Collaborative learning, as both a pedagogical method and a cognitive mechanism plays a prominent role in the Learning Sciences. 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, coconstruction, knowledge convergence, common ground, joi...

Following a discussion of activity theory as an approach to human development originally rooted in transformational change, we review the historical context and diverse conceptualizations of social conduct from the field of sociology. The discussion of social conduct is broken into theories of social action, theories of enactment, and contemporary sociological attempts at critical integration o...

As has been shown by Traugott & Dasher (2002), discourse markers proceed along the following grammaticalization cline; non-subjective > subjective > intersubjective uses. We look for evidence of this grammaticalization cline using a previously unexamined discourse marker in Spanish no sé (‘I don’t know’). Inline with Bybee & Sheibman (1999), we show that no sé seems to be stored in lexical repr...

This paper argues that the need for a core ―fourth pillar‖ of sustainability/sustainable development, as demanded in multiple arenas, can no longer be ignored on the grounds of intangibility. Different approaches to this vital but missing pillar (cultural-aesthetic, religious-spiritual, and political-institutional) find common ground in the area of ethical values. While values and aspects based...

Recent experimental and design studies of collaborative learning mediated by tabletops has foregrounded equality of interaction at the verbal and the physical level, while intersubjective learning has been back-grounded. However, the embodied interaction analysis of video footage, from ten months of single-touch screen interaction among 8-9 year-old children presented here, shows that while the...