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style=3D'mso-bookmark:_Toc91046089'>Mediation of Group Cognition
Gerry Stahl
University,
The term “community-based learning” can re= fer to a variety of forms of learning. One can, for instance, insist on an individualistic notion of learning and argue that individual learning can be enhanced by factors that may influence it from a supportive community environment. At the other theoretical extreme, one can propose a social conception of learning and claim that most important knowledge building tak= es place at the community level, while individual learning is a secondary matt= er of internalization, acculturation or increased participation in community. Here, we will stake out a middle ground: that community-based learning shou= ld be analyzed at the intermediate level of small groups of individuals within= the community.[1] We point out that small groups typically mediate the relationship of communities to their members and we propose a consideration of small group cognition as an alternative methodological focus to either cognition in the head of individuals or the cultural knowledge of a whole community. This approach has practical implications for CSCL and CSCW: collaboration is tak= en to be a potential emergent phenomenon of small group interaction, and the computer support of collaboration is analyzed as an enabling technology who= se design and use forms and transforms the nature of the interactions.
Let us consider this article’s title a word at a= time. Mediation is the most complex a= nd unfamiliar term. In popular and legal usage, it might refer to the interven= tion of a third party to resolve a dispute between two people. In philosophy, it= is related to media, middle and intermediate. So in CSCL or CSCW, we can say that a software environment provides a medium f= or collaboration or that it plays an i= ntermediate role in the midst of the collaborators. The contact between the collaborators is not direct or im-mediate, but is mediated by the software. Recognizing that when human interacti= on takes place through a technological medium the technical characteristics influence—or mediate̵= 2;the nature of the interaction, we can inquire into the effects of various media= on collaboration. For a given task, for instance, should people use a text-bas= ed, asynchronous medium? How does this choice both facilitate and constrain the= ir interaction? If the software intervenes between collaborating people, how should it represent them to each other so as to promote social bonding and understanding of each other’s work?
The preposition in the phrase is ambiguous. Is of to be taken in a passive or possessive sense? Does the mediation of group cognition refer to how the group cognition is mediated by the technol= ogy? Or, conversely, does it refer to how collaboration and shared meaning are mediated by the group cognition’s act of mediating? This ambiguity is= not accidental: in processes of mediation, that which is mediated, that which mediates and the mediation itself tend to merge into a process of co-determination in which each is defined and refined by the others.
By itself, the term group is quite straight-forward. In this context, we can take it to refer to a sm= all set of people, usually numbering about three to six. But combined with the = term cognition, it strikes many peop= le as counter-intuitive. This is because cognition is often assumed to be associa= ted with psychological processes in individual minds.
The usual story about cognition, at least in the Weste= rn culture of the past three hundred years, goes something like this: an individual experiences reality through his (sic, the paradigmatic rational thinker in this tradition is often assumed to be male) senses. He thinks about this experience in his mind; cognition, stemming from the Latin = cogito for “I think,” = refers to mental activities that take place in the individual thinker’s head= . He may articulate a mental thought by putting it into language, stating it as a linguistic proposition whose truth value is a function of the proposition’s correspondence with a state of affairs in the world. Language is a medium for transferring meanings from one mind to another by representing reality. The recipient of a stated proposition understands its meaning based on his own sense experience as well as his rather unproblemat= ic understanding of the meanings of language.
The story based on the mediation of group cognition is rather different: in this view, language is an infinitely generative system= of symbolic artifacts (words, phrases, genres, etc.) that embody the cultural experiences of a community. It is a social product of the interaction of groups—not primarily of individuals—discussing and acting in the world in culturally mediated ways. Individuals who are socialized into the community learn to speak and understand language as part of their learning = in order to participate in that community. In the process, they internalize the use of language: e.g., as silent self-talk, internal dialog, rehearsed talk, narratives of rational accountability, senses of morality, conflicted dream lives, habits, personal identities and their tacit background knowledge lar= gely preserved in language understanding. In this story, cognition takes place primarily in group processes of inter-personal interaction, including mother-child, best friends, husband-wife, teacher-student, boss-employee, extended family, social network, gang, tribe, neighborhood, community of practice, etc. The products of cognition—thoughts—exist in discourse, symbolic representations, meaningful gestures, patterns of behav= ior; they persist in texts and other inscriptions, in physical artifacts, in computer databases, in cultural standards and in the memories of individual minds. Individual cognition emerges as a secondary effect, although it later seems to acquire a dominant role in our introspective narratives.
Most people have trouble accepting the group-based sto= ry at first and then starting to view collaborative phenomena in these terms. Let= us take a closer look at the philosophical view which is sedimented in the term “mediation.” It belongs to a tradition that undertook a fundame= ntal critique of the individualistic perspective that goes back to Descartes and= even Plato, and that underlies common folk theories about cognition.
We can start to deconstruct the term mediation as used in CSCL and CSCW by looking at its use in Lave
& Wenger’s seminal Situat=
ed
Learning
“Briefly, a theory of so= cial practice emphasizes the relational interdependency of agent and world, activity, meaning, cognition, learning and knowing…. Knowledge of the socially constituted world is socially mediated and open ended.”
This theory of social practice can be traced back to H=
egel
and Marx by way of Vygotsky. Vygotsky described what is distinctive to human
cognition, psychological processes that are not simply biological abilities=
, as
mediated cognition. He analyzed=
how
both signs (words, gestures) and tools (instruments) act as artifacts that
mediate human thought and behavior—and he left the way open for other
forms of mediation: “A host of other mediated activities might be nam=
ed;
cognitive activity is not limited to the use of tools or signs”
Vygotsky attributes the concept of indirect or mediate= d activity to Hegel and Marx. Where Hegel loved to analyze how two phenomena constitute each other dialectically—such as the master and slave whose identity arises through their relationship to each other—Marx always showed how the relationships arose in concrete socio-economic history, such as the ris= e of conflict between the capitalist class and the working class with the establishment of commodity exchange and wage labor. The minds, identities a= nd social relations of individuals are mediated and formed by the primary fact= ors of the contexts in which they are situated.
The term media= tion takes on a variety of interrelated meanings and roles in discussions of soc= ial theory. The point here is to start to think of group collaboration software= as artifacts that mediate the cognition of their individual users and support = the group cognition of their user community.
Small groups are the engines of knowledge building. The knowing that small groups build up in manifold forms is what becomes intern= alized by their members as individual learning and externalized in their communiti= es as certifiable knowledge. At least, that is a central premise of this artic= le.
Although we can see many examples of the decisive role=
of
small groups, their pivotal function is rarely acknowledged. For instance, =
the
two prevailing paradigms of learning in CSCL—which may be referred to=
as
the acquisition metaphor and the participation metaphor
Some theories, like activity theory
My own experience in research collaborations and in my
apprenticeships in philosophy and computer science impressed me with the
importance of working groups, reading circles and informal professional
discussion occasions for the genesis of new ideas and insights. The same ca=
n be
seen on a world-historical scale. Quantum jumps in human knowledge emerge f=
rom
centers of group interaction: the Bauhaus designers at
The obvious question, once we recognize the catalytic = role of small groups in knowledge building, is: can we design computer-supported environments to create effective groups across time and space? In order to achieve this, we need a degree of understanding of small group cognition th= at does not currently exist. In order to design effective mediated collaborati= on, we need to develop a theory of mediated collaboration based on a design research agenda of analysis of small group cognition.
Most theories of knowledge building in working and lea= rning have focused primarily on the two extreme scales: the individual unit of analysis as the acquirer of knowledge and the community unit of analysis as the context within which participation takes place. We no= w need to focus on the intermediate scale: the small group unit of analysis as the discourse in which knowledge actually emerges.
Following are some research hypotheses for a theory of= small group cognition:
Here are some theoretical issues to be investigated in= such a research program focused on the small group unit of analysis:
The size of groups can vary enormously. Our examples t= end to be of small groups of a few people meeting for short periods. Given the hypothesized importance of this scale, it is surprising how little research= on computer-supported collaboration has focused methodologically on this unit. Traditional approaches to learning measure effects on individuals. More rec= ent writings talk about communities of practice. Many studies of collaboration = that do talk of groups look only at dyads, where interactions are easier to desc= ribe and qualitatively different from those in larger small groups.
The emphasis on the group as a unit of analysis belong= s at the foundation of a science of collaboration. It is not just a matter of claiming that it is time to focus software development on groupware and to develop appropriate techniques (e.g., for assessment of groupware). It is a= lso a methodological rejection of individualism as a focus of empirical analysis and cognitive theory. Software should support cooperative work and collaborative learning; it should be assessed at the group level and it sho= uld be designed to foster group cognition. For that, we need a fitting theoreti= cal framework centered on an understanding of the role of small groups and the mediation of group cognition.
[2.] Lave, J., & Wenger, E. 1= 991. Situated learning: Legitimate peripher= al participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
[3.] Sfard, A. 1998. On two metap= hors for learning and the dangers of choosing just one. Educational Researcher, 27(2): 4--13.
[4.] Stahl, G. (in press). Group cognition: Computer support for collaborative knowledge building. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Retrieved f= rom http://www.cis.drexel.= edu/faculty/gerry/mit/.
[5.] Vygotsky, L. 1930/1978. Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Ha= rvard University Press.
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This paper is excerpted from (Stahl, in press)<=
!--[if supportFields]>, where issues of group
cognition are considered at length