In this study we explore how reflective practices function in the process of collaborative writing of primary school students, performing writing tasks in the context of inquiry learning. Previous research has established that reflecting on the writing process and use of metalanguage are significant for developing writing proficiency. The Conversation Analysis-informed exploration displayed different practices. First, students reflect on appropriateness, in terms of redundancy, relevance and style, when accounting for the rejection of a proposal. Second, students reflect on correctness of spelling, punctuation and grammar, which becomes observable in recruitments, instructions and corrections. The findings suggest that students share a strong orientation to certain writing norms that are merely made relevant in a responsive manner.
IntroductionCollaborative writing has shown to be beneficial for developing writing proficiency of individual students. Writing in small groups or dyads helps learners to emulate and learn from each other's writing and regulation processes, may stimulate conceptual learning, and encourages critical reflection and a heightened sense of audience awareness (Klein, 2014;Nykopp, Marttunen, & Laurinen, 2014; van Steendam, 2016). Hence, joint writing tasks may stimulate the progression from a novice to a skilled writer, which has been characterized by Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) as the transition from a knowledge-telling to a knowledge-transforming approach to writing: "the development of the ability to write […] as involving moving the student from a natural oral conversationalist to a communicator who could generate a largely shared meaning in the absence of immediate audience" (Parr & Wilkinson, 2016, 217). The writing process of a skillful writer, can be characterized as a form of knowledge transforming, solving conceptual, metacognitive and rhetorical problems (
The nature and function of proposals in collaborative writing of primary school students was studied from a sociocultural, interactional perspective, using data from 33 writing events in the context of inquiry learning. Five main targets of proposals were identified: content, procedure, translation, text structure and layout. We demonstrate how proposals are designed in different declarative and interrogative constructions. The objective of a proposal appears to be related to both the syntactical design, and the ways in which participants respond to proposals. Proposals for content and translation generate extensive discourse, in contrast to procedural proposals. Writing down the agreed words or sentences occurs in various sequential positions and consequently performs a different function in the joint construction of text. The results enhance our understanding of how primary school students collaboratively write texts.
This paper discusses how primary school students, who are writing together in the context of inquiry learning, explicitly orient to knowing of oneself and others within the peer group. Using Conversation Analysis, we disclose the conversational functions of assertions holding 'I know', 'you know' and 'we know'. First, students position themselves as knowledgeable, to (i) express a preannouncement of a proposal, (ii) respond to a request for information and (iii) reinforce an assertion with use of an evidential. Second, students claim equal epistemic access, as a response to an action that conveys epistemic authority of a peer. Third, students indicate shared knowledge with other participants, to (i) pursue agreement, (ii) check the epistemic status of a co-participant, (iii) reject a proposal for grounds of relevance and (iv) mark shared, newfound knowledge. The different practices are discussed in terms of epistemics in conversation and dialogic writing.
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