SAMTALENS BETYDELSE UNDER KEMILABORATIONER - Hur lärarens stöttning kan främja gymnasieelevers utforskande samtalsmönster och förståelse.

Sammanfattning

Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate how context-specific and generic scaffolding affect upper secondary school students' conversations during laboratory work in chemistry and find out if meaningful exploratory conversations taking place that increase the students' understanding. Theory: Previous studies show that there are difficulties for students to both handle practical material in laboratory work and create meaningful conceptual understanding. It needs to be more minds on than hands on. This study has a socio-cultural basis where language is an important basis for thinking. Previous studies show that the exploratory conversation is important for creating understanding. The discourse analysis is based on Mercer's (1995) conversation categories. Method: During a laboratory work, four groups with a total of eight students were video recorded. A discourse analysis is done where the conversations are categorized as disputative, cumulative or exploratory conversation. In addition, a thematic analysis of the content of the conversations is carried out. Results: The conversations in the different student groups contain approximately equal parts cumulative and exploratory conversation. There is no big difference depending on the type of support the students have received. The exploratory conversation, which is desirable, takes place more at the end of the laboratory work and therefore it is important that enough time is given so that the students have time to get to it. The context-specific support provided the students with valuable structural support, which reduced the complexity of the task and reduced frustration. The generic support helped to focus on the use of concepts early on during the laboratory, which contributed to sensemaking. Implications of the findings are discussed.