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Different leaders: Emergent organizational and intellectual leadership in children’s collaborative learning groups

Mercier, E.; Higgins, S.; Da Costa, L.

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Authors

E. Mercier

L. Da Costa



Abstract

This paper presents two studies that examine emergent leadership in children’s collaborative learning groups. Building on research that finds that leadership moves are distributed among group members during learning activities, we examined whether there were patterns in the distribution of moves, resulting in different types of emergent leaders in groups. Study one examines individual groups working with a teacher, on the same task either with paper or multi-touch tables. Study two examines groups of students in a multi-touch classroom. Results from study one indicated that the leadership was distributed among the students; the distributions aligned with classifications of intellectual leadership moves and organizational leadership moves for about half of the groups. There were no differences in emergent leadership between the multi-touch and paper conditions. These results were explored in more detail in a multi-touch classroom study, exploring emergent leadership in 22 groups of students across six classes. Again, leadership was distributed among group members, and specific roles of intellectual and organizational leader, taken on by two different students, could be identified in half of the groups. These results suggest that attention should be paid to how students are engaging in collaborative learning tasks to ensure all students participate in the intellectual as well as organizational demands of the task. Additionally, the pattern of the distribution of roles suggests that care should be taken to specify behaviors if the role of leader is assigned to collaborative groups.

Citation

Mercier, E., Higgins, S., & Da Costa, L. (2014). Different leaders: Emergent organizational and intellectual leadership in children’s collaborative learning groups. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 9(4), 397-432. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-014-9201-z

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 9, 2014
Online Publication Date Sep 14, 2014
Publication Date Dec 1, 2014
Deposit Date Jul 14, 2014
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning
Print ISSN 1556-1607
Electronic ISSN 1556-1615
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 9
Issue 4
Pages 397-432
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-014-9201-z
Keywords Emergent roles, Leadership, Multi-touch tables, Collaborative learning, Interactive surfaces, CSCL.

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Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2014. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.







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