Abstracts - Earli

commonly the centre of focus in research. This paper has two foci and reports findings from anethnographic study of the five special state schools for the deaf and hard-of-hearing in Sweden.These schools have remained segregated since their inception nearly 200 years ago. This is uniquesince their segregated organisation has been argued for in different ways during the radical shiftsvis-à-vis communication "methods" related to literacy and normalcy that deaf education haswitnessed since the end of the 19th century. This paper will firstly, at a macro level, explore howdiversity has been conceptualised and operationalised through a sociohistorical analysis of nationalcurricula that have guided these particular school settings. Secondly, the paper will make anattempt to understand aspects of heterogeneity in the categories of pupils and adults who aremembers of these schools at the beginning of this century. Thus the following types of questionswill be focused: How are membership categories operationalised? What kinds of communities areco-constructed in these special school arenas? How is heterogeneity conceptualised and attendedto in everyday life in the primary grades of these schools? What is the nature of classroomactivities, communication and social interaction in these grades? The empirical data comprises offield notes and videotaped material of mundane interaction inside and outside classrooms ofgrades 2, 3 and 4 in these state schools, informal discussions with adults and children in thesearenas, texts used and (re)produced in the classrooms, and local and national policy texts withspecial relevance to these schools.F 529 August 2007 17:00 - 18:20Room: 4.95Paper SessionScience educationChair:Philip Adey, Kings College London, United Kingdom"I am right and you are wrong!" - Analysing the management of disagreement and conflict incollaborative learningAnniken Furberg, University Of Oslo, InterMedia, NorwayHans Christian Arnseth, Network for IT-Research & Competence in Education, NorwayThis study examines the structures and functions of disagreements in collaborative activities inscience education. The empirical setting is a project where secondary school students and theirteacher used the web-based science program Viten.no. We report on interaction analysis of onesequence of student talk where their contradictory accounts of the relationship between DNA,proteins and genes, are topicalized in their talk. We analyse in detail how they engage inargumentation; how they make claims, provide accounts for their claims and resolve or fail toresolve disagreements and misunderstandings. Our findings indicate that the disagreementbetween the students is not only about how to make meaning of the subject matter, but also aprocess where identity and validation of knowledge is at stake. Further, the interaction between thestudents and the teacher differs from an IRF-structure often embedded in such interactions. Theteacher avoids validating the students’ claims. As a consequence, the students are madeaccountable for validating each others claims. The students deal with this situation by holdingViten.no as the main source of evidence for validating their opposing claims. Another finding isthat the web based learning resource structures the students’ argumentation despite of not being– 324 –