Abstracts - Earli

collaborative learning have demonstrated that collaboration challenges learners cognitively,motivationally and emotionally during the learning process. Therefore, individuals need toregulate their own learning, as well as, groups’ joint learning processes. Cognitive challenges ofcollaboration are particularly focused on learners’ skills to construct knowledge together; makeown thinking visible and interpret others’ thinking. Studies of knowledge representations haveexplored how different knowledge representations can support individuals thinking and problemsolving activities. However, so far pictorial knowledge representations as a stimulant forstructuring and supporting regulation of collaboration by visualising individuals’ thinking andcollaborative negotiation processes have attained only a little attention. The reported study was apart of teacher students’ (N=20) studies of educational technology. In this design experiment, aproblem oriented learning task and different cognitive tools, e.g. open source software (weblogand wikispace) as well as computers and mobile phones were used. The data collection periodlasted three months, and during that time students’ collaborative meaning making processes withpictorial knowledge representations were videotaped and all written data to the technology toolswere collected. A stimulated recall interview captured students’ immediate reflections of thelearning situation. The results of the study indicates that pictorial knowledge representations canenhance collaborative knowledge construction by making thinking more visible, by making groupprocesses more visible and by supporting various modes of interaction, and thus, supportregulation of collaboration.I 2230 August 2007 14:30 - 16:30Room: 3.67 BékésySymposiumImproving readingChair: Wassilis Kassis, University of Basel, SwitzerlandOrganiser: Wassilis Kassis, University of Basel, SwitzerlandDiscussant: Gudrun Ziegler, University of Luxembourg, LuxembourgThe five contributors present recent research studies which highlight relevant empirical results inthe field of reading competence. The presentations and the discussion will concentrate onimportant aspects of reading socialization which are fundamental in the educational policy andteaching practice. In the process of reading socialization there is relatively little known about theoverall interplay of social and educational family variables and variables of personality, genderand school. Papers draw also conclusions from exploratory studies, bringing together classroominteractional data of different linguistically specific settings (1. u. 2. paper), allowing for a generalperspective on conditions and potentials for learning languages within the primary classroom. The3. paper contributes that there are few investigations, which concentrate on the impact of familybackground on learning motivation. Presumably, disadvantaged children’s motivation is low, butthere is no empirical evidence. On the basis of hypotheses, the paper investigates the motives ofmastery motives, reading self-concept, math self-concept, desire of positive feedback for learning,and the practical value of learning. The next paper focuses the intervention in school settings forimproving reading. Following the results of PISA 2000 and 2003 on reading literacy, which haveproved the correlation of low reading abilities and social background, the study is focusing theeffectivenes of teaching methods for children and adolescents of different social groups. The– 529 –