Student participatory role profiles in collaborative science learning: Relation of within-group configurations of role profiles and achievement

Abstract

<p>During collaborative learning, students tend to spontaneously enact different participatory roles<br>that may significantly affect collaborative learning processes. Only few empirical studies to date<br>have investigated groups as systems based on emerging roles and role profiles of the participating<br>students, and how emerging role profile configurations affect achievement. This exploration of<br>students' self-adopted roles investigated the relationship between role profile configurations and<br>achievement. The statistically driven identification of role profiles was based on fine-grained<br>observations of student groups' interactions in two distinct collaborative science-learning settings.<br>While higher achieving groups typically exhibited versatile science-oriented role profile<br>configurations, opinion-based configurations prevailed in lower achieving groups. Although role<br>profiles with a social orientation were rare, a student with a distracting profile can have a significant<br>influence on group work. Consolidated by in-depth case examples, the findings highlight<br>the importance of understanding how collaborating groups' emergent role profiles dynamically<br>interact during collaborative learning and how different role profile configurations relate to<br>achievement.<br></p>