Relating students' personal frameworks for science learning to their cognition in collaborative contexts

This study examines relationships between students' motivational and episte mological perspectives-called their "personal frameworks" for science learn ing-and their cognitive engagement with peers during collaborative knowledg e-building tasks in two science classrooms. Twelve eighth graders' perspect ives on self, learning, and knowledge were discerned through interviews, an d their collaborative cognition was judged through analysis of their discus sions during a 12-week unit on building models of the nature of matter. A n umber of analytic categories that depict students' perspectives and high an d low sociocognitive engagement patterns are described. The dimension of st udents' personal frameworks that most closely mirrored their patterns of so ciocognitive behaviors were their learning-referenced perspectives. One imp lication of this finding is that a more explicit metacognitive focus in sci ence classrooms might help students develop flexibility in adopting perspec tives on learning that are most productive for their current learning tasks . An implication for research is that individual differences in perspective s should not be ignored as we widen our analytic lens to examine community knowledge building in science classrooms. (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.