Learning Across Sites: New tools, infrastructures and practices - Earli

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174 H. Muukkonen et al.
We are applying ideas of object- orientedness from activity theory more generally
in order to build a framework where collaborative object- oriented inquiry is
emphasized as a potential design principle of educational practice. A key characteristic
present in various models describing knowledge creation appears to be that
collaboration is organized around long- term efforts for developing shared, tangible
objects such as articles, models, and practices. It can be maintained that all human
activity is object- oriented, although this object may take very different forms when
examined at different levels of activity (see also Kaptelinin, 2005). Accordingly,
individual students’ activities are also focused on some objects, for example, writing
an essay for a course. Collective activity system have their own objects of
activity, for example, in the educational system to produce educated students for
professional life. We are, however, concentrating on those “trialogical” processes
in deliberately arranged educational settings where students are collaboratively
developing some shared artifacts or practices (Paavola & Hakkarainen, 2005).
So, for us here, object- oriented inquiry means that students’ work is organized
for developing together some concrete outcomes during the course as a result of
sustained inquiry process. We think that dialogical thinking skills, as well as individualistic
working practices, are central elements of advanced learning paradigm
(Wegerif, 2006), but inquiry- learning should also focus on those ways that students’
activities are organized for collaboratively modifying and making something
tangible together. Therefore, the notion of “shared object” (object basically in a
thing- like sense) has a more prominent place than before. Further, the emphasis
on modifying a shared object together can be distinguished from merely dealing
with a common artifact which is shared (e.g. a presentation) by participants. We
argue that this focus has not been explicit in most previous educational practices
or studies concerning collaborative learning.
Taken back to educational practices, making such emphasis naturally leads
to numerous questions about whether such practices are feasible or what the
knowledge- creation approach actually gives to students and teachers, or demands
from them. We suggest that by addressing together the aspects of individuals,
small groups, and, thirdly, objects of activity in educational settings, we may gain
novel understanding of students’ and teachers’ practices. In short, we are in search
of educational practices that support the development of what we call metaskills
of collaborative object- oriented inquiry, although we acknowledge that using the
term “meta” is in many ways problematic. Metaskills of collaborative inquiry
(Muukkonen & Lakkala, 2009) are proposed to address commitment to collective,
object- oriented, and prolonged inquiry efforts, which are not reducible to individual
productions. Furthermore, it means those skills that students must develop
for monitoring, evaluating, and coordinating efforts of knowledge advancement.
In a sense, these skills are triggered by practices where students are responsible for
coordinating and directing their activities over different aspects of inquiry: own
individual efforts, effective collaboration in a group, and the progression and high
quality of the knowledge objects they are developing.