Cognitive Interaction Analysis On Undergraduates' Problem-Solving Based Team Learning

The rapid development of globalization and information technology have brought about unprecedented challenges to traditional individual learning and working pattern. Thus the potential and the advantage of team learning are more and more widely acknowledged. Team learning is the process of the realization of the common goal by team members cooperated as a whole. Though team learning is very important, at present little has been known about its micro process. For example, we need to describe clearly what it looks like when it works well and tell the differences between passive ineffective team thinking and genuine effective team intelligence. So the research explored the mechanism of effective team learning as the goal, with the concrete researching issues from the cognitive processes underlying team learning process as following: What are the productive interactions in team learning and what is the reciprocal nature of the productive process? How to observe and analyze individual interactions during their team learning process?The present research set out first to explore the nature of the mechanism of the cognitive interaction of efficient team learning with the guidance of the social cultural theory and the concept of"Scaffolding". Empirical researches began with the tests on 142 participants individually and 17 participants collectively. Meanwhile situational interviews were carried out with different teams, including 17 innovative winning team members and 33 students from temporary free-will problem-solving teams. 3 out of 11 teams were chosen, characterizing respectively"solving completely","solving partly","solving none", for case studies on their micro-processes of interactive problem solving to provide integrative discription and profound outcomes. Then subsequent quantitative research adopted systematic observation to get variable data and to test statistically. Six valid teams were divided into high efficient teams (solving completely in certain time) and low efficient teams (solving partly in certain time). Transcripts of their discussions were compared using a content analysis method and a test for differences. The reliability and validity of encoding were tested with various methods. In the end, a real-time interference experiment was carried out with such factors as cognitive demand, reasoning ability and gender balanced. Whereas the task and procedure were roughly the same as the previous researches, certain interaction guidance was shown to the experimental teams in advance.By systematic analysis on the data outcomes, we have reached the following conclusions:1. Cognitive interaction processes play a key role in the efficiency of team learning.2. In team cooperative problem solving, success or failure lies not in the length of discussion time or the frequency of interaction. And the emergence of key thoughts is not the decisive element concerning team efficiency either. Interaction is effective because it devotes peers to higher cognitive processes.3. When dealing with complex tasks that are difficult for individuals, usually there may be both correct and incorrect cognitive process at the same time. Becoming positive or negetive (clear←→vague or right←→wrong)of individual's cognitive process lies in cognitive aids during their team interaction.4. There are no significant differences on the frequency of key proposal, the types of crucial puzzles and the frequency of deviated prososal among high or low efficient teams. While there are significant differences on positive reciprocal understanding, negtive mutual aiding and negtive mutual monitoring. In other words, members in high efficient team recognize and capture the correct thoughts in others'cognitive process more frequently, and abandon their incorrect thoughts, refine and continue the process consequently. On the contrary, although there also lie in low efficient teams some key thoughts or puzzles (crucial insights), the mutual and continual promotion on important cognitive contributions is deficient.5. The nature of the cognitive interaction of high efficient team learning is reciprocal scaffolding. The reciprocal scaffolding can be observed and analyzed from three dimensions as reciprocal understanding, reciprocal scaffolding, and reciprocal supervising in different levels, which has been fulfilled by the concise and exercisable analysis of representative episodes marked by"key discourse".