Sam Romney Cat-Oliason 4/10/2013 Epistemological Issues Brought up by Working as a Collective The article I chose caught my eye because

of its relevance with my college experience. The article is about research done on 6th graders about their learning in groups and if it hinders or helps their learning process. Children are great to study for this topic because they wont have developed too many strong opinions on subjects, and dont have their own political agendas. Their innocence helps the research because there is less bias, and less variables for the researchers to take into consideration. The researchers studied classrooms that focused on creativity. This includes creative writing, musing, singing, etc. One of the more interesting points this study brought to light is that some level of disagreement or conflict between the children of the group concerning the task actually increased their collective creativity. My assumption was that when disagreement happens they all listen to the dialogue between the two parties at odds. This dialogue makes their worlds bigger because they are getting multiple perceptions on the task they need to do. Why one child thinks it should be done one way, and another thinks it should be done differently. Lack of disagreement made the groups observed less creative as a whole. On creative writing tasks it depended on the emotions towards the topic whether how good the writing was. The researchers task for the children was for them to program a robot in such a way that it would repeat certain actions. They would have to learn about the robot and try different things. There were multiple ways to do this, but it took creativity. The observers watched how the different groups approached the problem differently, as they all have a different way of learning.

They came to understand this problem over time through reasoning activities that included: observation, experimentation, argumentation, elaboration, clarification, and play. These findings back up the importance of group work. One of the main reasons people dont like group work (and I can attest to this) is because people argue and think things should be done their way. This actually makes for a better outcome because of all the perspectives being taken into account. (Source on next page).

Works Cited Sullivan, F. R. (2011). Serious and Playful Inquiry: Epistemological Aspects of Collaborative Creativity. Journal Of Educational Technology & Society, 14(1), 55-65.