Recontextualisation processes as sense‐making practice in student‐writers’ collaborative dialogue

Abstract

The research introduced in this article is placed in the field of socially mediated learning processes and draws from fieldwork in a highly diverse sector in higher education. It explores the potential of peer scaffolding as a means of making sense of tutor comments. The data consist of recordings of conversations in two collaborative writing groups on two laboratory reports. The participants were students with a second‐language background enrolled in a course which was part of a one‐year Master’s programme in computer science at a Swedish university. The analysis is based on transcriptions of episodes in the recordings, where the students are engaged in conversations about different aspects that can be related to the unfolding text. All instances in these episodes where the students are making use of teachers’ comments on explicitness with respect to logical reasoning are coded. A qualitative analysis of the interaction reveals how aspects from teacher voices are extracted from the institutional frame, paraphrased and put into the students’ colloquial talk. The findings indicate that peer collaboration plays an important role in enabling students to use the meta‐knowledge available in the educational setting as a tool for their learning of academic literacies. Pedagogical implications are discussed in terms of the potential of peer scaffolding as a means to support and develop teachers’ discourse around writing.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge funding from the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) for implementation of the project Collaborative writing and writing development in heterogeneous student groups. I would also like to thank my colleague, Mona Blåsjö, for her fruitful feedback on an earlier draft of this article. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to teachers and students for their participation in this study.