Students’ socially shared regulation of learning during a collaborative inquiry task: do groups’ diverse preconceptions matter?

Abstract

In collaborative inquiry learning, students may have diverse preconceptions about the topic within groups and should become aware of these differences to achieve shared conceptions. Little is known about how these differences relate to the progression through the phases of socially shared regulation of learning (SSRL)–task understanding, goals and planning, strategy enactment, adaptation–and monitoring of learning. We addressed this gap by studying the associations between students’ preconceptions of energy within groups and their progression through SSRL phases during an inquiry task involving a simulation. Of 14 groups of preservice teachers (N = 52), 8 groups had different preconceptions, and 6 had similar preconceptions, based on a domain knowledge pretest. We coded students’ discussions according to SSRL phases based on video-recordings. We used screen-capture recordings to code their inquiry activities with a simulation. We applied process mining and ordered network analysis and found that different preconceptions were not associated with progression through the SSRL phases or the frequency of inquiry activities, but they were associated with more frequent co-occurrence of simulation use with several SSRL phases. Thus, shared conceptions were achieved by observing simulation evidence rather than negotiating different preconceptions. We discuss ways to support collaborative inquiry learning with digital technologies.