F. Feldia Loperfido

Università degli Studi di BariE-mail: feldialop@gmail.com

UN CORSO DI APPRENDIMENTO BLENDED COME CONTESTO A

SUPPORTO DELL’ESPRESSIONE DEMOCRATICA DI SÉ

• A whole-person approach concerning identity, motivation and higher mental functions is needed to educate for sustainability (Podger, Mustakova-Possardt and Reid, 2000);

• Sustainability is about cultural identities, equity, respect, society-nature relationships, development, justice, peace, conflicts, and human rights (Wals, Jicklin, 2002);

Theoretical perspective (1)

Theoretical perspective (2)

–Dialogism (Bakhtin, 1930/1981, 1941/1965, trans. 1986) as a lens to understand the dynamic and intersubjective structure of the Self;

–Concepts of polyphony (simultaneous association of voices) and chronotope (the inseparable connection between space and time, always colored by values and emotions);

–Magistral, Socratic and Menippean dialogue (Bakhtin, 1961/1986) representing the power relations among the first, the second and the third voice;

Theoretical perspective (3)

–Magistral dialogue asimmetry of interlocutors due to the asimmetry of power, discourse toward a correct meaning;

–Socratic dialogue questionning and challenging of voices;

–Menippean dialogue the third voice is completely mocked and rejected by the second one.

–The Dialogical Self. The multiple, dynamic, and polyphonic presence of several I-positions and the unity of the Self (Hermans, 2002; Hermans, Kempen, 1993);

Aim

• To investigate how the three forms of dialogue feature the Self over a blended learning experience

The context• Two blended learning courses held at the University of

Bari (IT) (2008-09 and 2009-10 academic year) involving 52 burgeoning psychologists (2008-09 academic year: four males, 12 females, average age 23 years; 2009-10 academic year: 10 males, 30 females, average age 27 years)

• Each course was based on the Blended Collaborative and Constructive Participation (BCCP) model (Ligorio & Cucchiara, 2011)

The BCCP model

Data collection

• Eight focus group discussions about learning and identity– First course: one discussion held at the beginning (N=10) and

another at the end (N= 5); – Second course: three discussions conducted at the beginning (N =

36) and three at the end (because of the higher number of students) (N = 34).

All of the discussions have been audio-recorded and transcribed by using the Jefferson notation system.

Data analysis

• Dialogical discourse analysis (DDA) (Wortham, 2001) looking at both narrated (what people say)and storytelling (what people act when they narrate) events;

• Two steps: • 1) reading the whole data corpus to have a global view of the utterances

context and to detect indexical clues (references and predication, metapragmatic descriptors, quotations, evaluative indexicals, and epistemic modalization)

• 2) re-reading the data looking for interpretative inferences taking into account the context of the discourse

• Two researchers first performed the two steps of analysis independently, later they compared and discussed the analysis involving a third researcher in case of divergence (about 15%).

Overview of the results

Beginning End

Narrated event

- Actual positions: passive, not practical, traditional – other learning contexts;- Potential positions: critique, collaborative, active learners – the blended context;- The first voice requires how and what the second voice has to learn and to behave;-The second voice recognizes the third voice as a system to be criticized

- Actual positions: Individual, independent and traditional learners – traditional learning chronotopes; collaborative, active and critical learners – the blended course;-The first voice decides how and what the second voice has to learn. The teacher of the blended course allows the group positions and a critique approach to learning;- Contradiction between learning chronotopes, similarity between blended and job chronotopes

Storytelling event

- Power relations researcher/students defined by the researcherWhen students talk about the university system they enact a collective actor against the system (a “Menippean-We-Position)

Individual positions;When students talk about the blended learning strategies they enact supportive and collective voices

Beginning of the course 2008 – 09, narrated event; The second voice against the first and the third one

End of the course 2009 – 10, narrated event; A collaborative second voice against the

individualism

End of the course 2009 – 10, storytelling event; A collective voice in the learning course

Conclusions • The Magistral dialogue is associated to the previous learning

experiences;• System of the Self constituted by the first voice (teachers), the

second one (students) and the third one (the university system);• The Menippean dialogue is related to the blended course and allows

students to position themselves as more collaborative, active, and able to self-defined their own learning activities;

• The first voice of the teacher of the blended course is perceived as opposite to the third voice;

• Both narrated and storytelling events change over the course as, at the end, students refer to a new structure of voices and enact at the interactional level those collaborative, critique, and active positions related to the blended course;

• The participation in the course based on the BCCP model sustained the formation of more democratic relationships and the distribution of power among the three voices