Abstracts - Earli

Co-regulation of students’ writing activity in the classroom.Linda Allal, University of Geneva, SwitzerlandIncreasing importance has been given in recent years to situating self-regulation in social andinstructional contexts. In our conceptual framework, the "co-regulation" of learning activitiesresults from the interplay between contextual factors (affordances of the learning situation,teacher-student interactions, peer interactions, tools embedded in the situation) and processes ofself-regulation in which learners engage. The study presented here examines the relations betweenregulations linked to classroom interactions and students’ self-regulations during an activity of textproduction and revision. The data concern a writing activity carried out in three fifth-grade classesand then repeated, a year later, in the same classes in sixth grade. A qualitative analysis of theinteractions in each class is used to interpret between-class differences on several quantitativeindicators of students’ transformations of their texts (as shown by repeated measures ANOVA). Inaddition, the dialectical character of co-regulation is illustrated by a case study of a student whoencounters difficulties with writing; it is shown how she contributes to classroom interactions, inwhole-class and in dyadic settings, and how these interactions influence, in return, her way ofregulating her writing activity.K 1631 August 2007 08:30 - 10:30Room: 0.89 JedlikSymposiumBuilding knowledge in a community of learnersChair: Jos Beishuizen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, NetherlandsChair: Mireia Montane Tuca, Ministry of Education, Catalunya, SpainOrganiser: Jos Beishuizen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, NetherlandsDiscussant: Marlene Scardamalia, Ontario Institute for the Study of Education, CanadaThe concept of "community of learners" was coined by Ann Brown and Joseph Campione. In acommunity of learners students are considered as partners in the process of knowledgedevelopment by inquiry learning. Students are immersed in a culture of collaboratively conductingresearch and sharing empirical findings . Various related perspectives have been developed, likethe concept of "knowledge building communities", introduced by Carl Bereiter and MarleneScardamalia. Within the socio-cultural tradition, Bert van Oers elaborated the concept ofdevelopmental education, in which the coherent development of students’ cognitive, affective andpsychomotor capacities is emphasized, taking the concept of the zone of proximal development asan educational perspective. These theoretical conceptions and practical orientations shed furtherlight on the way students collaboratively with fellow students, teachers and other experts (likeresearchers) build knowledge in a game or inquiry learning setting. This symposium aims tocompare the various concepts by discussing empirical and theoretical contributions from each ofthe three aforementioned perspectives. An elaboration on five characteristics of knowledgebuilding will be followed by a presentation of two projects in Dutch classrooms in which theconcepts of the community of learners and of developmental education have been put to theempirical test. Consequenses of these findings of the education and professional development ofteachers will discussed.– 620 –