Exploring the Role of Inquiry and Reflection in Shared Sense-making in an Inquiry-based Science Classroom: toward a Theory of Distributed Shared Sense-making

Despite considerable attention to inquiry and reflection in the literatures of science education and teacher education/professional development over the past century, few theoretical or analytical tools exist to compare/contrast these processes, or to characterize their development, within a naturalistic classroom context. In the current research study, we develop a model of shared sense-making that attempts to integrate processes of inquiry and reflection, and systems of shared sense-making and mental models of those systems, into a single coherent theoretical framework. Using the model of shared sense-making as an interpretive lens, we then develop a qualitative case study that explores empirically teacher-student shared sense-making over the course of a year of scaffolded introduction to inquiry-based science instruction. Theoretical arguments and empirical findings both suggest that conceptualizing inquiry and reflection as two interactive coherence processes within a model of shared sense-making provides a rich interpretive framework for exploring developing understanding/sensemaking in the classroom. Results further suggest that perspectival shifts play an important role in that developing shared sense-making. In particular, perspectival shifts among doing, thinking, and thinking about thinking, and among opening to consider multiple possible interpretations and closing to examine a particular interpretation in detail, seem to play a central role in inquiry and reflection. Conceptualizing teaching/learning as shared sense-making rather than individual teacher activity or student learning has important implications for both science education and teacher education/professional development. Introduction Successive reform efforts in science education over the last century have repeatedly identified “inquiry” as one of the fundamental processes involved in constructing Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 2 scientific ideas (AAAS, 1990, 1993, 2000; Dewey, 1910/1933, 1938; NRC, 1996, 2000, 2007; Schwab, 1966). At the same time, research in teacher education has repeatedly identified “reflection” as one of the central processes involved in decision-making within the ill-structured domains of professional practice (Rogers, 2002; Schön, 1983, 1987; Shulman, 1988). However, despite the considerable attention these two constructs have received within their respective fields, we know little about the nature of these constructs as they actually play out within naturalistic classroom contexts, and equally little about possible developmental progressions or potential interrelationships among the two constructs. Science and Inquiry Although reform efforts in science education have consistently identified inquiry as one of the critical elements of effective science teaching and learning (AAAS, 1990, 1993, 2000; Dewey, 1910/1933, 1938; NRC, 1996, 2000, 2007; Schwab, 1966), teaching has changed very little in science classrooms during that period—teacher-led lectures; textbook-based curricula; and memorizing facts and formulae have continued as the predominant instructional activities in most science classrooms (Anderson & Smith, 1987; NCES, 2004; Weiss, 1997). When changes in instruction have been attempted, the exploration of substantive scientific ideas/relationships has often been reduced to (a) “activity-based” instruction focusing on disconnected “hands-on” activities and/or prescribed laboratory procedures; or (b) “discovery-based” instruction focusing on unguided student exploration (Anderson & Smith, 1987). Why has fostering student understanding of scientific inquiry and facilitating meaningful student exploration of substantive scientific ideas/relationships proven to be such an elusive goal? Why has more than a century of effort in K-12 educational research and practice, curriculum and instruction, teacher education and teacher professional development, been so ineffective in fostering development of inquiry in K-12 classrooms on a large scale? It seems important to explore these questions with an eye to the broader sociocultural context, as well as from the perspective of the challenges faced by individual teachers within particular instructional contexts. Joseph Schwab (1966) proposed that some of the key challenges teachers face may in fact arise from a fundamental contradiction between the “habits of mind” fostered by traditional American public education and the habits of mind required for inquiry. Schwab claimed that the K-12 educational system in the United States was originally structured to disseminate a common culture to the masses, not to support the capacity to inquire. As a result, few teachers in our K-12 classrooms have had the opportunity to engage in sustained inquiry themselves: We continue to route our publics through an indoctrinational program of unquestioned dogma. What is more, we now route most members of our elites, including many of our scientists and teachers, through a similar inculcation, permitting only a few men [sic] in each generation to push past its doctrinal barriers into the regions of reflection by sheer force of skeptical intelligence. (Schwab, 1966, p. 8) Schwab proposed a dramatic change in the culture of American public education—our Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 3 educational institutions should transform themselves from institutions structured to disseminate a common culture to institutions designed to foster the flexible analytic and synthetic ways of thinking needed to keep pace with (and shape) a rapidly changing world. However, Schwab’s proposal seems to present a dilemma—how does a transformation to inquiry thinking take place, when it may be inquiry thinking itself that is required to initiate and sustain such a change in thinking processes? How can institutions that were not designed to foster inquiry be transformed to do that task by teachers and administrators who may never have engaged in inquiry and may not have a vision of what inquiry looks like in the classroom? The National Research Council (2007) has completed a comprehensive study of current research in science education. The report identifies four interrelated strands that define scientific proficiency for grades K through 8: • Strand 1: Know, use and interpret scientific explanations of the natural world; • Strand 2: Generate and evaluate scientific evidence and explanations; • Strand 3: Understand the nature and development of scientific knowledge; • Strand 4: Participate productively in scientific practices and discourse. (NRC, 2007, p. 37) The four strands clearly frame the goals of instruction. But, what is the process by which teachers and administrators, and eventually students, can be supported to meet these goals? Has our research about inquiry helped develop a vision of what is unique about inquiry thinking, and specifically a vision of what is unique about inquiry thinking as it develops in the classroom, so that teachers and administrators have the tools to differentiate between substantive inquiry and other types of activity, such as “hands-on” activities or “discovery-based” learning? Has our research about inquiry helped to develop a vision of possible learning progressions as students (and teachers) develop an understanding of inquiry? What tools do we have to characterize teacher-student interactions in the classroom, in order to develop an in-depth vision of the process of inquiry as it develops in a classroom context? Teacher Education and Reflection While scientists and science educators were examining the central role of inquiry in making sense of real-world phenomena, teacher educators were pursuing a parallel thread of research exploring the central role of reflection in making sense of the dilemmas of professional practice. Donald Schön (1983) described a crisis of confidence in the professions precipitated by a mismatch between the canons of professional knowledge and the complexities, uncertainties, and values conflicts characteristic of a rapidly changing world of professional practice. Schön claimed that such conditions have led in some professions to “professional pluralism”—that is, practitioners are presented with competing views regarding appropriate professional practice and are provided with little Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 4 guidance regarding how to choose between those differing views. To understand the tasks of professionals operating within this world of indeterminacy and value conflict, Schön proposed differentiating the “naming” and “framing” of problem setting from the process of problem solving: ...with this emphasis on problem solving, we ignore problem setting, the process by which we define the decision to be made, the ends to be achieved, the means which may be chosen. In real-world practice, problems do not present themselves to the practitioner as givens. They must be constructed from the materials of problematic situations which are puzzling, troubling, and uncertain.... Problem setting is a process in which, interactively, we name the things to which we will attend and frame the context in which we will attend to them. (p. 40) Schön further proposed that a practitioner’s continual redefinition of a problematic practice situation—through successively naming the things she will attend to and framing the context in which she will attend to them—defines the complementary thinking processes of reflection-in-action (1983, 1987) and reflection-on-action (1987). Schön proposed that these were the processes a thoughtful practitioner could use to adapt everchanging professional knowledge to the ever-changing complexities, uncertainties, and values conflicts of real-world professional practice. Once again, however, the question remains—what exactly does reflection look like as it plays out in practice? What differentiates reflection from other types of thinking, such as recall? And, what (if anything) differentiates reflection from inquiry? Inquiry and Reflection: A Theoretical and Empirical Exploration The current paper explores such questions theoretically and empirically. Because the two strands of research exploring inquiry and reflection converge in the science classroom, the science classroom provides a particularly rich context for exploring the nature of these processes as they play out in a real-world context. Theoretically, we develop a sociocultural model of shared sense-making to characterize teacher-student interactions in the classroom, focusing on teacher-student interaction as the unit of analysis, rather than using a more traditional lens of teacher enactment or student learning alone. Empirically, we use the model of shared sense-making as an interpretive framework to examine developing teacher-student interactions over the course of a year of a middleschool teacher (Connie) and her students’ scaffolded introduction to a form of inquirybased science instruction called project-based science (Blumenfeld et al., 1991; Krajcik, Blumenfeld, Marx, & Soloway, 1994; Marx, Blumenfeld, Krajcik, & Soloway, 1997). Project-based science provides a particularly rich context for exploring these questions because of its focus on developing a variety of instructional contexts to support teacherstudent exploration—including opportunities to engage in first-hand investigations and opportunities to use scientific ideas to make sense of real-world issues. Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 5 Methods The Context The current research study was situated within a larger research project that explored issues surrounding understanding, planning, and enactment of project-based science and design of professional development contexts to scaffold that learning. Results from the larger research project have been documented in a number of previous publications (Blumenfeld, Krajcik, Marx, & Soloway, 1994; Krajcik et al., 1994; Ladewski, Krajcik, & Harvey, 1994; Marx et al., 1994). See Ladewski (2006) for a complete description of the research context. School and Classroom Context The site for the current research study was a middle-school serving approximately 600 students located in a small, racially and socioeconomically diverse district in southeastern Michigan. The school was departmentalized by subject matter in the seventh and eighth grades; sixth-grade teachers belonged to an interdisciplinary sixth-grade department. Connie was a member of a three-person 6 th -grade team and taught three 6 th -grade science classes. Connie’s science classes were large (31-33 students) and heterogeneous with respect to achievement. The classes were scheduled in 45-minute back-to-back periods (2nd, 3rd, and 4th hours), with little time for set-up or clean-up between classes and with almost no flexibility to extend an activity beyond the allotted 45-minute class period. Connie’s classroom was not particularly well-designed for teaching inquiry-based science—it was not equipped with either a teacher demonstration table or student lab tables, had minimal counter and storage space, and during Year 1, did not have either a water source or a drain. Thus, Connie was faced with many of the same procedural challenges to engaging in investigative science instruction that are typical of middle school classrooms across the country--large class sizes, rigid class schedules, limited access to laboratory facilities, little money to purchase equipment or materials. Connie’s educational background included a bachelor's degree in science education and K-12 teaching certification; she had four years experience teaching sixth grade when the research project began. Instructional and Curricular Context This study examines Connie and her students’ classroom interactions as they were engaged in a year-long scaffolded introduction to a form of inquiry-based science instruction called project-based science. Project-based science is characterized by multifaceted, open-ended learning environments designed to help students develop more integrated understandings of science concepts as they explore authentic meaningful realworld questions over an extended period of time. Project-based learning environments: (a) are anchored by authentic, real-world questions or problem areas that provide a meaningful context for exploring substantive scientific ideas; (b) provide opportunities for students to carry out investigations, in which they ask their own questions, make predictions, gather and interpret data, draw conclusions, and frame real-world Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 6 recommendations; (c) provide opportunities for students to construct artifacts that represent students’ emerging understandings of substantive scientific ideas; (d) foster the development of communities of inquiry, in which students, teachers, and members of the larger community collaborate about the question or problem area; and (e) promote the use of cognitive tools, including computing and telecommunication technologies, to explore the question or problem area (Krajcik et al., 1994). During Year 1, Connie and her students carried out two sixto eight-week project-based units—during the fall semester, the National Geographic Kids Network project entitled What's in Our Water? (National Geographic Kids Network, 1991); and during the winter semester, a similar National Geographic Kids Network project entitled Acid Rain (National Geographic Kids Network, 1989). Carrying out two similar projects over the course of the year provided the opportunity to compare/contrast classroom interactions for different instructional activities within one project and for similar instructional activities across both projects. Data Sources and Analytical Methods An interpretive case study comprised of “telling” mini-cases (Knobel, 1996) was developed to capture both the subtle nuances of teacher-student interactions at a particular moment in time and also the change in interactions over extended time. Primary data sources used in developing the case study included videotaped and transcribed recordings of nine key lessons—four 45-minute lessons from each of the two project-based units during Year 1, as well as a culminating end-of-year student-designed investigation. Other data sources—including a rich set of informal conversations during enactment and teacher semi-structured interviews after enactment, teacher-written case reports, and videotapes of teacher professional development worksessions—provided additional data to corroborate and enrich the story told by the case. For the purposes of this paper, telling” mini-cases related to investigation were excerpted from the nine lessons to weave the story of the case. The nine lessons were selected prior to analysis; criteria for selection included (a) the central role of each lesson in developing the substantial science content of the project; (b) the opportunities that each lesson provided to explore key aspects of project-based instruction—and in particular, investigation and real-world decision-making; and (c) the extent to which activities were parallel across projects, which enabled comparing/contrasting instructional conversations (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988) for different activities within one project and for similar activities across both projects. A theoretical model of shared sense-making grounded in the tenets of sociocultural theory was developed to provide a coherent theoretical framework for examining changing teacher-student interactions over extended time in an inquiry-based science classroom (see following section “Developing the Theoretical Framework”). Methods of conversation analysis (Psathas, 1995) and an analytical framework derived from the theoretical framework were used to characterize teacher-student interactions in terms of the following constructs of shared sense-making: (a) joint attentional field—on what Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 7 object was joint attention focused and by whom; (b) referential field—what ideas/links were added to the referential field and by whom; (c) perspectival shifts—what shifts in perspective were initiated and by whom, and what corroborating or conflicting ideas/experiences were added to the referential field as a result of the shift; (d) inquiry and reflection—what coherence processes were carried out and who initiated/participated in those processes; and (e) cohesive tools—what cohesive elements were added to the referential field and by whom. Research Questions The following questions guided the theory development and the development of the interpretative case study: • The theoretical question: What elaborations on sociocultural theory are necessary to provide the foundation for a systematic examination of shared sense-making within the naturalistic context of a middle-school science classroom over extended time? In particular, what role (if any) do inquiry and reflection play in a sociocultural model of shared sense-making? • The empirical question: In what ways did Connie and her students’ shared sense-making change over the course of a year-long scaffolded introduction to inquiry-based science instruction? In particular, in what ways did opportunities to engage in inquiry and reflection change over the course of the year? Developing the Theoretical Framework We explore the rich intersection of the literatures of inquiry, reflection, socioculturalism, and theory of mind to develop a sociocultural model of shared sense-making that permits exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in teacher-student shared sense-making in the classroom. Foundational Vision of Inquiry/Reflection: The Writings of John Dewey The writings of John Dewey provide the foundational ideas for much of current thinking in the areas of inquiry and reflection, including much of the last decade’s work in projectbased and inquiry-based instruction. Dewey did not differentiate between the terms inquiry and reflection, sometimes using the terms in combination (“reflective inquiry”), and sometimes interchangeably. Attempting to characterize this type of thinking—and distinguishing this thinking from other types—was a central unifying thread in Dewey’s writings. Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 8 Characterizing the Constructs In How We Think, Dewey (1910/1933) described reflection as a special kind of thinking that “consists of turning a subject over in the mind and giving it serious and consecutive consideration” (p. 3). He proposed that the function of such thinking was “to transform a situation in which there is experienced obscurity, doubt, conflict, disturbance of some sort, into a situation that is clear, coherent, settled, harmonious” (pp. 100-101). He further claimed that reflective thinking is differentiated from other types of thinking— such as stream of consciousness, imagination, unexamined belief—by certain characteristics., including (a) reflective thinking refers to a consecutive ordering of ideas, in which each idea derives from the preceding one and determines the next; (b) it leads toward a goal or conclusion; (c) it involves careful consideration of the evidence that supports a belief and the conclusions to which a belief leads; and (d) it involves both a state of “perplexity” that initiates reflective thinking and an act of searching to resolve the perplexity (Dewey, 1910/1933). Dewey maintained that there is no need for reflection as long as activity is moving along smoothly; recognition of a fork-in-the-road, a dilemma, initiates a process of reflection: Thinking begins in what may fairly enough be called a forked-road situation, a situation that is ambiguous, that presents a dilemma, that proposes alternatives. As long as our activity glides smoothly along from one thing to another,...there is no call for reflection. Difficulty or obstruction in the way of reaching a belief brings us, however, to a pause. In the suspense of uncertainty, we metaphorically climb a tree; we try to find some standpoint from which we may survey additional facts and, getting a more commanding view of the situation, decide how the facts stand related to one another. (pp. 14, italics as in original text). The outcome of inquiry was knowledge, or Dewey’s term “warranted assertion” (p. 9), which could only be developed through a process of inquiry: Knowledge, as an abstract term, is a name for the product of competent inquiries. Apart from this relation, its meaning is so empty that any content or filling may be arbitrarily poured in. (p. 8) Dewey conceived of inquiry as a continuous process, with the “settled belief” or knowledge that was the outcome of one inquiry providing the foundation for the next round of inquiry, but with that “settled belief” or knowledge always open to revision during subsequent inquiry. Dewey (1938) claimed that experience is “felt” or “had” before it is known (p. 70-71; see also Taylor, 2002); that is, perception of a situation precedes understanding the relations that exist within it. According to Dewey, four types of relations exist that can be examined/developed through inquiry (Dewey, 1938; Kennedy, 1970, p. 74): connection/involvement (relations among existential things); inference (relations that connect the plane of existential things and their relations with the plane of symbolmeanings and their relations); implication (relations among symbol-meanings, resulting Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 9 in abstract theories); and reference (relations connecting abstract theories to complexes of connections/involvements). Dewey conceived of inquiry as particularly concerned with exploring referential relations (Kennedy, 1970). Thus, Dewey conceived of reflective thinking as an ordered sequence of thoughts directed toward a goal, arising from a state of doubt and involving an act of searching for possible means to resolve the doubt and for evidence to support those possible means. Reflective thinking provided a means of developing mental coherence in a situation of logical confusion or moral dilemma. This developing mental coherence—or “knowledge”—formed the foundation for the next round of inquiry, and was always open to revision during subsequent inquiry. A Social/Cultural Process Dewey viewed man as “a social animal,” living within an environment that is culturally determined and acting in ways that are determined not only by biology but also by culture: Man, as Aristotle remarked, is a social animal. This fact introduces him into situations and originates problems and ways of solving them that have no precedent upon the organic biological level. For man is social in another sense than the bee and ant, since his activities are encompassed in an environment that is culturally transmitted, so that what man does and how he acts, is determined not by organic structure and physical heredity alone but by the influence of cultural heredity, embedded in traditions, institutions, customs and the purposes and beliefs they both carry and inspire. (Dewey, 1938, p. 43, italic emphasis as in original text) Dewey described inquiry as being socially/culturally conditioned, because of its reliance on a culturally mediated symbol system and also because inquiry originates within a particular problematic situation in cultural context and results in modification of that situation in cultural context. Dewey considered language to have a special function, as the cultural institution by which other cultural institutions are “transmitted” (p. 45). He defined language very broadly to include not only oral and written speech, but also gestures, ceremonies, and physical tools. Dewey also claimed that the existence/transmission of cultural activities is made possible through an individual’s taking the perspective of another in the course of using language to communicate: ...on the one hand, it [language] is a strictly biological mode of behavior, emerging in natural continuity from earlier organic activities, while, on the other hand, it compels one individual to take the standpoint of other individuals and to see and inquire from a standpoint that is not strictly personal but is common to them as participants or “parties” in a conjoint undertaking. (Dewey, 1938, p. 46, italic emphasis added) Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 10 Thus, Dewey conceived of inquiry as a systematic social and cultural process by which “warranted assertions” (knowledge) were continually refined through the resolution of particular problematic situations. He considered language to be a special broadly defined cultural institution that made possible the existence and transmission of other cultural institutions (with inquiry being one such cultural institution), by enabling individuals to take on the perspective of another. Inquiry/Reflection: Synonymous or Mutually Constitutive? Dewey considered one of the foundational problems of philosophy to be finding a way to integrate logic with judgment, to integrate an understanding of the world and its relations (and in particular understandings related to natural science) with an understanding of the values/goals that guide human decision-making (Hahn, 1970). Dewey proposed that such a unifying principle could be found in a common method applied to both logic and judgment—the proposed method was inquiry (Hahn, 1970): ...the basic problem of present culture and associated living is that of effecting integration where division now exists. The problem cannot be solved apart from a unified logical method of attack and procedure. The attainment of unified method means that the fundamental unity of the structure of inquiry in common sense and science be recognized, their difference being one in the problems with which they are directly concerned, not to their respective logics. (Dewey, 1938, p.79) Thus Dewey conceived of inquiry as a unifying process, a process of careful thinking capable of guiding development of a coherent body of scientific knowledge, and also capable of guiding thoughtful judgments during real-world decision-making. However, it is not clear that defining a single unifying process, while maintaining traditional dichotomies in the domains in which it functions and in the outcomes that it yields, necessarily results in a unified whole. Therefore, we suggest an extension of Dewey’s proposal to unify logic and judgment through the method of inquiry, proposing instead that it may be more fruitful to consider achieving that unity through a mutually constitutive dialectic of two related processes— inquiry and reflection—with the special province of inquiry being exploring relations among perceptual experience and ideas (what Dewey termed inferential and referential relations), and with the special province of reflection being exploring relations among ideas (including memories, goals/intentions, and values/beliefs) (what Dewey termed implicatory relations). Consistent with the unity sought by Dewey, we propose that the mutually constitutive interaction of inquiry and reflection is equally relevant to scientific and everyday experiences, and to the world of objects and the world of agents. Socioculturalism Inherent in much of the research involving inquiry and reflection has been the assumption that such processes occur “inside the head” of an individual, and that co-construction of shared understanding occurs simply as a composite of individual sense-making processes. Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 11 However, the development of socioculturalism (Bruner, 1986, 1990; Palincsar, 1998; Rogoff, 1995, 1998; Vygotsky, 1987; Wertsch, 1985b) has contributed to a rather dramatic shift in conceptions of shared understanding and of the processes by which it is co-constructed. Going far beyond simply situating the individual thinker in social context, socioculturalism conceives of human understanding as co-constructed within, between, and among people in meaningful interaction in sociocultural context, a process that is mediated by intellectual tools, which simultaneously shape and are shaped by the unfolding interactions. Foundational Vision of Socioculturalism: The Writings of L.S. Vygotsky Russian psychologist L.S. Vygotsky, considered one of the “founding fathers” of socioculturalism, attempted to develop a unified theory of psychology that was capable of resolving the traditional dichotomies between the individual and the social, with the explanatory power to address the full range of human development—phylogenic, sociocultural, ontogenetic (Wertsch, 1985b). Vygotsky’s work explored the relationships between the sociocultural/ sociohistorical, social, and individual planes of development, and proposed physical and psychological tools (in particular, semiotic signs and other artifacts of human activity) as mediational bridges connecting these planes (Wertsch, 1985b). The basic tenets of sociocultural learning theory as proposed by Vygotsky (1978, 1987) and later elaborated by (Wertsch, 1985a, 1985b, 1990) and others (Bruner, 1985, 1987; Minick, 1987, 1989) include: • A genetic (developmental) method: Vygotsky believed that development was the result of multiple interacting forces; the task of a unified psychology was to study the changing interrelationships among sociocultural, social, microgenetic, and ontogenetic processes over time, in order to develop coherent explanatory principles (Wertsch, 1985b). He proposed that explanatory principles were developed by studying a body “in movement” as it developed over time; descriptive observations were developed by studying the static result, or “product,” of that development. • Semiotic mediation: Vygotsky proposed an important role for physical and psychological tools, and in particular semiotic signs, in mediating between the sociocultural, the social, and the individual, that is, between the intermental and the intramental planes. Vygotsky further proposed decontextualization of mediational means—the process by which sign-meanings become more and more independent of the context in which the sign was first designated—as the central explanatory principle of development in the sociohistorical domain (Wertsch, 1985b): Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 12 • Sociogenesis of mind: Vygotsky proposed a central developmental role for social interaction in sociocultural context, claiming that higher psychological processes in the child appear first in interaction between people, and then within the child: We could formulate the general genetic law of cultural development as follows: Any function in the child’s cultural development appears twice, or on two planes. First it appears on the social plane, and then on the psychological plane. First it appears between people as an interpsychological category, and then within the child as an intrapsychological category. (Vygotsky, 1981, p.163) Near the end of his lifetime, Vygotsky proposed a construct called the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), which attempted to integrate the three foundational tenets of his theory—genetic method, semiotic mediation/decontextualization of mediational means, and the interaction of intermental/intramental processes (Moll, 1990; Wertsch, 1985b). (See later section entitled “Systems of Shared Sense-Making: Extending the ZPD Construct.”) Empirical Studies of Teacher-Student Classroom Discourse Over the last decade, a number of researchers have used a sociocultural framework based on the above tenets and various types of discourse or conversation analysis to examine empirically teacher-student interaction in the classroom. Although most of these studies have not explicitly identified the scope of their exploration as teacher-student shared sense-making (as contrasted with student learning or teacher enactment), these studies provide a foundation of rich images and detailed analyses of teacher-student classroom interactions upon which to build the current exploration of shared sense-making. Four studies, in particular, provide a rich empirical foundation for exploring teacher-student discourse in science and mathematics classrooms (Leinhardt & Steele, 2005; Palincsar, Brown, & Campione, 1993; Rosebery, Warren, & Conant, 1992; Wells, in press). These articles, singly and together, contribute to a rich foundation for continuing theoretical and empirical exploration of shared sense-making in a classroom context. In particular, they cumulatively suggest the following key ideas: (a) instructional interactions can provide opportunities to help make both teacher and student thinking visible, and analytical frameworks used in empirical analyses can/should provide ways to meaningfully characterize interactions that help make thinking visible; (b) instructional interactions can provide opportunities for students to participate in progressively more responsible ways in the shared sense-making of the classroom, and analytical frameworks can/should provide ways to meaningfully characterize those developing progressively more responsible interactions; and (c) instructional interactions can provide opportunities for the mutually constitutive interaction of doing, thinking, and thinking about thinking, and analytical frameworks can/should provide ways to meaningfully characterize those developing interactions. Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 13 A Model of Shared Sense-Making Building on the key ideas related to inquiry, reflection, and socioculturalism, and the empirical studies of teacher-student discourse explored in the preceding sections, we propose a dramatic shift in the theoretical models and “unit of analysis” used to examine teaching and learning in the classroom. We propose that conceptualizing teaching and learning as mutually constitutive processes within a model of shared sense-making provides a fruitful theoretical framework for interpreting classroom activity. We further suggest that focusing on teacher-student interaction as the “unit of analysis”—rather than teacher enactment or student learning alone—opens up novel and productive ways to characterize unfolding events in the classroom. We propose that using a model of shared sense-making and a unit of analysis of teacher-student interaction can support both researchers and practitioners in conceptualizing the many complex interactions of the classroom—teacher and learner, individual and social, activity and ideas—as a unified whole. Shifting the unit of analysis to teacher-student interaction creates a theoretical “Interaction Space” that requires theoretical definition. How can this space be characterized, in order to construct theoretical and analytical tools that will enable productive exploration of shared sense-making interactions in the classroom? The Interaction Space (I-space) First, we propose characterizing sense-making interactions and their development in terms of their position and movement within the theoretical Interaction Space (I-space) (Figure 1). The I-space is an extension of the theoretical 2-dimensional intermentalintramental plane of developing understanding originally proposed by Vygotsky (1987) and also an extension of an n-dimensional space proposed by Harré (1984) to describe the development of psychosocial entities such as cognition and memory (two major axes: realization (individual collective); definition (personal social)). We propose characterizing sense-making interactions in the I-space in terms of three dimensions that span the space (and in terms of the poles of those dimensions): realization (individual collective); definition (personal social), and convergence/control (open closed). We propose that the realization dimension can be equivalently conceived as “interaction in the perceived world,” and the definition dimension as “interaction in the world of ideas and semiotic signs/symbols representing those ideas.” A possible fourth dimension affect is not addressed within the scope of the current research study. We propose that development of shared understanding can be characterized as movement within the multi-dimensional I-space and those movements through the I-space can be described as shifts in perspective, or perspectival shifts (see the later section entitled “Perspectival Shifts”). Thus, understanding develops through perspectival shifts—either shifting among the major axes of the I-space (from realization/action to definition/ideas to convergence/control; that is, from doing to thinking to thinking about thinking), or shifting along any particular axis (shifting perspective from one sense-making system to Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 14 another, or shifting control back and forth from multiple possibilities (open) to a single possibility (closed)). A Network of Systems of Shared Sense-Making The interaction space can also be characterized as an interconnected network of systems of shared sense-making. The following constructs have been extended or elaborated in order to develop a coherent model of a network of systems of shared sense-making: (a) the ZPD (Vygotsky, 1987); (b) theory of mind (Astington & Olson, 1995; Hatano, 2002, 2005; Hatano & Takahashi, 2005; Lagattuta & Wellman, 2001; Tomasello et al., 2005); (c) joint attentional and referential fields (Tomasello, 1999; Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005); (d) alternation of perspective (Dewey, 1938; Tomasello, 1999) or perspectival shift; (e) coherence processes, including inquiry (AAAS, 1990; Dewey, 1910/1933, 1938; NRC, 2000, 2007; Schwab, 1966) and reflection (Schön, 1983, 1987); and (f) cohesive tools (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). Figure 2 provides a schematic illustration of this model of an interconnected network of systems of shared sensemaking. Systems of Shared Sense-Making Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD) has generally been conceived as the difference in knowledge/performance that is characteristic of an individual learner when supported by a more knowledgeable other compared with the individual’s knowledge/performance when acting alone (Vygotsky, 1987). However, a number of researchers, based on careful examination of the original Russian texts in the context of Vygotsky’s complete works, have concluded that Vygotsky intended a more central role for the concept of the ZPD in his theory of development: English-speaking scholars interpret the concept more narrowly than Vygotsky intended, robbing it of some of its potential for enabling us to understand the social genesis of human cognitive processes and the process of teaching and learning. (Griffin & Cole, 1984, p. 45) Moll (1990) made a similar claim regarding the ZPD as a key theoretical construct in Vygotsky’s work: [Within the last phase of his life], shortly preceding his death, Vygotsky proposed the concept of the zone of proximal development. Thus the zone must be thought of as more than a clever instructional heuristic; it is a key theoretical construct, capturing as it does the individual within the concrete social situation of learning and development. (pp. 3-4) Moll further suggested that the concept of the ZPD represented an important transformation of the theory itself, enabling Vygotsky to integrate social activity into his theory while retaining the importance of sign and tool mediation. A number of researchers have suggested extensions/elaborations of the ZPD construct. Rogoff and Wertsch (1984) proposed that Vygotsky’s ZPD involves “the joint Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 15 consciousness” or “intersubjectivity” of the participants (p. 5), thus expanding the notion of the ZPD as a shared learning space where the depth of potential learning is not simply a function of the “ability” or “readiness” of the learner, but is also strongly dependent upon the ability of both learner and more-knowledgeable-other to develop “joint consciousness” or “intersubjectivity.” Brown (1992) and Brown and colleagues (1993) further proposed that learning within the ZPD is multi-directional, not simply flowing from teacher to student; classrooms contain multiple ZPDs; and ZPDs can include artifacts and tools, as well as people. Finally, Wells (1999) summarized and continued the elaboration of these ideas, suggesting a central, very broad, and still developing role for the ZPD in sociocultural theories of learning: Vygotsky’s genetic theory of learning and development can provide a starting point for rethinking the principles on which education should be based. And in that rethinking, the concept of the zone of proximal development has a central role to play. For, far from being simply a new and better pedagogical method, the zpd offers an insightful and theoretically coherent way of thinking about the complex nature of the transformations that are involved in learning and of the multiple ways in which learning can be assisted. (p 334) Building on the above ideas, we propose a further extension of the construct that is consistent with, though more general than, the extensions already proposed by others. We propose broadening the definition of the construct to a human system of shared sense-making—a flexible association of humans, tools, and their interactions that enables shared sense-making. A human system of shared sense-making includes: (a) a particular set of participants and their interactions; (b) currently developed, and not-yet developed, interconnections among ideas of participants (intellectual tools), including the activity and participation structures that define the context for interaction; (c) physical representations of those ideas in the perceptual world that facilitate developing the ideas (artifacts), including those representations that facilitate modifying physical entities in the perceptual world (physical tools); (d) currently developed, and not-yet developed, interconnections with adjacent sense-making systems; and (e) the potential for developing shared ideas that arises from interaction of elements a through d (the depth of the sense-making system). Such a sense-making system evolves over time, changing as the elements change, which in turn alters the potential ideas (the depth) associated with the system. A sense-making system can include from many participants to a limit of one—the “solo” cognizing individual, now fully embedded in sociocultural and sociohistorical context. We propose that systems of shared sense-making are an appropriate unit of analysis for examining teacher-student interactions in the classroom. To examine processes of shared sense-making within/among systems of shared sense-making, some additional constructs are needed. Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 16 Theory of Mind “Theory of mind” has historically been defined rather narrowly by developmental psychologists as a single capability of mental representation that a child is judged to have attained or not attained at approximately 4 years of age depending upon a pass or fail score on a false-belief test. However, some developmental researchers (Astington & Olson, 1995; Bruner, 1995; Feldman, 1995; Lagattuta & Wellman, 2001; Leadbeater & Raver, 1995; Lillard, 1998) have recently proposed defining the construct more broadly as a complex understanding of the mediating role of mind between perceptions and actions, an understanding that a child develops throughout early childhood and that is itself mediated by perhaps multiple interacting biological and cultural factors. Hatano (2002, 2005) claimed that “theory of mind” is an important missing element in much sociocultural research and that “complex forms of communication such as negotiation of meanings are possible only when both speakers and listeners can effectively mentalize” (2005, p. 155, italic emphasis added); that is, when both speakers and listeners can conceive of other humans as having mental lives similar to (and different from) their own. Tomasello (1999) attempted to integrate evidence from evolutionary and comparative human and primate developmental biology to elaborate a sociocultural theoretical framework. He proposed intentionality/mentality—the capability for humans to conceive of other humans as having intentional/mental lives like themselves, that is, the capacity of humans to conceptualize “theory of mind”—as the processes of social cognition that make human cognition unique among the species. Tomasello and colleagues (2005) added to these earlier ideas by proposing two parallel developmental trajectories: (a) a developmental trajectory of individual mental representations that culminates in the individual acting as an “intentional agent,” that is, engaging in goal-directed action with conscious awareness of the goal; and (b) a developmental trajectory of social interaction that culminates in “shared intentionality” when intentional agents interact socially, that is, when participants consciously share goals and coordinate actions to achieve those goals. Developing from this foundation of ideas, we propose defining theory of mind in its broadest sense as an individual’s developing understanding/flexible control of the mediating role of (individual and collective) mind between (individual and shared) perceptions and (individual and coordinated) actions. We further propose that developing the understanding of oneself and others as “shared intentional agents” is not a developmental attainment of early childhood, but rather a complex set of understandings that mediates shared sense-making and is itself mediated by shared sense-making throughout an individual’s life history. Joint Attentional and Referential Fields Tomasello (1999) proposed that shared understanding develops through the coconstruction of joint attentional and shared referential fields. The joint attentional field refers to those elements of the perceptual field on which interacting individuals agree to focus their attention. The shared referential field refers to mental representations of the symbols/semiotic signs that individuals agree to use to designate elements/relationships in the joint attentional field. Tomasello and colleagues (2005) revised Tomasello’s Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 17 (1999) earlier concept of shared referential field, instead proposing two referential fields—an individual’s referential field and an individual’s model of a collaborator’s referential field. We propose several elaborations of Tomasello’s ideas, in order to advance the exploration of shared sense-making of the current study. First, we propose that the joint attentional and referential fields are mutually constitutive, rather than distinct, constructs. That is, we propose that not only does the joint attentional field provide perceptual images that influence what symbolic representations are created in the referential field, but also the symbolic representations that already exist in the referential field influence how the perceptual images of the joint attentional field are interpreted. We further propose making explicit the idea, not explicitly stated by Tomasello, that the joint attentional and referential fields represent conceptual elements of the mind, not physiological elements of the brain. Tomasello’s ideas lead to several very important inferences, which have important implications for the current exploration of shared sense-making. Tomasello’s differentiation of the attentional field from the symbolic field that describes and interprets it is an important theoretical contribution, enabling his model to represent the important distinction in shared sense-making interactions between attending to the same perceptual images and coordinating thought to construct a bridge of convergent symbols/semiotic signs to mediate between shared perception and coordinated action. Perhaps of even greater significance, the separation of these two fields enables the attentional field to “attend to” the referential field; that is, the separation of these two fields enables the attentional field to focus on the contents of the referential field as an object of attention, that is, for the world of ideas and the unfolding “narrative experience” of constructing ideas to become objects of attention. Of equally great significance is Tomasello’s reconceptualization of the “shared referential field” as two separate fields within the mind of an individual—the individual’s own referential field and the individual’s model of a collaborator’s referential field. It is a relatively straightforward extrapolation to propose that an individual can store experiences related to all the sense-making systems with which she interacts and can develop ideas about patterns within those experiences (i.e. can develop “theories of mind” for all the sense-making systems with which she interacts). It is another relatively straightforward extrapolation to propose that the processes of constructing a model of one’s own mind from one’s own mental/perceptual experiences and constructing models of other minds based on perceptual experiences and inferences of the mental experiences of those other systems are mutually constitutive processes, with each process using the other as a template. Finally, based on a similar line of argument, we propose that interactions within the real-world systems—that is, interactions within the flexible associations of humans that enable shared sense-making—are mutually constitutive with participants’ mental models of those systems. Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 18 Perspectival Shifts According to Tomasello (1999), learning to use linguistic symbols and other symbolic artifacts “transforms the way children view the world,” providing simultaneously a sense of both the intersubjective (shared) as well as the perspectival (particular): The symbolic representations that children learn in their social interactions with other persons are special because they are (a) intersubjective, in the sense that a symbol is socially “shared” with other persons; and (b) perspectival, in the sense that each symbol picks out a particular way of viewing some phenomenon. (pp. 95, italic emphasis added) The idea that an individual’s mind includes implicit and explicit “models of minds” provides for the contextualization of images of experience/ideas within a particular mental model associated with a particular sense-making system. It also provides for the possibility of “perspectival shifts,” shifts in the relative proximities of images/ideas, that enable images/ideas to be shifted (that is, decontextualized) from the context in which they were first encountered so that they can be used as a template for idea construction in other contexts. Thus, for example, images/ideas originally connected only to other images/ideas within an individual’s mental model of the classroom sense-making system can, through a perspectival shift, be brought into closer proximity with images/ideas within the individual’s model of her family sense-making system. We propose that major perspectival shifts can be characterized in terms of the dimensions of the I-space, as discussed above. Inquiry and Reflection: Mutually constitutive coherence processes Building on the above foundation of theory development, and in particular, on the exploration of the constructs of inquiry and reflection, we define coherence processes as the synthetic and/or analytic pattern-matching processes that enable developing more tightly interconnected links within/among sense-making systems and mental models of those systems. Coherence processes include (a) exploration processes, through which sense-making systems “open” to consider multiple possible connections among actions/ideas and then “close” to a single “best fit” option based on culturally developed criteria of “best fit”; and (b) dissemination (or “ratcheting” (Tomasello, Kruger, & Ratner, 1993)) processes, through which “closed” actions/ideas are propagated based on culturally developed criteria of authority. Exploration processes, which foster movement in the I-space along the “open”/”closed” continuum of the convergence/control axis, have special significance because of their central role in flexible shared sense-making. We suggest further study of the role of affective weights in coherence processes, and in particular, in determining in which situations exploration or dissemination processes will be invoked. We propose defining inquiry and reflection as two mutually constitutive exploration processes, through which humans systematically “open” to consider multiple possible interconnections among actions/ideas and then “close” to a single “best fit” option based on culturally developed criteria of reliability, such as consistency, repeatability, Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 19 fruitfulness, and/or robustness; this “best fit” option then serves as a foundation for further idea development/action. (See later sections “Inquiry” and “Reflection” to compare/contrast these two mutually constitutive processes.) We further suggest that perspectival shifts play a key role in inquiry and reflection. We propose that perspectival shifts involve consecutive shifts in relations within/among sense-making systems and mental models of those systems (along or across any of the axes of the I-space)—temporarily increasing the local incoherence of the sense-making network, but providing the opportunity for increasing global coherence through the recognition of new possible patterns as a result of the shifts in relations. We propose that systematic perspectival shifts drive the back-and-forth movement along the “open”/”closed” continuum of the convergence/control axis that is characteristic of the exploration processes of inquiry and reflection. Inquiry. Inquiry can be described as the systematic, data-based exploration process that explores possible interconnections (static relationships/causal connections/interactions) among perceptual objects/events in the joint attentional field and signs/symbols in the referential field, based on systematic observation/measurement of objects/events in the joint attentional field (empirical data). Inquiry includes both the systematic use of perspectival shifts that supports opening to consider multiple possibilities, and the systematic evaluation of possibilities that supports closing to the most coherent/fruitful of the possibilities for a particular situation. Reflection. Reflection can be described as a systematic, logic-based exploration process that explores possible syntheses of more complex from less complex ideas or possible analyses of less complex from more complex ideas within the referential field, based on comparisons with patterns of ideas already in the referential field. Reflection includes both the systematic use of perspectival shifts to open to consider multiple possibilities, and the systematic evaluation of possibilities that supports closing to the most coherent/fruitful of the possibilities for a particular situation. In particular, reflection enables the construction of possible ideas such as conclusions or intentions to act (or predictions of others’ intentions to act) from existing ideas such as theories, memories of prior experience, values and beliefs, and goals. Reflection also enables the reverse process—reconstructing the possible paths by which existing ideas or intentions to act may have developed. Reflection also includes the systematic integration of ideas and the processes for thinking about those ideas—that is, the mutually constitutive interaction of thinking and thinking about thinking. Note that systematic perspectival shifts to open to consider multiple possibilities and systematic evaluation to close to a “best-fit” option are requirements for a process to be considered an exploration process, and therefore are requirements for a process to be considered inquiry or reflection. Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 20 Cohesive Tools Finally, we explore semiotic mediation as the means by which thinking is made visible and shared within/among sense-making systems and models of those systems—and therefore, perhaps also the means by which interactions within/among sense-making systems and models of those systems can be examined empirically. Halliday & Hasan (1976) define a text as any passage, spoken or written, that forms a unified whole and define the concept of “texture” to refer to the property of “being a text.” They then examine various literary tools that function to create texture within a spoken or written passage. We propose defining the notion of text, consistent with but perhaps even more broadly defined than current broad definitions of text in the field of literacy, to include any unfolding sequence of human interactions that form a unified whole (which can also be termed “narrative experience”). We further propose that a sequence of interconnected referential fields that serve to interpret that unfolding narrative experience is also a text, and various types of intellectual tools function (and can be constructed to function) to create cohesion of various sorts within that narrative experience (see also Wells, 1999, for a different proposed synthesis of Vygotsky’s and Halliday’s ideas). Case Study: Exploring Shared Sense-Making in a Project-Based Science Classroom The theoretical/analytical tools developed in the preceding sections provide a framework of shared sense-making for interpreting Connie and her students’ interactions over the course of a year of scaffolded introduction to project-based science instruction. “Telling” Mini-Cases: Developing Ideas through Investigation Through “telling” mini-cases we explore Connie and her students’ developing shared sense-making as they engaged in three long-term experiments/investigations over the course of a year of instructional interactions. The experiments/investigations included (a) a long-term prescribed experiment (“Grass Seed Experiment”) carried out during Fall, Year 1, during the What’s in Our Water? unit; (b) a long-term prescribed experiment (“Effects of Acid Rain on Non-Living Things”) carried out during Spring, Year 1, during the Acid Rain unit; and (c) a culminating end-of-year long-term investigation (“Effects of Acid Rain on Living Things”), in which students designed their own investigation. Making Sense of a Long-Term Prescribed Experiment (Grass Seed Experiment) Connie and her students’ first major activity, a long-term prescribed experiment entitled the “Grass Seed Experiment,” explored two interrelated questions—(a) what is the relationship between nitrate treatment level and grass growth/health (nitrate as a fertilizer); and (b) what is the relationship between nitrate treatment level and concentration of nitrate that percolates through the soil as a result of “leaching” (nitrate as a potential pollutant of the ground water). The activity involved small groups of 23 students treating three small cups of sand and grass seed with No, Low, or High Fertilizer treatment solutions and observing the results over a two-week period. The experiment included three parts: (a) Part I, to set up the treatment cups; (b) Part II, a partial lesson Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 21 one week after set up of the treatment cups, to make intermediate measurements of grass growth/health; and (c) Part III, to make final measurements of grass growth/health, measure the concentration of nitrate that “leached” through the sand, and make sense of the results. Connie structured the first lesson (Part I) as a fairly typical hands-on activity in three segments: (a) a whole-group, mainly lecture-demonstration segment to introduce the activity and rehearse prescribed procedures; (b) a small-group hands-on activity segment during which students worked independently to set up their treatment cups; and (c) a whole-group recitation segment to make sense of the activity. Connie decided to demonstrate proper procedures during the introductory segment of the lesson and then allow students to work independently to set-up their own treatment cups during the small group segment, in order to scaffold correct lab procedures while also enabling students to act more independently than if she had led the whole group step-by-step through the complete experimental set-up (CH, Clip Interview #1). She further decided to defer sense-making of the activity until after they had completed the experimental set-up, to ensure that they would have time to complete the set-up during their single 45-minute class period (CH, Clip Interview #1). Rehearsing procedures for setting up a prescribed experiment. The introductory segment of the lesson was a fairly traditional well-executed lecture-demonstration rehearsing procedures for setting up a prescribed experiment. Connie demonstrated stepby-step the prescribed procedures that her students would need to follow to set up the experiment. As she demonstrated procedures, Connie also gave verbal instructions to highlight important aspects of each step. Teacher moves such as using hand gestures or hand gestures with experimental materials to demonstrate experimental procedures, walking around the classroom making eye contact with each student as she assigned treatment conditions, incorporating a particular small group into her whole-class demonstration of correct labeling of treatment cups—seem to be doing the intellectual work of making bids to establish joint attentional fields. Student nonverbal responses suggest that many students were responding to the teacher bids and were attending to the joint attentional fields proposed by the teacher. Connie’s step-by-step verbal instructions seem to be doing the work of elaborating a referential field highlighting salient features of the teacher-proposed joint attentional field. Connie decided to limit student participation during this introductory segment of their first major long-term experiment because of her strong awareness of important time constraints and management issues (CH, Clip Interview #1). Connie facilitated only one opportunity for student participation during this introductory segment: T: Why put holes in the cup?” S: T: [Nodding] (Grass Seed Exp, Part I: Seg 00:03:58–00:04:39) Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 22 In this single instance of student participation, Connie chose to focus on a step that she considered to be less significant in terms of substantive content, in order to ensure that her initial invitations to participate were well within the knowledge base of all of her students and therefore would foster broad student participation (CH, Clip Interview #1, Reflections Interview, personal communication). Interestingly, however, Connie’s question was not answerable from the stream of narrative images and descriptions associated with each student’s model of the classroom referential field, as most “recitation”-type questions are. Thus, Connie’s question required students to shift from the stream of narrative images and description associated with students’ model of the classroom referential field to their model of their own referential field (a perspectival shift from social personal definition/ideas) in order to respond to the question. Note that there were many possible student responses to this simple Why question, from the simple explanation of intended purpose that was provided, to more complex conceptual explanations of the causal relationship between soil moisture and mold growth or between oxygen in soil air spaces and root respiration. Perhaps to maintain the pace of her first major activity (CH, Reflections Interview), perhaps to avoid any possibility of intimidating her first student respondent (CH, Clip Interview #1, Reflections Interview, personal communication), perhaps because she was content with the response that had been provided and with the student participation that had been successfully fostered, Connie acknowledged the single student response as correct and continued with her demonstration of experimental procedures. During this introductory segment, Connie infrequently added a brief explanation to her description of a procedural step. That is, in terms of the theoretical/analytical frame of shared sense-making, she executed a perspectival shift from procedural description theoretical explanation/interpretation, enriching the procedural description by linking it to a related causal chain and/or intended purpose. For example, as she provided instructions regarding how to spread the grass seed on top of the sand-filled cup, Connie added explanatory detail (a causal chain associated with the need to treat the seeds gently): T: [...] And you’re going to get one level teaspoon of grass seed and put it on top of your sand and very GENTLY spread it out—don’t BANG on it, because you’ll damage the seeds and if you break them and damage them they won’t grow. So, do it very, very gently. (Grass Seed Exp, Part I: Seg 00:06:44–00:07:20, italic emphasis added) And, as she demonstrated how to pour fertilizer over the seeds, Connie provided an intended purpose for carefully pouring the fertilizer: Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 23 T: [...] Very carefully pour it on top of the grass seed, kind of sprinkle it, don’t dump it, pour it very carefully [tchr pretends to carefully pour fertilizer from beaker] so that all the grass seed gets some fertilizer. (Grass Seed Exp, Part I: Seg 00:07:52–00:08:55, italic emphasis added) These occasional perspectival shifts from procedural description theoretical explanation/interpretation added some depth (that is, another perspective) to the sequence of procedural images and description. However, these occasional associations of brief causal chains or intended purposes with a prescribed procedural step contrast both in detail and in scope with explanations that would have supported the procedural descriptions if teacher and students had themselves designed the experimental procedures. Of particular significance, the occasional explanations that Connie added provided conceptual explanation/interpretation at the level of the individual procedural step, not at the level of a broader framework of ideas such as “investigation” or “experimental design.” Setting up a prescribed experiment. During the small group segment, Connie circulated from group to group, taking the time to engage with each student around the task of correctly setting up their treatment cup. Described in the shared sense-making framework, Connie established a clearly engaging joint attentional field with each student that was focused on “their cup.” The brief 2to 20-second interactions scaffolded each student to execute a perspectival shift of collective individual realization so they could set up their own treatment cup following the procedures that Connie had demonstrated to the whole group. According to the theoretical frame, executing such perspectival shifts should result in the procedural images of Connie’s demonstration that had been contextualized in students’ model of the classroom referential field being shifted to images of their own enactment associated now both with their model of the classroom referential field and also with their model of their own referential field. Note, however, that these interactions show little evidence of perspectival shifts of social personal definition/ideas. That is, there is little evidence in the transcripts that students wrestled with making sense of either the procedures or the experimental design as they imitated prescribed procedures to try to make their treatment cups look like Connie’s; there is also little evidence that students considered alternative possibilities for setting up their cups. Rather, students simply asked for and received teacher acknowledgment that they were correctly following the prescribed procedures. However, the activity provided an opportunity for Connie to scaffold constructive student participation in developing images of their own enactment of experimental procedures—handling and sharing experimental equipment and materials, carefully labeling experimental treatments and following prescribed procedures, moving independently about the classroom—at a level that appeared to be accessible and engaging for a large majority of her students. Making shared sense of a prescribed experiment: Nacent reflection. At the conclusion of the small group segment, approximately 4 minutes of the class period Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 24 remained for Connie and her students to begin to make sense of the intellectual affordances of this key experiment. Connie’s students—most of whom had never before had the opportunity to carry out an investigation, who had described an experiment as “mixing medicines together” during the first lesson introducing project-based instruction—now shared the common narrative experience of having set up their own treatment cups in the service of carrying out a classroom experiment. However, their instructional conversation up to this point had provided few tools to help students to make shared sense of the richly detailed images of this narrative experience—what were the important images in the hundreds of successive images in the procedural narrative to focus on and remember, what were the ideas that would link sequences of images together, what were the overarching ideas that would recur repeatedly as common elements in other experiments and investigations? No overarching ideas had yet been “seeded” in the classroom referential field that could later become the object of a social personal definition/ideas perspectival shift to support shared sense-making. No action ideas perspectival shifts had yet been orchestrated to scaffold students in finding patterns in their own experiences. Through their interactions over the next four minutes of the lesson and over the next four weeks of the project, how could Connie and her students use the affordances of these richly detailed shared procedural images to begin to make shared sense of the process of scientific investigation? Connie divided the concluding whole-group recitation segment into two parts—making predictions for the No Fertilizer cups and making predictions for the Low/High Fertilizer cups. The two discourse sequences used almost identical, apparently open-ended, questions to solicit the prediction: For the No Fertilizer cups: T: So, what do you expect will happen to the cups that have just sand and grass seed? (Grass Seed Exp, Part I: Seg 00:030:21–00:31:21, italic/bold emphasis added) For the Low/High Fertilizer cups: T: Now, what about the high and the low fertilizer, what do you think’s going to happen? (Grass Seed Exp, Part I: Seg 00:31:21–00:33:32, italic/bold emphasis added) Such opportunities for prediction should provide opportunities for students to engage in reflection, as students are challenged to search through their existing ideas for possible causal/synergistic interactions that might be relevant to making predictions of possible outcomes in a particular situation. However, the two predictions were embedded in two very different discourse sequences that fostered very different intellectual work. Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 25 For the No Fertilizer discourse sequence, Connie’s solicitation for a prediction was embedded in a longer discourse chain: T: All right, I just want to talk just for a few minutes about the experiment and what we expect will happen. Now, you’ve all probably been to the beach at one time, OK^. What do you see USUALLY growing in sand? Ss: [Calling out] Seaweed....Crabs....Nothing.... T: OK, [tchr pointing to std who said “Nothing”] you’re right, absolutely nothing. So, what do you expect will happen to the cups that have just sand and grass seed? S1: [Std hand shoots up, tchr calls on her] Nothin’ will grow in ‘em. T: OK, first you need to know that there’s a little bit of food inside the seed itself, so that the seed can get started, but what’s going to happen after the seed gets started, if it’s growing just in sand? 1 [S2 raises hand; teacher motions to S2] S2: It won’t have no place to plant its roots, like in the soil. S1: [S1 joins in] It won’t have nothin’ to feed on. T: [Tchr nods in affirmation to S1’s response] OK. (Grass Seed Exp, Part I: Seg 00:030:21–00:31:21, italic/bold emphasis added) Note that the “So” that prefaced Connie’s solicitation for a prediction refers back to the conclusion of a preceding set of turns in the discourse chain that Connie had constructed to lead students to an idea that she had in mind (and that she believed few of her students would already know)—that energy/nutrients stored in the seed might enable the grass in the No Fertilizer cups to sprout and initially grow (CH, Post-Instruction Interview #2, personal communication). Thus, a question that appeared to have the form of an openended question asking students to search their own minds for potential connections between possible causal/synergistic interactions and possible outcomes, when considered in the context of the discourse chain in which it was embedded, was actually part of a carefully constructed chain of closed moves designed to lead students to an idea that the teacher had in her own mind. Connie added important new information to the classroom referential field about nutrients/energy stored in the seed that she believed students would not know—and students seemed to enjoy trying to guess the idea that the teacher had in mind. However, the discourse chain led to a single closed idea that the teacher had in 1 Note that Connie chose not to grapple in their first What’s in Our Water? project with distinguishing between the scientific definitions of “food” (a source of chemical potential energy) and “nutrients” (a source of chemical compounds/chemical building blocks) for plants, a distinction that she thought was peripheral to the project and would be conceptually difficult for her students (CH, personal communication). Ladewski, B.G., Krajcik, J.S., & Palincsar, A.S. (2007) Exploring the role of inquiry and reflection in shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom. Page 26 mind, rather than scaffolding students in doing the open-ended search for possibilities within their own minds—the perspectival shifts of closed open control, social personal definition/ideas, and theoretical explanation (ideas) predicted outcome (action)—that characterizes the real intellectual work of a prediction. In contrast, in the second discourse sequence, Connie did not set up a prior chain of analogic reasoning to scaffold (and constrain) student responses. Therefore, Connie’s solicitation for a prediction was truly open-ended, challenging students to pull together their earlier procedural images from the experimental set-up and their own understandings about fertilizer and grass growth in order to make their own predictions: T: Now, what about the high and the low fertilizer, what do you think’s going to happen? S3^. S3: , the low [fertilizer] will grow easier than the high, the high might not grow because it has too much fertilizer. T: OK, S3 says that she thinks that the low fertilizer will grow the best because she thinks the high fertilizer might be TOO MUCH fertilizer and that might make it not grow very well. Does anybody else have a different opinion? We’re just asking for predictions. I’m not going to say whether anybody’s right or wrong, cause we’ll find out as we watch. S4^. S4: I think it would grow better UNDER the soil. T: Grow better what?