Papers by Christa Asterhan
Social Science Research Network, 2022
Learning, Culture and Social Interaction
The papers in this symposium together address new contexts, modes and concerns related to teachin... more The papers in this symposium together address new contexts, modes and concerns related to teaching and teacher professional development in the age of social media, with a particular focus on the socio-technical affordances and challenges of social network sites and teachers’ perceptions and experiences. The presentations included in this symposium offer a multi-faceted and international view on the topic, highlighting both opportunities and challenges. Expected outcomes are a critical evaluation of the value, implications, and generality of the work presented to the field as well as an outlined agenda for future research on teaching with these new media and design work related to teachers’ professional development.
Computers & Education, 2017
Whereas the cognitive processes and effects of collaborative learning have been intensively studi... more Whereas the cognitive processes and effects of collaborative learning have been intensively studied within the Learning Sciences, little attention has been paid to the way motivational and emotional factors may affect them. In this symposium, we present recent findings from three independent lines of research that focus on the way motivation and affect shape the interaction between peer learners and how this, in turn, affects cognitive gains from this interaction. All three presentations focus on learning within a socio-cognitive conflict task design, while drawing on different data sources, each highlighting different aspects of the interaction process: (1) Students self-reported perceptions of the self, the other and the interaction; (2) Epistemic and motivational features of verbal dialogue content; and (3) Interactants' emotional reactions using facial signals and content-free vocal parameters of speech. The findings shed new light on how motivational and affective factors m...
Inhibitors and Facilitators of Peer Argumentation that Supports Conceptual Learning: The Role of ... more Inhibitors and Facilitators of Peer Argumentation that Supports Conceptual Learning: The Role of Achievement Goals Christa S. C. Asterhan, Baruch B. Schwarz & Ruth Butler ([email protected], [email protected], [email protected]) School of Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus Jerusalem 91905, Israel. Abstract Recent research suggests that peer-to-peer argumentation supports conceptual change in students’ knowledge structures in science and mathematics, provided that students actually juxtapose and evaluate different ideas in a critical, yet co- constructive manner. However, it is well known that this type of peer-to-peer dialogue is not easily elicited and sustained, especially on scientific topics. In this paper, we report on findings from research that investigates how the pursuing of different goals may result in more or less productive types of peer interaction and peer argumentation, and how this, in turn affects conceptual learning ...
Research into the benefits of collaborative work on learning have shifted from questions regardin... more Research into the benefits of collaborative work on learning have shifted from questions regarding whether it promotes learning, to research into the conditions that promote learning and the identification of processes that make collaborative group settings particularly effective. In this symposium we will present findings from recent research into a number of socio-cognitive processes that have been found to foster conceptual gains following group learning. The papers that will be presented as part of this symposium will focus on three different phenomena: argumentation, production feedback and the incubation effect of collaboration. In addition, these studies also show that the effects of collaborative learning may not be apparent immediately following interaction, but need some time to materialize. This finding emphasizes the need for multiple and delayed assessment, as well as alternative assessment tools, such as prospective (instead of retrospective) measures of learning.
Research on computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is traditionally rooted in construct... more Research on computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is traditionally rooted in constructivism. It intensively focuses on how productive peer collaboration can be stimulated and sustained in meticulously designed computer-mediated environments. Within the field of e-discussions, for example, it has been found that providing sentence openers, software-embedded collaboration scripts, representational guidance and even the medium itself may improve the quality of online collaborative argumentation. The role of the teacher and his/her impact on these activities, on the other hand, has been regarded to a far lesser extent. Teachers do not only plan, design and give feedback on students' collaborative activities, but they may also play an important role during these activities: They moderate, coach and guide groups of students. The research on F2F settings has unequivocally shown the positive effects of carefully calibrated, non-intrusive human facilitation of small-group disc...
One unique characteristic of learning systems that support peer collaboration is that these syste... more One unique characteristic of learning systems that support peer collaboration is that these systems have the potential to supplement or replace softwarebased representations of domainand learner-models with the representations implicitly formed by peers. In order to realize this potential, a collaborative activity must sufficiently motivate peers to reflect, collect, and communicate these mental models. Peer-assessment represents a class of activities that address this challenge by design. In this work, we describe a project, currently under development, in which peer-assessment is melded with peer-instruction to create a new learning activity for an existing collaborative learning platform. We present the rationale behind the design of the activity, focusing specifically on how it draws from and synthesizes the three modes of learning supported by the Grockit platform: adaptive individual study, live collaborative small-group study, and instructor-led skill-focused lessons. By trea...
In the last two decades or so, argumentation has become a prominent topic of educational reform a... more In the last two decades or so, argumentation has become a prominent topic of educational reform and psychological and educational research. It has been recognized as an important competence to be developed and practiced in classrooms, to lie at the basis of thinking and reasoning within and across different disciplines, and to foster thinking skills and complex learning processes. Unfortunately, however, when compared to normative criteria and models of good argumentation, most people demonstrate only rudimentary argumentation competencies. The question then is how educational activities and experiences can be designed to foster these competencies effectively? In this contribution, I will review developments from a number of research strands that have addressed this question, with a specific focus on the use of computertechnology to foster dialogic argumentation for educational purposes. Based on theoretical distinctions and recent empirical findings, the affordances and limitations...
The Internet and Higher Education, 2021
Abstract Despite visions of social network technology (SNT) for collaborative knowledge construct... more Abstract Despite visions of social network technology (SNT) for collaborative knowledge construction, recent research in secondary schools suggest that students use these tools mainly for knowledge sharing of study-related artifacts. We extend these findings to higher education settings and report on two survey studies that map characteristics of students' self-directed use of SNTs for study purposes, in undergraduate university programs (N = 264) and teacher training colleges (N = 449). The combined findings confirm that students use SNTs extensively for uploading, linking and downloading study-related artifacts in peer-directed SNT groups. They regard these practices positively and believe they improve academic achievements. Sharing was predicted by positive attitudes toward sharing and collectivist value orientations, motivated overall by prosocial reasons and less frequent in competitive study programs. Use of shared materials was associated with performance-avoidance achievement goals and lower GPA. Findings, directions for future research and implications are discussed in the context of learning theories, as well the knowledge sharing literature.
Teaching and Teacher Education, 2021
Abstract We explore how problem framing shapes teacher dialogue in teacher-led, school-based peer... more Abstract We explore how problem framing shapes teacher dialogue in teacher-led, school-based peer consultations. Twenty audio-recorded workgroup conversations were analyzed using a mixed-methods approach. Three different frames for presenting problems of practice were identified: teaching-, student- and classroom composition-oriented. Quantitative analyses showed associations between problem frames and the ensuing positioning of teachers as main agentive actors. In-depth qualitative analysis of two focal cases of low-teacher-agency problem frames (student- and classroom composition-oriented) revealed that psychologized discourses and attribution of responsibility to parents contributed to reduction of teacher responsibility and concomitant limited agency, and that initial problem frames were resistant to reframing.
Background: Detection of suicide risk is a highly prioritized, yet complicated task. In fact, fiv... more Background: Detection of suicide risk is a highly prioritized, yet complicated task. In fact, five decades of suicide research produced predictions that were only marginally better than chance (AUCs = 0.56 – 0.58). Advanced machine learning methods open up new opportunities for progress in mental health research. In the present study, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models were constructed to predict externally valid suicide risk from everyday language of social media users. Method: The dataset included 83,292 postings authored by 1,002 authenticated, active Facebook users, alongside clinically valid psychosocial information about the users. Results: Using Deep Contextualized Word Embeddings (CWEs) for text representation, two models were constructed: A Single Task Model (STM), to predict suicide risk from Facebook postings directly (Facebook texts → suicide) and a Multi-Task Model (MTM), which included hierarchical, multilayered sets of theory-driven risk factors (Facebook texts → ...
Learning and Instruction, 2020
Clinical Psychological Science, 2019
Data collection from online platforms, such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), has become popul... more Data collection from online platforms, such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), has become popular in clinical research. However, there are also concerns about the representativeness and the quality of these data for clinical studies. The present work explores these issues in the specific case of major depression. Analyses of two large data sets gathered from MTurk (Sample 1: N = 2,692; Sample 2: N = 2,354) revealed two major findings: First, failing to screen for inattentive and fake respondents inflates the rates of major depression artificially and significantly (by 18.5%–27.5%). Second, after cleaning the data sets, depression in MTurk is still 1.6 to 3.6 times higher than general population estimates. Approximately half of this difference can be attributed to differences in the composition of MTurk samples and the general population (i.e., sociodemographics, health, and physical activity lifestyle). Several explanations for the other half are proposed, and practical data-quali...
Teaching and Teacher Education, 2018
Contemporary Educational Psychology, 2018
Computers in Human Behavior, 2019
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Papers by Christa Asterhan