Päivi Immonen-Orpana, Laurea University of Applied Sciences
Well Life Center, FINLAND Mauri Åhlberg,
University of Helsinki, FINLAND Abstract
We are reporting research on collaborative knowledge building compared to individual conceptual change during a professional study unit in University of Applied Sciences. As educational research that is a design experiment, a multi-case, multi-method study. We used both individual and collaborative concept mapping in the same design experiment. The theme of the design experiment was ‘Coping at Home’. In the competence based curriculum it was a research project as a learning environment. The core concept of the research pro- ject and study unit Physiotherapy of the elderly was ‘successful aging’. The subjects were Bachelor of Health Care students in Laurea University of Applied Sciences in Finland. We monitored both individual and collabo- rative learning and knowledge building related to this concept and also students’ self-reflection by Vee dia- grams. The focus of the study was professional and generic competence, especially the reflective compe- tence of physiotherapy students. Students’ conceptions developed greatly. Collaborative knowledge building was meaningful for the individual conceptual change. The discussion during the concept mapping process was like a shared thinking process. Students continued each others talking and thinking very fluently like they had had “common brains”. It took lot of conversations and many speech acts before the common understanding had existed. After collaborative interactions, multidisciplinary concrete links were made between all con- cepts almost in all individual concept maps and interconnectedness of concepts in different subject areas was understood. Concepts in these individual concept maps were also more at the same time more theoretical and practical than in previous concept maps of these subjects. Also the wider context of the concepts was recognized in many individual concept maps. Students’ conceptual frameworks developed from novice level to more advanced expert level. According to students the research project as a learning environment was interesting and useful. They attained new knowledge, skills and attitude and new perspective to their profes- sional knowledge.
Introduction
The purpose of the study is to monitor and promote quality of learning and development of the professional and generic competences of physiotherapy students. The generic competence focused in this study is reflec- tive metacognitive competence which means students ability to evaluate her/his own learning and compe- tence, to identify development challenges and problems, to develop her/his competence independently and with others, to share what she/he has learnt and to assume a role in a group/team and acquire and analyse information systematically.
The learning environment - the research project - is based on real needs of elderly people (over 75 years) who still live at home and wish to stay home. The physiotherapy students are going to design programs for an interactive TV – Caring TV-project in aim to support the functional ability, activity, social and mental welfare of the elderly and also to give possibilities to the elderly to discuss with other elderly people in similar posi- tions with the help of different counselling, teaching and instruction methods. The aim of the project is to support successful ageing and sustainable welfare. The needs and expectations of the elderly exist in four themes: welfare, safety, functional activity and possibility to take part in activities. Students try to find out these themes in their professional basis and to plan evidence based interactions as programs of that interac- tive television. To plan the programs they need to understand and learn more about the main concept of project: successful ageing. The teaching and learning method is Learning by Developing (LbD), which is a concept developed in Laurea University of Applied Sciences, Finland (Raij 2007). In this study learning is un- derstood as a meaningful conceptual change. Physiotherapy students’ learning is monitored and evaluated by the quality tools of high quality learning: improved concept maps and Vee diagrams: (1) as an individual con- ceptual change and (2) as collaborative and social learning and knowledge building of two student groups.
Backgroud
Conceptual change as learning
Sinatra & Pintrich (2003, 6) characterize intentional conceptual learning with few dimensions: intentional conceptual learning is goal-directed, the goal is to change conceptual understanding; intentional conceptual change is characterized by conscious initiation and regulation of cognitive, metacognitive and motivational processes to bring about a change in knowledge.
According to Vosniadou & Kollias (2003, 2) the conceptual change is the outcome of a complex cognitive as well social process. An initial naïve theory is restructured in order to agree with currently accepted scientific and expert views. Studies of conceptual change have shown that this is a slow and gradual process. Dillon (1993, 229) describes the relationship between conceptual development, context and characteristic models of learning for a given issue. He creates a theoretical model for how people develop an understanding of en- vironmental issues. The first exploratory, stage is characterized by developing an awareness of key concepts in a limited contextual framework. In the second stage, often involving some rudimentary work across disci- plines, tentative links are made between concepts. In the third stage, usually characterized by extensive subject- based study, concrete links between related subjects are made, the contextual framework is broad- ened and there is some recognition of the interconnectedness of concepts in different subject areas. In the final, multidisciplinary, stage, concrete links are made between all concepts, interconnectedness is under- stood and the wider context dependency of the concepts is recognized.
Concept mapping is a way to describe and visualize the conceptual understanding and its change. Accord-
ing to Nowak and Canãs concept maps are graphical tools for organizing and representing knowledge. They include concepts, usually enclosed in circles or boxes of some type, and relationships between concepts indi- cated by a connecting line linking two concepts. Words on the line referred to as linking words or linking phrases, specify the relationship between the two concepts. We define concept as a perceived regularity in events or objects, or records of events or objects, designated by a label. The label for most concepts is a word, although sometimes we use symbols such as + or %, and sometimes more than one word is used. Propo- sitions are statements about some object or event in the universe, either naturally occurring or constructed. Propositions contain two or more concepts connected using linking words or phrases to form a meaningful statement. Sometimes these are called semantic units, or units of meaning. (Nowak & Canãs 2008, 1)
Meaningful, high-quality Learning
According to Åhlberg (1993 - 2007) high quality learning has at least 20 aspects. It is divided into individual and social learning, learning from personal level to organizational and the humankind levels. The first four aspects of high quality learning are as follows: 1) Meaningful in the sense that it corresponds real needs of individual, society and humankind. Through the concept of 'real needs' high quality learning is connected to the general definition of 'quality'. It is meaningful also in the Ausubel’s sense that new learnt knowledge is connected to earlier knowledge. 2) Deep in the sense that grounds and justifications for knowledge are ac- tively sought after, and consequences of knowledge is actively tested both theoretically and empirically. 3) Proactive, creative, expanding, transformative, surpassing earlier knowledge and expertise in the sense that real human needs are better and better met, real problems are solved, or at least alleviated and better fu- ture is created as a result of creative learning. It often means reframing problems, seeing the world, its prob- lems and real human needs in different perspectives. 4) Metacognitive, in the sense that ways to monitor and promote own learning are learnt.
According Novak and Gowin (1984) concept maps and Gowin's Vee diagram are a way to promote meaningful learning. Åhlberg (1993) presented his improved versions of both, which have been improved later on (Åhl- berg 1998 – 2008, Åhlberg, Äänismaa & Dillon 2005). Elements of an improved method of concept mapping are as follows: 1) All concepts are main elements of thinking and learning, and they are always inside frames. 2) Novak and Gowin (1984) and Novak (1990, 1998) prefer very short verbal labels for concepts. However, con- cepts sometimes require many words in order to be correctly labelled. There is no accurate limit on how many words may be included in a concept label. In an improved concept map as many words as are needed are used to name the concept accurately. 3) In order to have a meaningful proposition, all links between concepts have arrowheads to show in which direction the connection from one concept to another is to be read
resources to answer the focus question'? Åhlberg integrated the basic ideas of action research and Deming's cycle from Continual Quality Improvement movement into the design of Improved Vee Heuristic. This tool provides for teachers, pupils and researchers valuable data (e.g. Åhlberg & Ahoranta 2002). Åhlberg (1988 – 2008) has an integrating approach to both theory building and its testing in practice. Similar integrating ap- proach is in Laurea’s pedagogical strategy, Learning by Developing (Raij 2007).
Table 1. The steps of Improved Vee Diagram by Åhlberg (1993-2007)
The main elements of the improved Vee heuristic (Åhlberg 1993 – 2007)
1. Focus question(s) with own words, in question form.
2. Value basis: Why do you want to spend your life, time and re- sources to answer the focus question(s)?
3. Theoretical basis: What is your tentative theory in the beginning of your inquiry? What do you know in the beginning of your inquiry? 4. Conceptual basis: What are the main concepts of your theoretical basis? They act like lenses or a net by which you try to answer the fo- cus question(s).
5. Methodological basis: What methods do you plan to use to answer your focus question(s)?
6. Description of what has been really done in order to answer the fo- cus question(s).
7. Records; what kind of literature, research paper etc. has got 8. Transformations: decision making, How?
9. Knowledge claims; what did I really learn? 10. Value claims; what was valuable?
Learning by Developing
In the late 1990s, Laurea University of Applied Sciences chose as its strategic approach the integration of education, research and development, and regional development. A concept of learning and knowledge in line with the strategic intent was recorded in Laurea’s pedagogical strategy and approved by the Board on 28 October 2002. This strategy was revised in spring 2007. According to the strategy, learning at Laurea takes place through instruction, research and development. The principle of triple task integration, approved as Laurea’s strategy, was turned into the idea of ‘learning in projects’ in the 1990s and the early days of the new millennium. While implementing the pedagogical strategy, Laurea’s practical developers refined this principle into the Learning by Developing (LbD) model. Competence development in the LbD- model and its values like authenticity, partnership and creativity etc. are described in figure 1. Learning by Developing combines two of the major orientations of polytechnic universities: professional education (learning) and research-oriented higher education (developing). (Rauhala 2007a)
The development objectives of the European Higher Education Area and research on curricula carried out by Finnish higher education institutions led to the adoption of a competence-based curriculum idea and model. The model’s focus is not on contents but on broader competences needed in the workplace of the future. It is no coincidence that the core competences defined in a Future Probe published in autumn 2006 by the Con- federation of Finnish Industries ended up being very similar to Laurea’s generic curriculum competences, which are reflective, ethical, innovation, globalisation and network competence. The generic competences defined in Laurea’s competence-based core curriculum are theoretically same as those defined by ARENE’s ECTS Project: self-development, ethical competence, communication and interaction competence, develop- ment competence, organisational and social competence, and international competence. (ARENE 2007) The theoretical difference lies in the fact that subject-specific competences run parallel to the generic compe- tences in the ECTS Project’s recommendations. In Laurea’s theory, subject-specific competences are also generic competences (knowledge-based and skill-based professional competences). (Rauhala 2007b) The cur- riculum of physiotherapy education is based on Laurea’s development work and European Physiotherapy benchmark work (WCPT 2003) and curriculum process in physiotherapy in Laurea is described by Piirainen, Julin and Immonen-Orpana (2007).
Successful ageing as conceptions of physiotherapy students
The purpose of the study and research questions
The purpose of the study is to monitor and promote quality of learning and the growth of the professional and generic competence of the physiotherapy students (Laurea 2006). The teaching and learning method was learning by developing. In this study learning is understood as a meaningful conceptual change. Physiotherapy students’ learning is monitored and evaluated by the quality tools of high quality learning: improved concept maps and Vee diagrams: (1) as an individual conceptual change and (2) as collaborative and social learning and knowledge building of two student groups. The core concept of the course and developmental project is ‘successful aging’. The research questions are:
1. What kind of individual conceptions do the students build on the concept of successful ageing? What kind of concepts and propositions they have a) before the project, b) after the project and c) after they have built together a summarising concept map?
2. What happens in collaborative learning as social knowledge building? What happens when a concept map of the same theme is built by group of students? What kinds of differences (if any) are in collaborative learning processes and products when the two groups are compared?
3. What kind of socially built conceptions (concepts and propositions) do the students have after the project? 4. What did student learn evaluated by Vee diagrams?
Method and subjects
As educational research this is a design experiment, a multi -case, multi -method study. The subjects are Bachelor of Health Care students in Laurea University of Applied Sciences in Finland. They are third year Physiotherapy students and they all are female. They are studying their professional study unit Physiother-
apy of the elderly in the Coping at Home research project and in its Caring TV- project. In the two study
groups there are 22 students. The individual chance of conceptual change is evaluated by 9 research persons who have a different knowledge level in baccalaureate qualification, in the matriculation examination of Finnish language test. Three research persons are chosen by random choice in each group: high achieving, average achieving and low achieving group.
Data collection as a part of design experiment
In September 2006, before the study unit of Physiotherapy of elderly starts, the students built their first indi- vidual concept maps of the concept of successful ageing based on their own common sense knowledge. After that they discussed the themes and tried to find out their own professional possibilities to support the aims of the project. They wrote evidence based reports of the theme and planned programs to television. They had their 7 week sessions; one to two programs every weekday and 3-4 programs per a student pair. The students had a possibility to discuss in a computer based learning environment (Discendum Optima) of their own ex- periences and evaluate each others work and reports. They visit in homes of the elderly and there to observe and evaluate the functional ability and activity, quality of life, stress and experiences of the elderly by WHO’s measures. After that they built their second individual concept maps of successful ageing based on experiences with the elderly, evidence based literature and reports and work in television. In January 2007, the students wrote their reflection by Vee diagrams of the process of planning their TV programs. Because of practical scheduling reasons the students were divided into two groups: group A had 15 members and group B had 7 members. In January both group A and B created collaboratively a group level concept map of the theme’ successful ageing’ These face- to – face interaction sessions were both videotaped and recorded by Cmap Recorder. In February 2007 the students built third individual concept maps, individual professional concept map based on shared knowledge creation.
Data analysis
Both individually and socially built concept maps and Vee diagrams were evaluated and analysed by content analysis; content maps also by simply statistical analysis. Collaborative group level concept mapping proc- esses, videotaped sessions, were analyzed by dialogue analysis. Before dialogue process analysis, the dialogue was divided into dialogue turns. A turn is an interval of expression by a single participant. The units were either turns or parts of turns, such as sentences or single words. The categories in analysis (Table 2.) were developed applying Aarnio & Enqvist (2001).
Table 2. The categories in dialogue analysis applying Aarnio & Enqvist 2001.
1. to produce a concept synthesis (CS), 2. to produce a proposition synthesis (PS) 3. to produce own opinion (O),
4. to ask a clarifying question, (CQ) 5. to ask a direct question (DQ)
6. to support others opinion by agreeing or connecting own opinions to others’ (S) 7. to answer a question (AQ)
8. to continue others opinion with a new idea (C), 9. to produce own attitudes (A)
10. to produce an unnecessary opinion, which is not connected to aims (UN)
Results
Individual conceptual change
What kind of individual conceptions do the students build on the concept of successful ageing? What kind of concepts and propositions they have a) before the project, b) after the project and c) after they have built together a summarising concept map?
Before the study unit, in first concept maps of a concept of “successful ageing” the research persons (N=9) created 48 concepts and 32 propositions. (Figure 2.) The following kinds of abstract concepts were used: ‘life’ (good life, quality of life, life satisfaction) ‘health’ (physical and mental health), ‘welfare’, ‘functional ability’, ‘human relationships’, ‘economical situation’, and concrete concepts like ‘home’ and ‘environment’. Immediately after the study unit, in the second individual concept maps the total number of concepts in- creased from 48 to 71 and the total number of propositions from 32 to 54. The content categories remained similar as earlier. Professional, active functional aspect was very prominent and concepts of ‘independency’ and ‘activity’ were mentioned many times. In propositions there was found five themes: “supporting the health”, “physical -”, “social -”, “environmental -” and “psychological existent”.
The total number of concepts and propositions
48 71 84 32 54 166 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
1 map 2 map 3 map
concepts propositions
Figure 2. The total number of concepts and propositions in improved concept maps.
After the social concept mapping, in the third individual concept maps, the total number of concept in- creased from 71 to 84 and the total number of propositions increased from 54 to 166.
In the third individual concept maps, there was lot of new propositions and concepts like “optimistic atti- tude”, “sexuality”, “good physical condition” “social support” and “pets” which did not exists in first or sec- ond individual concept maps. In propositions there were found very similar themes like before and a new