Approches psychologiques de situations de malentendu dans des activités de didactique des sciences

2015-6, Kohler, Alaric

Natural Logic provides a methodology of analysis for transdisciplinary research, particularly relevant for dialogical approaches of cognition, social interactions and communication based on discourse, and micro-scale analysis. This theory approaches thought and discourse as intertwined together, based on the idea that most thought processes used by adults are embodied in a vernacular language. Formal language are at the best a relevant model of such vernacular languages, and are based on a different logic. Grize developed Natural Logic as a non-formal logic for the study of natural reasoning, after working for Piaget's formal logic of meaning. In Natural Logic, discourse can be analyzed thanks to a set of thought operations, which define an open system for the description of meaning making. The discursive thought is approached as a whole, in such a way that logical operations remain linked with their content, with the language used by the interlocutors, and with the context of enunciation.  The system of thought operations is dynamic, focused on changes throughout the process of communication, and allows to study meaning across individual use of it, at various level of analysis such as the discursive thought of a pair of interlocutors, of a group, or at the level of social representations. This presentation will provide a quick introduction to the method of analysis, and short examples of results traced with Natural Logic. The results are drawn from educational practices, presenting for instance analysis of misunderstanding between students.

2017-5-16, Kohler, Alaric

This paper presents a methodology building on Grize’s Natural Logic to study unnoticed misunderstanding in teaching and learning communication. The study of unnoticed misunderstanding is important for education, as misunderstanding has been pointed out as a candidate mechanism for the reproduction of social inequalities at school. It is also a challenge, because most linguistic approaches rely on the interlocutors’ attempts to repair a specific communicative failure for identifying and describing misunderstanding. Additionally, the study of misunderstanding at school requires not only a discursive but also a cognitive approach to understanding, in order to relate the description of misunderstanding to the school subject matter. We present one example of misunderstanding at college, in physics, to illustrate the methodology. I argue that Natural Logic provides a useful theory for relating a communicative level of analysis with a semiotic level, allowing a scientific study of interlocutors’ interpretation here and now.

2015-10, Kohler, Alaric

The following study my not actually relates to the Conference Theme, in particular to the Contemporary Public Discourse, yet the audience may find relevant links between their own analysis and the methodological proposal for analyzing misunderstandings presented here. Misunderstandings are part of the everyday life, and have been since long ago among the research topics of linguistics, pragmatics, psycholinguistics and other studies of language and communication, notably in relation to ambiguity (p.ex. Caron, 1983). Misunderstanding, however, is more a common sense notion, and any attempt to define it clearly is confronted with the difficulty to set criteria delimiting misunderstanding from other forms of ambiguity or the general attempt to build a mutual understanding. Verdonik (2010), for instance, reports some relative borderline examples of misunderstanding. Sayer (2013) tries to specify the relations between misunderstanding and mutual comprehension. Bazzanella & Damiano (1999) have studied the way interlocutors handle misunderstanding in their conversation, and distinguish “non- understanding” from “misunderstanding”, and “understanding” from “coming to understanding”, i.e. building a common understanding. They insist on the importance to approach understanding or coming to understanding as a continuum rather than something that is or isn't. in this approach, misunderstanding are considered as participating to the construction of mutual understanding in the communication. Linell (1995) distinguishes mishearing, misunderstanding, misinterpreting, and so on. Generally, language-based analysis of misunderstanding identify the occurrence of a misunderstanding in a given discourse or interaction from the presence of a reparation (Weigand, 1999; Dascal, 1999). There are only few exceptions to this way of proceeding, as for example the work of Trognon & Saint-Dizier (1999) who also refer to the cognitive aspect of communication in order to investigate misunderstanding. Yet, event in this last example, it is a reparation much later in the conversation that allows the researcher to identify a misunderstanding. Yet, recent research shows that the inconsistencies in the communication are often overlooked by the participants (Galantucci & Roberts, 2014), which is an indicator that any analysis only based on explicit repair are missing quite many misunderstanding, unspoted by the interlocutors. What about situations where the gap between the interpretation of one and the other interlocutor is unnoticed? This last question takes a particular importance in the educative context. Research in sociology (Bourdieu et al., 1965; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1970; Passeron, 1991; Bourdieu et al., 1994; Bautier & Rochex, 1997; Bautier & Rayou, 2009) have pointed out misunderstanding as a candidate explanation for the reproduction of inequalities, as a general mechanism of our western school systems. For these authors, the differences between social classes in terms of communicative abilities, interpretation frame, pragmatic expectation and other features of the social interactions taking place in a school context, could be a major reason for the children originating from lower social classes and migration to have overall poorer school performances. To put this hypothesis into further investigation, and in particular into more micro-level analysis, requires to study misunderstanding in a school context. Yet, before to address the question of thereproduction of social inegality through misunderstanding, a more basic challenge needs to be taken: how can we observe misunderstanding, and, in particular, when these misunderstanding are unnoticed by the interlocutors involved in the interaction? My standpoint in this presentation is methodological, and consists in showing that Natural Logic can contribute to make some advance into this challenging question. Campos (sous presse) shows how Natural Logic is a theory and methodology relating discourse, meaning, and cognitive psychology (in particular, the piagetian theory). Natural Logic can be used for what Piaget (1972) calls a transdisciplinary approach, articulating the cognitive dimension of language use, the discourse and the meaning, and the interlocutory dynamics of social interactions. In this presentation, I will try to show how such an approach can study misunderstanding as simultaneously discrepancies in the meaning – the discursive – a learning issue – the psychological – and a collective construction here and now in the social interaction taking place at school – the interlocutory dynamics. Examples of misunderstanding will be taken from the presenter's PhD research on misunderstanding in a physics class at college (Kohler, 2015). References Bautier, E., and Rayou, P., (2009). Les inégalités d'apprentissage : programmes, pratiques et malentendus scolaires. Paris : Presses Universitaire de France. Bautier, E., and Rochex, J.-Y. (1997) Ces malentendus qui font les différences. In: Terrail, J.-P. (Ed.), La scolarisation de la France, Critique de l'état des lieux, Paris, La Dispute. Bazzanella, C., and Damiano, R. (1999). The interactional handling of misunderstanding in everyday conversations. Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 817-836. Bourdieu, P., and Passeron, J.-C., (1970). La reproduction. Eléments pour une théorie du système d'enseignement. Paris, Minuit. Bourdieu, P., Passeron, J.-C., and De Saint Martin, M., (1994). Academic Discourse: Linguistic Misunderstanding and Professorial Power. Standford: Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, P., Passeron, J.-C., and de Saint-Martin, M., (1965). Rapport pédagogique et communication. Paris: Mouton & Co, The Hague and Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. Campos, M.N., (sous presse). Navegar é Preciso. Comunicar é Impreciso. São Paulo : EDUSP - Presses de l'Université de São Paulo. Caron, J., (1983). Les régulations du discours. Paris: PUF. Dascal, M. (1999). Introduction: Some questions about misunderstanding. Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 753-762. Galantucci, B., and Roberts, G. (2014). Do We Notice when Communication Goes Awry? An Investigation of People’s Sensitivity to Coherence in Spontaneous Conversation. PLOS ONE, 9. Grossen, M. (2010). Interaction analysis and psychology: A dialogical perspective. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 44, 1-22. Kohler, A. (submitted). Approches psychologiques de situations de malentendu dans des activités de didactique des sciences. Thèse de Doctorat en Sciences Humaines, Université de Neuchâtel, Suisse. Linell, P. (1995) Troubles with mutualities: toward a dialogical theory of misunderstanding and miscommunication. In: Marková, I., Graumann, C., and Foppa, K. (Ed.), Mutualities in dialogue, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Passeron, J.-C., (1991). Le raisonnement sociologique. L'espace non-poppérien du raisonnement naturel. Paris, Nathan. Piaget, J. (1972) L’épistémologie des relations interdisciplinaires. In: OCDE (Ed.), L’interdisciplinarité : Problèmes d’enseignement et de recherche dans les universités, Paris: OCDE. Sayer, I.M. (2013). Misunderstanding and language comprehension. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 70, 738 – 748. Trognon, A., and Saint-Dizier, V. (1999). L'analyse conversationnelle d'un malentendu : le cas d'un dialogue tutoriel. Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 787-815. Verdonik, D. (2010). Between understanding and misunderstanding. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 1364-1379. Weigand, E. (1999). Misunderstanding: The standard case. Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 763-785.

2015-8, Kohler, Alaric

Science education is reputed for being challenging to the learners, and is considered a society issue in national or international reports (Eurydice, 2006; Musset, 2009). Despite extensive description and research work on the learner’s difficulties Driver et al., 1985; Viennot, 1996, they are still challenging, both for the attempt to reach a theoretical consensus (Sawyer, 2006) and for efficient teaching (Roth, 2008). Cognitive psychology most often approaches the difficulties of the learners as individual conceptions prior to learning activities taking place. The first work on learner’s conceptions (Posner et al., 1982) were considering concepts as closely linked with the learner’s use of a particular word, which has led to a critique (Barth, 1994) : how can the researcher consider a learner has acquired a new conception based on the mere choice of a particular word? Researchers (Vosniadou, 2008) in agreement with this critique, claim that conceptions exist independently from a particular language use. Yet, even when the analysts rely on the behavioral responses to an experimental task, such responses depend on communicative processes, as the task itself can lead to various interpretations (Grossen, 1988). In addition, learners do not appear consistent enough in these behavior across various tasks, which is a reason why conceptual change theorists are debating about how fragmented the learner’s knowledge is (diSessa, 1993). This research proposes to approach the same problem differently : instead of taking the individual learner as the unit of observation, it focuses on single situations of misunderstanding encompassing the learners and the teacher as a whole unit. The choice of this focus is based on the hypothesis that some of what appears to be a misconception can be explained by a misunderstanding. Indeed, the learners’ understanding is first acknowledge through communication before the analyzer attribute it to an individual conception (Perret- Clermont, 1979). If some of the difficulties in learning science can be explained as situations of misunderstanding, there will be no reason to think there are also due to misconceptions, or to any individual ability. In order to make a description of misunderstanding, the learner’s point of view and the teacher’s point of view have been reconstructed based on various types of data, including written documents and recorded verbal interaction. An extensive corpus of data was constructed on a single-case study, in a clinical approach of teaching and learning activities (Leutenegger, 2009), having an ecological validity (Crowley & Schunn, 2001). A teaching sequence on Newton mechanics was video and audio recorded during 3 month in a high-school classroom, including 25 pupils ( 17 y.o.). The researcher identified critical moments Ludvigsen et al. (2010), corresponding to the misunderstandings, after coding the audio and video material, and analyzed it on two levels Doise (1982): the situation - to reconstruct the context of interpretation - and the meaning - in order to identify diverse meaning on the same object of discourse. The analysis of misunderstanding is based on an original typology, built from Natural Logic Grize (1996), taking into account both the discursive and the cognitive feature. Results consists in the description of 10 situations of misunderstanding, of which one example is briefly mentioned below. Misunderstanding #1: the sign “g” was understood as a constant value by a group of learners, however as a force instead of an acceleration. Usually interpreted as a confusion between acceleration and force in general, the analysis of this misunderstanding shows that the pupils only confuse the two about “g” and emphasize the idea of a constant, in a way directly related to the teacher’s discourse. Hence, rather than due to an individual conception of the learners, prior to learning, we claim that this confusion is due to a misunderstanding of the teacher discursive representation Grize (1996). We conclude from this research that it is more difficult to attribute a given expression or behavior of a learner to an individual conception prior to learning that assumed in science education literature. Some well known misconceptions may be explained by a (mis-)interpretation of the teacher communication, and cannot be considered individual mental representation prior to the learning. They are instead co-constructed misunderstanding. Barth, B.-M. (1994). Le savoir en construction : former à une pédagogie de la compréhension. Paris: Retz. Crowley, K., & Schunn, C. D. (2001). Designing for science. LEA, Mahwah. diSessa, A. A. (1993). Toward an epistemology of physics. Cognition and Instruction, 10 (2 & 3), 105-225. Doise, W. (1982). L’explication en psychologie sociale. Paris, Presses universitaires de France. Driver, R., Guesne, E., & Tiberghien, A. (1985). Children’s ideas in science. Philadelphia: Open University Press, Milton Keynes. Eurydice. (2006). L’enseignement des sciences dans les établissements scolaires en europe. etat des lieux des politiques et de la recherche (Tech. Rep.). Eurydice, Bruxelles. Grize, J.-B. (1996). Logique naturelle & communications. Paris: PUF. Grossen, M. (1988). L’intersubjectivité en situation de test. Cousset: Editions Delval. Leutenegger, F. (2009). Le temps d’instruire. Bern : P. Lang. Ludvigsen, S., Rasmussen, I., Krange, I., Moen, A., & Middleton, D. (2010). Intersecting trajectories of participation; temporality and learning. In S. Ludvigsen, I. Rasmussen, L. A., & R. Säljö (Eds.), Learning across sites. London, New York: Routledge. Musset, M. (2009). Sciences en classe, sciences en société. Dossier d’actualité, 45 , 1-15. Perret-Clermont, A.-N. (1979). La construction de l’intelligence dans l’interaction sociale. Peter Lang, Berne. Posner, G. J., Strike, K. A., Hewson, P. W., & Gertzog, W. A. (1982). Accommodation of a scientific conception: towards a theory of conceptual change. Science Education, 66 , 211-227. Roth, W.-M. (2008). The nature of scientific conceptions: A discursive psychological perspective. Educational Research Review, 3 , 30-50. Sawyer, K. R. (2006). The new science of learning. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), The cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (p. 1-16). New York: Cambridge University Press. Viennot, L. (1996). Raisonner en physique : la part du sens commun. De Boeck Université, Paris. Vosniadou, S. (2008). Bridging culture with cognition: a commentary on “culturing conceptions: from first principles”. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 3 , 277-282.

2016-8, Kohler, Alaric, Perret-Clermont, Anne-Nelly

Among the challenges of a pedagogy engaging students into argumentative discussion Schwarz & Baker (2015) point out the fact that work on argumentation in science education often makes little use of the recent developments of theories of argumentation. In the present study, we would like to develop an approach of argumentation in science education by means of a theory (Grize's) that takes into account how students think in social interaction with the mediation of language and other signs. We will illustrate this with a case-study in a physics class in a Swiss high school, investigating the situated micro-history of meaning making in the perspective of each interlocutors. This contribution illustrates the potential of an argumentation theory as an instrumental resource to advance the psychology of learning, opening the way for an analysis of meaning making that is singular, situated and nevertheless accounts for some cognitive aspects of the activity.

2015-6, Kohler, Alaric

Scientific knowledge is commonly considered scientific in relation to its content, to methodological constraints and to a certain quality of reasoning. The scientific knowledge is often considered as corresponding with reality. Studies in science education (e.g. Driver et al. 1996), stress the discrepancies between the way scientific knowledge is taught – mostly in a dogmatic way – and the way it is produced, as it has been described long ago in sociology of science (e.g. Latour & Woolgar, 1979). Current research in science education propose to use argumentation to approach the science in a way closer to its making (Muller Mirza & Perret-Clermont, 2009). From a research on argumentation in physics, we suggest to describe the knowledge to be taught (Tiberghien, 1997) as a specific perspective, or look on the world. Such a description draws on a historico-cultural analysis as proposed by Koyré (1968). References Driver, R., Leach, J., Millar, R., and Scott, P., (1996). Young people's images of science. Open University Press, Buckingham. Koyré, A., (1968). Etudes newtoniennes. Paris: Gallimard. Latour, B., and Woolgar, S., (1979). Laboratory life : the social construction of scientific facts. London : Sage Publication. Muller Mirza, N., and Perret-Clermont, A.N., (2009). Argumentation and Education: Theoretical Foundation and Practices. New York: Springer. Tiberghien, A. (1997). Learning and Teaching: Differentiation and Relation. Research in Science Education, 27, 359-382.

2017-5-19, Kohler, Alaric, Chabloz, Bernard, Perret-Clermont, Anne-Nelly