Students negotiating and designing their collaborative learning norms: a group developmental perspective in learning communities

Abstract

This research shows how participants in classroom learning communities (LCs) come to take responsibility over designing their collaborative learning norms. Taking a micro-developmental perspective within a graduate-level course, we examined fine-grained changes in group discourse during a period of rapid change where this responsibility taking occurs, which we frame as the transition between the storming and norming stages of group development. Our findings indicate that this transition was based upon three sub-stages that included (a) recognition of a group crisis; (b) acceptance of responsibility; and (c) increased meaningfulness of norms. As an outcome of this transition, LC members took responsibility over negotiating and designing their collaborative norms as authority moved from moderators to students. We discuss the theoretical and practical contributions of this research on group development and LCs, as well as limitations and next steps for research.

Keywords:

• learning community
• norms
• participatory culture
• responsibility
• group development
• students as designers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Yotam Hod recently earned his Ph.D. within the Educational Technologies Graduate Program at the University of Haifa, Israel. He is the director of the Future Learning Spaces, assistant to the head of the Educational Technologies Graduate Program, and member of the Learning in a NetworKed Society Israeli Center of Research Excellence (LINKS I-CORE).

Dani Ben-Zvi is a Professor of statistics education and educational technology at the University of Haifa, Israel. He is the founder and member of the Education Technologies Graduate Program, and member of the scientific management of the Learning in a NetworKed Society Israeli Center of Research Excellence (LINKS I-CORE).

Notes

1. Pseudonyms are used to protect confidentiality.

2. Abbreviation for moderator.

3. Non-sequential numbering denotes that lines have been skipped.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the I-CORE Program of the Planning and Budgeting Committee and the Israel Science Foundation [grant number 1716/12].