussed.

Learning to teach the M in/for STEM for social justice

Issues of global and local importance such as climate change and homelessness require critical perspectives across multiple disciplines including science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Our paper brings critical mathematics education and social justice alongside STEM education to explore experiences of learning to teach. We focus specifically on learning to teach through creating mathematics problems in/for STEM and social justice. As a collaborative research group we are from five countries with varied cultural backgrounds, teaching experiences, and academic pathways. Dialogue as method is used to examine experiences of creating problems through which students can interpret and transform the world. Data collected included 46 h of audio-recorded dialogue meetings, 26 developed problems, and 7 interviews with 12 students. Results indicate creating mathematics problems in/for STEM involved navigating between mathematics, social justice, and STEM across all education levels and is supported with critical dialogue across cultural perspectives, diverse experiences, and expertise. Challenges lived include questioning the content of mathematics and STEM, deepening our own expertise to draw upon local and global problem contexts, and interrogating who benefits from such problems. Our study highlights the need for continued collaborative dialogue that not only gathers educators across disciplines but also includes students as co-creators of mathematics problems that could change their relationship with the world.

Impacts of dyadic interaction on second language writing: A study with eight bilingual primary school students in Singapore

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of pair interaction on the process and product of collaborative writing through analysing Language Related Episodes (LREs) and students’ writing products. Four pairs (nine to 11 years old) represented four different patterns of interaction. The results show that the pattern of dyadic interaction influenced the quantity and quality of LREs and associated post-writing. When learners engaged in collaborative or expert/novice patterns of learning, they were likely to produce more LREs and attain higher quality in the post-writing. Both a novice learner and a passive learner benefitted from collaborative writing by watching how the other student wrote. However, students who showed a dominant role had the least improvement in the post-writing. The findings of the study suggest that the interaction patterns affect both the process of collaborative dialogue and second language learning itself.

Learning Korean honorifics through individual and collaborative writing tasks and written corrective feedback

Abstract To date, the majority of task-based instructed second language acquisition studies have investigated the effects of tasks on second language morphosyntactic development, and little attention has been paid to the effectiveness of dialogic tasks on the learning of pragmatics in classroom contexts (Plonsky, L. & Y. Kim. 2016. Task-based learner production: A substantive and methodological review. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 36. 73–97). The present study is a partial replication study of Taguchi and Kim (2016. Collaborative dialogue in learning pragmatics: Pragmatic-related episodes as an opportunity for learning request-making. Applied Linguistics 37. 416–437) and aims to compare learning outcomes between collaborative and individual task groups while written corrective feedback is provided. Thirty-two high beginner learners of Korean from two classes participated in this study. Each class was randomly assigned to either a collaborative or an individual group to complete e-mail writing tasks. In the collaborative group, students wrote e-mails with a partner, whereas the individual group wrote e-mails independently to introduce their professors during study abroad using four types of Korean honorifics. Both groups received indirect corrective feedback on honorifics used during task performance. Written description tests (WDT) were designed to investigate the short-term and long-term learning of Korean honorifics in line with the instructional tasks. Students’ responses on the WDT were analyzed in terms of the number of suppliance and accurate production of each target feature. Students’ responses to teacher feedback were analyzed using the following categories: resolved correctly, resolved incorrectly, and unresolved. The results showed that there was no significant difference in the production of target features during task performance when indirect WCF was provided to both conditions. Furthermore, both groups significantly outperformed in the immediate and delayed posttest than the pretest. However, the results found no difference in learning of Korean honorifics between the two groups.

How Is the Caregiver Doing? Capturing Caregivers’ Experiences With a Reflective Toolkit

BackgroundThis paper describes the Co-Care-KIT, a reflective toolkit designed to provide insights into the diverse experiences of home-based informal caregivers during the delivery of care to a relative or loved one.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to evaluate the toolkit, including a custom-designed journal, tools for photography-based experience sampling, and heart rate tracking, which enables caregivers to collect and reflect on their positive and negative daily experiences in situ.MethodsA 2-week field study with informal caregivers (N=7) was conducted to evaluate the Co-Care-KIT and to capture their daily personal emotional experiences. The collected data samples were analyzed and used for collaborative dialogue between the researcher and caregiver.ResultsThe results suggest that the toolkit (1) increased caregivers’ awareness of their own well-being through in situ reflection on their experiences; (2) empowered caregivers to share their identities and experiences as a caregiver within their social networks; (3) enabled the capturing of particularly positive experiences; and (4) provided caregivers reassurance with regards to their own mental health.ConclusionBy enabling capturing and collaborative reflection, the kit helped to gain a new understanding of caregivers’ day-to-day needs and emotional experiences.

Wiki-mediated collaboration and its association with L2 writing development: an exploratory study

Prior research has shown that EFL learners who wrote collaboratively with partners using wikis improved the content quality and language accuracy of their L2 individual writing more than students who wrote individually. Drawing on the dataset from Hsu and Lo's study, the current study explores the nature of the students’ collaborative dialogue that occurred during wiki collaborative writing and the potential link between wiki collaboration and development in individual L2 writing. The students, working in self-selected groups, collaboratively completed a writing task with two drafts via wikis. Wiki pages created by the students, including the comments, discussion and history modules, were analysed for the occurrence of content-, organization- and language-related episodes. The total number, focus and resolution of the episodes were tallied and analysed. Results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses showed that (1) students produced significantly more language-related episodes than content-related and organization- related ones, (2) organization-related episodes occurred the least frequently, (3) students were able to resolve the majority of the content-, organization-, and language-related issues successfully and (4) students demonstrated a preference to work with grammar over lexis during wiki-mediated collaborative writing process. The results are discussed in the light of Hsu and Lo's study. Theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed.

A Dialogue-Based Approach to Subjective Well-Being: Co-Interpreting the Meaning of Daily Experiences.

Different from statistically analyzed self-reports of Subjective Well-Being (SWB), we explored how dialogue engenders the meaning of SWB as constituted through an individual's daily experiences. A revised Day Reconstruction Method (DRM; Kahneman et al. 2004) was used to describe the participants' previous day episodically, followed by a semi-structured life world interview (Kvale 1996) for the explication through dialogue of those episodes. The results of qualitative analyses on the structure and contents of the discourse of the DRM and interviews with three participants highlighted the following: 1) the participants construed the meaning of daily experiences by organizing and weighting them in individualized ways; 2) the meaning of daily episodes emerged and was clarified in the process of collaborative dialogue in the interview as well as in the analyses, and was vividly expressed in particular protocol sequences; and 3) Kelly's (1955) notion of Personal Construct is applicable to make sense of individualized narratives as a form of Well-Being. We concluded that the subjectivity of SWB does not merely imply the first-person authority in charge of the evaluation in the questionnaires, but rather is understood as a construct that reveals the personal meaning of one's daily experiences. The emergent quality of this process is crucial for understanding the nature of subjectivity in SWB.

The trait-type dialectic: Opportunities, challenges, and constructive dialogue.

In their incisive and engaging commentaries Drs. Lilienfeld and Widiger make a number of cogent points regarding how personality pathology should be conceptualized and assessed, both arguing strongly that dimensional models are superior to categorical personality disorder frameworks. In this response, I describe areas of convergence and divergence between my perspective and those of my colleagues and argue that-current ascendance of dimensional models notwithstanding-the trait-type dialectic will continue into the future as empirical evidence and clinical experience illuminate previously unrecognized strengths and limitations of each approach. To foster productive collaboration and constructive dialogue, I offer suggestions regarding studies that allow for rigorous comparison of the construct validity and clinical utility of categorical and dimensional perspectives on personality pathology, in the laboratory and in vivo. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The art of mediation through ‘the universe’ − A dialogue between an engineer and a designer at CERN

Over the centuries, collaborative research between artists/designers and scientists/engineers has been an ambition. Yet, precisely how to make this successful still remains an enduring question. A creative approach that can unite art, design, science, and engineering is needed as a framework for effective collaborations. Assuming that the notion of ‘the universe’ in which we live is a concept that all humans can share, this paper considers how the idea of ‘the universe’ can connect the experts between and across different disciplines. This notion was developed through collaborative dialogue between an engineer at CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) and a designer at HEAD – Genève (Haute école d'art et de design – Genève), with the author acting as a mediator – forming bridges between these two main collaborators. This mediated dialogue began with fundamental questions about the universe: “what are the core principles of the universe?”; “how do we perceive the universe?”; or, even “what is a meaning of life in this universe?”. This dialogue created a transformation of our usual perspectives, and it opened up our usual, narrow ways of viewing the world – in other words, collaborators developed ways of looking at the world from a cosmic perspective. The first, three-month-long, stage of the project was intended as a precursor to future collaborations. The project took place at the R&D platform at CERN called IdeaSquare. During the period of the project, the engineer and the designer together created a proposal for a new artistic practice in public, from scratch, with mediated dialogue as the basic means of a project evolution. The developed proposal was for the creation of a Cosmic Table – a public installation in which visitors could feel a connection between the universe and other living beings. A working prototype was experimentally presented at CERN to test its design and functions. Followed by this prototype, it was developed to install in a public space at CineGlobe, a film festival at CERN. Through the mediated dialogue, this paper explores the possibility of ‘the universe’ as a mutually acceptable idea established through mediation among experts, and examines how this might provoke diverse forms of public installation that touch on the essence of the universe.

Language-related episodes and learner proficiency during collaborative dialogue in CLIL

Research on form focused instruction has provided support for the use of collaborative tasks in which learners focus their attention on formal aspects of language and consciously reflect on their own language use (i.e. produce language-related episodes or LREs). A strand of research on LREs in different educational contexts examines the effect of learner-internal factors, such as target language proficiency, on the amount, type and resolution of LREs. However, little is known about whether learners in content-and-language-integrated-learning (CLIL) programmes pay attention to formal aspects of language and much less about the relationship between learner proficiency and LREs. Therefore, this study investigates how learner proficiency affected the amount, type (lexical or grammatical) and outcome (correct, incorrect or unresolved) of LREs involving the English 3rd person singular marker –s produced during a dictogloss task by 12 pairs of adolescent EFL learners from a CLIL classroom. The findings revealed that there was a positive correlation between the number of LREs involving the target form and the learners’ proficiency. Positive correlations were also found between learner proficiency and correctly resolved grammatical LREs involving 3rd person singular forms.

A case study on chat-mediated collaborative dialogue in L2 listening comprehension

Collaborative dialogue has been investigated in relation to language forms, vocabulary, and sentence-level writing but little attention has been given to its potential contribution to the development of L2 listening comprehension skills. This case study explores the features and dynamics of chat-mediated collaborative dialogue in a joint problem-solving process of L2 listening comprehension, drawing on a socio-cultural theoretical framework. Main data sources include chat-logs of online learner interaction saved in class online boards and follow-up individual stimulated recall interviews over 9 weeks. The findings indicate that learner-initiated text-based collaborative dialogue has a positive effect on the problem-solving process of L2 listening comprehension. Idiosyncratic patterns of multilateral interaction and role-taking prevailed in this study. Salient features that emerged in collaborative dialogue included co-construction and dialectic co-construction of comprehension, collective and emotional scaffolding for problem-solving and rapport-building, establishment of intersubjectivity, and attempts for apprenticeship. The findings have implications for the development of a collaborative L2 listening pedagogy that can foster collaborative autonomy for L2 listeners through expanded learning opportunities beyond the classroom enabled by the support of easily accessible interactive communication technology.

AN INTERPRETATIVE MODEL OF KEY HEURISTICS THAT PROMOTE COLLABORATIVE DIALOGUE AMONG ONLINE LEARNERS

One of the more challenging aspects of teaching online is promoting content-focused, collaborative dialogue among students. How do we move discussants beyond initial brainstorming toward more focused, deepened dialogue that clearly supports a course’s instructional goals? Garrison and Anderson’s framework for communities of inquiry illuminates the critical interplay among social presence, cognitive presence and teaching presence for learning in asynchronous, online courses. This paper describes aspects of teaching presence in Virtual High School™ classes: explicit teaching of how to engage in collaborative dialogue; collaborative activity designs and evaluation rubrics; and feedback that, supported by attention to maintaining social presence, helped to promote substantive, collaborative dialogue orcognitive presence.

Teaching a Second Language: How Multi-Lingual Collaboration and Munby’s ‘Needs and Needs Analysis’ Work

This paper deals with the teaching and learning process of English as a second language, especially in the context of Bangladesh where students in any academic institutions like colleges or universities are taught and instructed by teachers supposedly trained and skilled in teaching English as Foreign Language (EFL). It explores how an EFL teacher—using English as the primary mode of instruction—might deploy a methodological combination, where teacher transmission and student collaboration can be used as an effective method to teach this particular content-based subject to non-native English speakers. This methodological procedure is arguably influenced by the teacher’s EFL background having an undeniable effect on students’ input in the lesson, resulting in a syllabus which integrates students’ beliefs as well as experiences regarding the use of language in society and deploying a multilingual collaboration among the students in the lectures themselves. Such a version of traditional lecturing and student interaction, which is termed here as “collaborative dialogue”, has, to some degree, firstly succeeded in raising the general class level of comprehension and, secondly yet more significantly, lowering the general anxieties about interaction in class. Furthermore, it has also resulted in pooling student input about language use to create a rich, contrastive perspective on sociolinguistic topics.