Session Information
09 SES 13 C, Collaborative Problem Solving in the 21st Century: Definitions and Assessment
Symposium
Contribution
The Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ATC21S) project began with the definition of the concepts of 21st-century skills. These were considered, analysed and organised within a knowledge, skills, attitudes, values and ethics (KSAVE; Binkley et al. 2010) framework. This symposium is comprised of three papers which analyse and discuss different aspects of one of these skillsets – collaborative problem solving. Logically, this construct consists of two major dimensions – collaboration and problem solving. The major elements contributing to collaboration are described, and these are discussed in terms of how they may vary in importance in the context of collaborative problem solving. The model presented draws on the work of researchers not only in collaborative problem solving as a broad construct, but on those with specific interests in the construct’s elements such as on Cohen (1994) on participation; Meltzoff (2002) on perspective taking, Thompson, Wang and Gunia (2010) on social regulation; Efklides (2008) on task regulation; and Scardamalia and Bereiter (2003) on knowledge building. The approach taken in this research is via the description of skills rather than personality or traits. Emphasis is therefore upon elements that are both teachable and learnable. Assessment tasks have been designed for the ATC21S project. They have been developed for use by 11-15 year old students in order to address the question of whether this construct, in all its complexity, can be assessed, and whether this construct is perceived similarly across cultures. The tasks are designed to be used to explore the thought processes and strategies that students use as an individual within a group to solve both well defined and poorly defined problems. A problem solving process model which draws on research undertaken in Australia (Griffin, 2001) has been drawn upon as a resource to guide assessment task development for the cognitive aspects of the construct. Both social and cognitive processes contained in the model described are depicted across levels of increasing sophistication such that the behaviours of collaborative problem solvers can be characterised. The descriptions and analyses of data from implementing the assessment tasks in Australia, Finland, Singapore and the USA raise questions concerning the relationships across the construct’s elements. Data from cognitive laboratories in which students across these four countries are monitored as they think aloud through the assessment tasks are used to illustrate the nature of the relationships between the two major dimensions of collaborative problem solving – collaboration or “social” elements, and problem solving or “cognitive” elements. This project seeks both to define the skills relevant to the 21st century and to identify appropriate methods for their assessment. Data from the first phase of checking these tasks with students will be available for this presentation.
References to be provided with papers 1 to 3.
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