Dynamics of intersubjectivity : web-forum collaboration at a Brazilian secondary education

Abstract

This research discusses a theme receiving a growing attention: the dynamic of student-to-student intersubjectivity in problem-solving tasks and meaning-construction in hybrid settings – face-to-face and digital devices – within secondary education. The features of the dynamics of intersubjectivity in this study are defined by cognitive interdependence, the use of communicative language, the co-ordination of actions on the chronotope, and the production of collaborative meaning. We draw on Cultural Psychology and development with dialogic emphasis, based on the supposition that all discursive activity is intentional, evaluated, and goal-seeking. Recognising that all mediation action implies transformation of the environment, of the object of attention, and of the psychological activity. Participants were eight students, three girls and five boys, from the 3rd-year of secondary education, between 17 and 18 years old, freely organized into four dyads. A teacher of Philosophy and an ICT technician were briefed and were primed to support the activities. Data was collected from a state school in Brasília, where the Moodle platform had been in use since 2006. Data gathering drew on both qualitative and quantitative methodology, with an approach based on Grounded Theory, using an emic perspective. The data collection stage included field observation, individual interviews, two empirical studies, episodic interviews, and report of sources. Every stage of data collection was video recorded with the informed consent of the participants and their supervisors. Two problem-solving group tasks were set within the empirical study, the first involving two reports illustrating the use of digital technology in the classroom. The second centered on a view of how schools would be in twenty years’ time. The data obtained are presented and discussed in two stages: Study 1 a) interviews with two teachers and 1b) observations of the interaction between students-students in a context mediated by digital technologies. Study 2 a) presentation of the codebook elaborated from the discourses produced by the dyads in the tasks, composed of five categories and 21 subcategories, and submitted to log-linear analysis; 2b) horizontal and vertical reading of the discourses produced, that were submitted to the dialogical Thematic Analysis, and 2c) presentation of the Semantic Maps. All of the data were analysed and discussed. The results indicated that the dynamics of intersubjectivity stimulate interlocutors to take different perspectives on the same object and this reflects in the responsiveness and the alternation of positions of self, the other, the context, and the object. We observed that the interaction is the founding principle when interlocutors initiate the communication, because they seek a point of equilibrium in the intersubjective space. Negotiation of meanings and conventionalization of semiotic and symbolic elements are essential for constructing authorial and original ideas. The meta-analytic function suggests that dyads can interpret their own productions when they reintegrate and reinsert the knowledge and the meanings constructed in between. The activities mediated by forums indicated that intersubjectivity generates and it is generated by distributed cognition, when the production of knowledge moves from a dynamics of information accumulation towards the reflection of what is being produced. Our study indicated practical implications, thus, we suggest that teachers should better know the intersubjective phenomenon, since it is a key factor in collaborative learning.