EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Chapter 15 page 354

Samantha: And I don’t think whales do usually
Brian: Um, yeah, some do.
Samantha: No
Liana: No, only the killer whale has it.
Toscan: The blue whale has one.
[general laughter]

...
Toscan: The blue whale has a teeny one.
Brian: Yep, it’s like that [shows size with
gesture, seems absurdly small]
Toscan: It has a teeny one, at the back of the fin,
so the blue WHALE could be a dolphin.
Samantha: [laughs]

Å Samantha argues that whales don’t have dorsal fins.

Å Brian disagrees.

Å Liana partly agrees, but qualifies her agreement.

Å Toscan critiques the claim that whales lack dorsal fins

by citing the blue whale.

Å Samantha’s laughter (supported by her later

comments) indicates that she realizes that blue whales

can’t be dolphins, so that dorsal fins cannot distinguish

between dolphins and whales. Thus, Toscan’s critique

has been effective.

In this group conversation, by critiquing each others’ ideas, the students arrive at the realization that what
the Marine World trainer told them is not correct. This was a highly productive discussion that led them to
new insights about their topic of study.
An example of co-constructing ideas can be found in this example of thirteen year olds discussing
Steinbeck’s The Pearl in a small group (Barnes & Todd, 1977)

David: Well I, the best part I like were, when,
when he went looking for the pearl
down isn’t sea, did you?
Marianne: Yeah, it should have ... had a bit more
description about the actual diving...
Because if, if he’s supposed to be a diver
he hasn’t spent much time diving has
he?
David: He just went down and it were there
waiting for him, wasn’t it?

Marianne: He should have had to search for it first.
Barbara: It seems a bit funny that as soon as baby
gets hurt....
Marianne: That he should find the pearl.

Å Presents an initial idea

Å Takes up the topic of looking for the pearl and

moves it in a new direction.

Å Takes up Marianne’s new direction and adds that it

was odd that, being inexperience at diving, he found the

pearl right away.

Å Makes David’s last statement more explicit.

Å Builds on the theme of being improbably lucky by

noticing another very improbably lucky event

Å Completes Barbara’s idea when Barbara stops short

The students build on each others’ comments, developing turn by turn a more sophisticated understanding
of this episode in the novel.

Re-explaining or applying ideas. One form of uptake that we have not yet discussed is for students
to re-explain ideas or to apply the ideas that they have heard. For instance, if a student in a group hears an
explanation of how to do a math problem, the student can immediately re-explain it to herself, or she can
immediately apply the idea to another problem. In her work on explanations in math classes, Webb and her
colleagues (1995) found that hearing an explanation helped students only if the students who received
explanations responded in one of the following ways:

1. The student restated the explanation in their own words.


2. The student reworked the problem or part of the problem after having heard the explanation.


3. The student applied the explanation to the next problem.
   In contrast, students tended not to learn from explanations if they responded in any of the following ways:


4. The student just acknowledged the help received (“OK. OK. I got it.”).