• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.555-569
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• 2012

Many science education research and practices are recently emphasizing the importance of collaborative learning. This study also understands learning in aspects of socio-cultural context, and regarded the creation of meaning in a same-age group as an important learning process. This is most especially true in the premise that the formation of roles in a collaborative learning is important for successful interactive learning. This study aims to find out how roles form in a group. For this purpose, university students participating in a group discussion activity about energy flow and circulation of material were selected as research participants. Discussions among the nine students in one group consisted of cognitive conversations on the topic and operational conversations for preparing a presentation. Video-clips of the discussions were made and transcribed. For the analysis, we developed a framework that includes four interaction functions (cognitive, organizational, meta-cognitive, operational), four action elements (question, simple answer, providing opinion, response to opinion), and two to four intention elements by each action elements. As a result, a total of nine roles were revealed through the interaction function and element; cognitive questioner, operational questioner, simple answerer, operational suggester, organizational commander, operational commander, cognitive explainer, terminator, reflective thinker. These roles are re-classified into seven utterance patterns by the utterance order and object, and they were categorized into three role groups (facilitating interaction, sustaining interaction, finishing interaction). The result means that role formation and function can have influence on learning and interaction. This study is meaningful to the suggestion to collaborative learning including project-based learning, investigation, club activity, and for the re-illumination of the role in an aspect of the interaction.