Abstracts - Earli

What do they mean to and for students and practitioners? What do they look like in practice? Howare they evaluated? What assessment instruments need to be privileged? How are quality ofpreparation and quality of performance assessed? My research methods include scheduled,standardized interviews and spontaneous interviews, which have been conducted at the Universityde Montraal, where I have been involved in teacher training for over fifteen years. My theoreticalframework draws on Vygotsky’s social activity theory (Vygotsky, 1930). I also consider the workof authors such as Lave and Wenger (1991), who shed light on the progressive construction ofteacher identity generated in a social and collective, rather than individual, paradigm.Learning to communicate: the emergence of autoregulatory speech in children’s messageformulationConchi San Martin Martinez, Facultad Psicologia. Universidad Barcelona, SpainMaria Isabel Navarro Ruiz, Blanquerna. Universitat Ramon Llull, SpainCarmen Oliver, Facultad de Pedagogia. Universidad Barcelona, SpainIn the Vygotskian theses of the internalization of social speech as a key point in the emergence ofverbal thought, one of the most important aspects is what is known as private speech: that is,verbal productions that seem to regulate and guide the action underway (Vygotsky, 1934/1987).Traditionally, this process was studied with children engaged in tasks in non-communicativecontexts. However, an approach of this kind may not account for a key point in Vygotskian theory:the emergence of private speech associated with requests for help from other persons present. Weaimed to study the progressive differentiation between autoregulatory and heteroregulatoryutterances through an analysis of private speech in a communicative situation in which childrenwere asked to communicate unambiguously a series of objects. In a longitudinal study weobserved ten pairs of boys and girls at 4, 6 and 8 years in the presence of an adult, engaged in areferential communication task. Among our results, we found that at 6 and 8 years there is agreater sensitivity to communicative ambiguity, resulting in a greater presence of autoregulatoryforms. Similarly, we found that the sources of cognitive challenge were not only defined in thedifficulty of the referent per se, but are clearly related to the intervention of the other person.Private speech seems to be a useful tool to understand the links between metacognition andchildren’s collaborative processes. Therefore, we emphasize the importance of relocating the studyof private speech in the context of a task under way, and advocate the use of methodologies anddata analyses that allow us to understand these processes in all their complexity.Potentials for learning or problems in students understandingAnna-Karin Carstensen, School of Engineering, Jönköping University, SwedenJonte Bernhard, Eng. Ed. Res. Group, ITN, Linköping University, SwedenAs the title – Potentials for Learning or Problems in Students Understanding – suggests, wepropose that there is a need for the two becoming distinguished analytical categories in research ineducation within the disciplines. The research in Science education has for a long time dealt withmisconceptions of single concepts, although one of the common objectives in many subjects is "tolearn relationships". The research on threshold concepts is dealing with concepts that are related,and is thus opening up a new dimension of the research on understanding. Although many of thestudies on threshold concepts also deal with how to make learning possible, there is a risk thatstudies end when the problems are found. We suggest that a clearer differentiation between"problems" and "potentials for learning" is made. Our proposal is to distinguish between ways toidentify threshold concepts and ways to identify what needs to be addressed in order to open uplearning spaces. We propose the term ‘key concepts’ for those concepts that open up the ‘portal’.– 219 –