Abstracts - Earli

“Sofia doesn’t speak during team work.” Using discourse analysis as a tool for the transformationof peer group interactions in an elementary multicultural science classroom.Panagiotis Piliouras, University of Athens, GreeceKaterina Plakitsi, University of Ioannina, GreecePanagiotis Kokkotas, University of Athens, GreeceThis study deals with cultural diversity in the light of a wider on going action research programusing different approaches and tools. It refers to a "developmental work research" program(Engestrßm, 1996) that concerns the gradual transformation of the nature and type of peer groupinteractions to more collaborative inquiry conditions in an elementary multicultural scienceclassroom. The program had as an explicit objective to transform peer group interactions to moreinquiry ones. A second objective was to study the role of cultural diversity in those collaborativeinquiry settings. The under controlled hypothesis of the wider program is that collaborative inquiryin school science classrooms could function as a bridge between the different cultures in theclassroom. In order to accomplish collaborative inquiry conditions in classroom we gave chance toteachers and students to analyze their own talk, using appropriate simplified discourse tools in theformat of worksheets. We adopt the sociocultural driven position that the learning process can beviewed as appropriation-transformation through participation in gradually evolving discourses andpractices (Rogoff, 2003). To accomplish this choice we should seek for a collaborative inquiry innature (e.g. Wells, 1999) and oriented towards discourse (e.g. Hicks 1996) learning environment.We know that a literature review reveals that social interactions in collaborative activities do notalways create effective learning processes (e.g. Hogan, 1999). But, we believe that science in theclassroom could be a mean to overcome cultural diversity. School science classroom settingspromote communication in many ways and give equal chances for the different cultures tocontribute to the inquiry process. Last years, under the constructivist approach to learning andinstruction, became clear to all science educators that children from all cultures have the sameideas on natural phenomena (Driver et al 1989) and share the same questions about them.The effect of minority language courses on first and second language acquisitionEdina Caprez-Krompák, University of Zurich, SwitzerlandThis paper presents the longitudinal research project concerning the effect of minority languagecourses on first (L1) and second language (L2) task performance in primary schools in Switzerland(Caprez-Krompàk & Selimi, 2006). The study is based on the interdependence hypothesis of firstand second language (Cummins, 1984), which says that cognitive and academic development ofL1 has a positive affect on L2 for academic purposes and vice versa. However, a certain academiclevel of L1 must be reached to prevent facing cognitive and academic difficulties in L2 (thresholdhypotheses, Cummins, 1984). The effectiveness of minority language courses is investigated bychoosing a quasi-experimental design, including an experimental group (with minority languagecourses) und a control group (without minority language courses). This longitudinal study wasaimed to answer the following questions: are there any differences in first (Albanian/Turkish) andsecond language (German) competences of minority children who participate in minority languageclasses (experimental group) in comparison to those who do not (control group)? How do differenttypes of motivation influence the language performance? Which socio-demographic(socioeconomic status of family (SES) and gender) have an impact on language performance?Does self-assessment of language proficiency predict language performance in the first and thesecond language? The first data was collected in 2005 and the second in 2006. In total, theexperimental group consisted of 83 Albanian and 54 Turkish minority pupils and the control groupconsisted of 46 Albanian and 12 Turkish school children.Firstly, we expect that attending a– 733 –