THE DYNAMICS OF NON-CONVERGENT
LEARNING WITH A CONFLICTING OTHER:
INTERNALLY PERSUASIVE DISCOURSE AS A
FRAMEWORK FOR ARTICULATING
SUCCESSFUL COLLABORATIVE LEARNING
Yifat Ben-David Kolikant
School of Education
Sarah Pollack
Melton Center for
Jewish Education
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Exeter, June, 2015
THE NECESSITY OF A DIALOGICAL
CONCEPTUALIZATION: WHY? WHAT FOR?
Globalization, digitalism, & multicultural societies
Frequent encounters with different Others
Learning potential –
enriched by means
of the Other
threats to local cultures –
might cause people to
become entranced in the
local and the familiar
School can and should prepare students for these encounters
The convergence metaphor
• The (CS)CL literature defines fruitful collaborative
learning in terms “convergence”:
• In this symposium we will use the term ‘cognitive convergence’ to
encompass various concepts that have been used to explain the
important processes underlying successful collaboration, such as
intersubjectivity, co-construction, knowledge convergence, common
ground, joint problem space, and transactive reasoning. (Teasly, et al.,
2008)
• Students’ diversity is a good starting point, a means to increase the
depth of learning in collaborative settings, a stimulation for a vivid
discussion, but in the end they have to converge
Jeong &
Chi, 2007
Processes of convergence: “joint
exploration”
• Processes in which all group members unite in the effort to increase their shared
understanding (Roschelle & Teasly, 1995; Schwartz, 1995).
Students’
argumentative
background (e.g.,
• Dispute is viewed as less promising in terms of successful collaborative learning
modern schooling)
• When confronted with an opposing claim, one can:
also influences their
Disputative discourse
deliberative or exploratory
behavior in
discourse (Mercer,
2000)
collaborative
Goal is to
persuade, to defend a certain
to arrive at a coherent,
consensual
activities
•
(a) integration-oriented consensus
• and (b) conflict-oriented consensus.
Therefore
viewpoint and undermine
alternatives.
explanation through weighing the
various pieces of evidence.
students might limit their discursive
actions to the two following
responses:
Individuals are likelier to allow
themselves the full range of the
above responses.
(1) dismiss counter-arguments and
maintain their position;
(2) agree with counterarguments locally,
but deflect their impact by turning to
other claims in support of their
position;
(3) integrate counterarguments by
qualifying or adjusting their position; or,
(4) accept counterarguments and abandon
their position
(Felton, Garcia-Mila, and Gilabert, 2009
The limited power of the convergence
metaphor
Convergence aligns with
Traditional information-focused
agenda - students converge
towards the school-approved body
of knowledge throughout a process
of confronting alternative
conceptions and explanations.
Paradigmatic mode of thought and
the scientific conventions that
require one to produce a theory
coherent with all evidence and
responsive to alternative
explanations, coming closer and
closer to the objective truth(Bruner,
1996; Parker, 2006).
However…
Life-long learning is about ongoing
refinement of one’s knowledge with
and from others, regardless of
whether they share the same goals
or not, or whether the process would
eventually result in increased overlap
in the knowledge of the people
involved in it.
Narrative mode of - underlying
reasoning and epistemological
practices associated with the
Humanities.
The limited power of the convergence
metaphor
• The educational goals associated with the Humanities: to
humanize students, to assist them in re-examining how
they perceive themselves and others and in becoming
aware of the limitations of their understanding of the world
(Wineburg, 2001).
• Successful collaboration in this context might simply lead
to one’s deeper understanding of the text and better
understanding of other people and their worldview. (Parker,
2006).
• Multiple narratives and interpretations are legitimate
• Two historians, working with the same source materials and using
the same methods, might reach different yet legitimate and
reasonable interpretations of the same past events, (for an example,
see Wertsch and Poleman, 2001).
Internally Persuasive Discourse
IPD -“a dialogic regime of the participants’ testing ideas and
searching for the boundaries of personally-vested truth.”
(Matusov & von Duyke, 2010, p. 174)
Such a process can bring participants “to transcend their
ontological circumstances” (Matusov, 2009, p. 208).
The Other - “[i]n collaboration, participants need each other not
simply because they help each other accomplish some
common goals that, otherwise, they could not accomplish on
their own, but because they define a dialogic agency in each
other” (Matusov, 2001, p.397)
The ideological nature of language
• People from different groups may use different terminologies to create
historical representations (narratives) of the same events.
• A speaker always invokes a social language and genre when
producing an utterance, depends on our perception of the situation and
our affiliation
• Social language - “a discourse peculiar to a specific stratum of society”
(Bakhtin, 1981, p.430).
• Social languages differ from one another not only in terms of vocabulary but
also in terms of forms of expression and manifestation of intent (Bakhtin,
1986).
• A speech genre is defined as situation-dependent discourse (e.g., salon
conversations, Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) classroom discourse).
• These languages and genres shape what the speaker can say, but at
the same time can be shaped and changed a dialogue with the Other.
An IPD-oriented pedagogical model: the
“DOING HISTORY TOGETHER” PROJECT
Jewish Pair (JP)
1st (dyad)
encounter
2nd
(interim)
encounter
Arab Pair (AG)
Reading review articles
Reading review articles
Writing joint account
Writing joint account
Review AG account
Salwa
3st (triad)
encounter
Inter-ethnic foursomes(G)
Wiki environment , school commitment
?
Research goals: what learning occurred?
By what process(es)?
Interlaced Roots Doing History Together
Participants 12 graduate
students
104 Israeli Jewish and
Israeli Arab/Palestinian
post-primary students
sources
-Individual and
pair essays
-Reflections
Transcripts of einteraction
-Pair essays, foursomes
essays
-The e-discussions
transcripts. (26 in total)
Analysis
-thematic analysis tri-phasic discourse
analysis and historical
A thematic comparison between the essays
Topic
Theme
Joint essays Others
(n= 16)
AP JP
The Western
agent’s policy
1. Discriminative policy: the support of the Zionists at the
expense of the Arabs in order to gain control in the area
2. Balanced policy. Promoting both sides’ interests
6
1
40%
7%
3
10
20%
The
causes/circum
stances for the
Arabs’
objections
3. Unjust. The Arabs resisted the discrimination against
them / the West deceived/broke their promise to establish a
state for the Arabs.
4. non-pregmatism. The Arabs resisted the British/UN
policy because they resisted the concept of dividing the
territory.
The
5. Promoting Jewish goals. The Jews accepted the policy
causes/circum because it promoted their interests.
stances for the
6. Compromise. The Jews agreed to compromise (on
Jews’
what was previously promised by the British) due to
acceptances
concerns that Britain/the West would withdraw its support
14
94%
1
6%
12
80%
6
40%
(n= 10)
G
AP
5 4 40%
33%
5 1 10%
7
5
9
0
87% 33% 0%
1
5
9
90%
13% 47% 90%
13
1
10%
67% 33%
2
JP
7
0
0%
9
90%
1
7% 33% 70% 10%
14
9
2
10
93% 60% 20% 100%
Results: viewpoints on the Arab historical
agent (Churchill’s White paper ,1922)
AP's essay
JP's essay
Group essay
The response of
the Arabs side are
negative. They
were angry
because their lands
were taken from
them
The Arab population
did not agree with
the white book
because they
interpreted the
promises made in the
white book [to the
Jews?] exaggeratedly
The Arab population
did not agree with the
White book because it
perceived it as the
beginning of the
process of taking their
lands [from them]
The narratives
B
B
J
B
J
A
AP
J
A
JP
A
Q
Joint essays: mosaic
• (a) composed of themes that had originally appeared
in the pairs’ essays,
• (b) did not contradict either of the in-group historical
(meta-)narratives
• and yet, (c) included less moral judgment, and
• (d) reflected a more complicated, multi-dimensional
view regarding the historical processes and the
interrelationships among the historical agents who
were active in these processes, in comparison to the
pairs' essays.
“Double
construct”, a
settlement
(Kelman, 2010)
Discussion type
N Episode type average (SD)
nonTotal
Organiz Elabora
elaborat historic
ational tive
ive
al
Social
Elaborative
Discussions:
16
2.25
(1.06)
3.00
(1.03)
1.69
(0.48)
2.63
(0.89)
2
3
3
1.5
2.5
4.36
14
2.14
3
1.71
2.64
4.35
10
0.80
(0.79)
0.30
(0.67)
0.00
(0.00)
3.70
(0.67)
3.70
(0.67)
3. Cycles of
Dispute
8
0.625
0
0
3.875
3.875
4. Diluted voice
2
1.5
1.5
0
3
3
1.Joint
exploration
2. Fission
Non-elaborative
Discussions:
4.3
(1.14)
Two dynamics of elaborative
discussions
• In both, the opportunity for elaboration emerged when the Other
recognized a flaw (weakness) in one’s argument
Participants understood the
utterances as belonging to the
genre of collaborative inquiry,
rather than to the disputatious
genre.
the question became a matter
for joint exploration.
The new knowledge
collaboratively created as a result
was recognized by the
discussants as group knowledge

the genre remained disputatious.
The challenges were aimed at and
perceived as undermining the
arguments of the opposing pair, rather
than presenting opportunities for
group inquiry.
As such, the responsibility for
addressing them remained solely in
the hands of the “attacked” pair.
The ensuing breakthrough in
understanding the event was
therefore a within-pair affair, rather
than a shared process.






JP: But the White Paper did not indicate that your
lands would be taken.
AP: So what did it indicate?
JP: That we will continue with the Balfour
Declaration. Which says that a “Jewish home” will
be established here…It [the White Paper] doesn’t
necessarily mean that your lands will be taken…
AP: No, it [the White Paper] did not indicate it
[that lands will be taken] but it took [the lands].
JP: I don’t understand. The White paper cannot
take lands. It was an announcement.
• AP: So where did the Jews live in this country [?] On Arab lands.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Right [?]. So, they [Jews] took the lands from them [Arabs]
JP: The White book was [issued] in 1922.
AP: Yes. And there was also a [Jewish] immigration in this year.
Right [?]
JP: At that period the lands that Jews took were [bought] with
money…Therefore it is not reasonable that the Arabs in 1921
were angry because their lands were taken
AP: So where is the receipt [of the purchase]?
JP: Jews came here from other countries . Including my own
family . And we bought a house in Haifa and in Emek Izrael.
[…]We did not have an army at all then…
AP: But you had Britain
JP: Can we sum up that the Arabs see the white book as a
beginning of a process of taking their lands
AP: Yes
Fission: an intersubjective moment
emerging out of dispute
• 22 (85%) e-discussions were characterized as
disputatious
• Stage 1. all started with parallel monologicity
Stage 2. the majority moved to negotiate meaning
and viewpoints (19, 73%)
• Stage 3. fission occurred in a pair’s voice as a
result of a successful “hit” of the Other (14, 54%)
• All stage-3 e-discussions also included social
episodes in their beginnings (greeting,
Facebook), some ended with social episodes
This process was not shallow.
Fission-- borrowed from nuclear physics– is an intersubjective moment. It is when
one idea connects with another idea, when one’s voice becomes embodied in
another voice, or using Bakhtin’s (1984; 1991) terminology, a voice became more
polyphonic.
A fission-like discussion: a process of
knowledge convergence?
• All conditions for successful collaboration were satisfied:
• the elaborative episodes ended with a consensus, all participants
agreed on a certain text for the joint page;
• the process by which these agreements were achieved was not quick
or shallow (Weinberger & Fischer, 2006)
• (recall that students could have had an easy way out, merely by
juxtaposing their original answers).
• Moreover, fissions are intersubjective moments, they occurred in
one’s voice as the Other voice impacted it.
• Yet, convergence? Has the overlap between individuals’
knowledge increased after a successful collaboration?
• (cf. Jeong & Chi, 2007).
Jeong &
Chi, 2007
Not necessarily…in post-activity
All conditions for successful collaboration
individualwere
essays…
satisfied:
the elaborative episodes ended with a
• Group members consensus,
did not converge
intoagreed
the joint
all participants
on text.
a certain
for the narratives
joint page;
• They did not abandon
theirtext
in-group
the process by which these
• Nevertheless, footprints
of were
theirachieved
participation
agreements
was not in the activity
quick or shallow (Weinberger &
were evident
Fischer, 2006)
•From one-sided to multi-sided perceptions of the historical event
(recall that students could have had an
a) the ascription easy
of at way
leastout,
some
accountability
for the event to the in-group
merely
by juxtaposing
historical agent;
their original answers).
b) employing historical
empathy
towards
the Other historical agent, i.e.
Moreover,
fissions
are intersubjective
presenting this
agent as they
acting
not onlyinwith
cold
intentions but also
moments,
occurred
one’s
voice
within constraints,
reducing
the moral
as thethereby
Other voice
impacted
it. judgment;
Yet,reflected
convergence?
Has the overlap
c) the answers
an understanding
of the event as a more tangled
individuals’
knowledge
system ofbetween
interrelations,
in comparison
to increased
the rather simplistic
after a successful
collaboration?
victim/perpetrator
description
in the pre-answers.
• Strengthen our claim that mosaic-like joint texts are double
construct
Pollack & Ben-David Kolikant, 2011
The power of conceptualizing (successful)
collaborative learning as IPD
• IPD captures ‘fission’ moments, a successful form of
collaborative learning.
• IPD highlights the role of the Other in stimulating the
development of dialolgic agency in one (Matusov, 2009).
• IPD better captures the dynamics of successful
collaboration that does not necessarily involve
convergence, common to settings like those of the DHT
model and interlaced roots model.
Towards a polyphonic
conceptualization of knowledge
• People do not construct their knowledge and memories of
the utterances of others (or their own) merely according to
their contents (as implicated in the convergence/overlap
approach).
• Rather, in their thoughts and memories, people maintain the
polyphonic socio-emotional nature of knowledge and “tag”
utterances with their authors, contexts, and responses, all
comprising one’s knowledge of an utterance.
A new illustration is required
• This observation is especially important when the topic
concerns one’s identity, one’s sense of belongingness.
• Quartet members were all exposed to the same contents since they
received the same source texts and participated in the same
discussion.
• However, these pieces of content were judged, tagged, and
emplotted differently by each pair, creating different narratives,
different meanings, different knowledge of the event (Bruner, 1986).
• As fission occurred within a pair, it allowed a piece of knowledge
identified as belonging the “Other’s voice” a certain legitimacy,
ameliorating its negative “tagging” as “wrong”, “capricious” , or
“lies”.
• This piece probably became more tangled with pieces used to
emplot one’s own narrative, creating dialogical relations between
the voices (e.g., echoing in one’s mind when related issues pop
up).