SOCIOEMOTIONAL ASPECTS OF STUDENTS LEARNING IN A COGNITIVE-APPRENTICESHIP ENVIRONMENT

In this article, it is argued that learner's individual activities and interpretations in new learning environments have not been adequately analyzed. The analyses of students' social and motivational interpret ations of interaction during classroom teaching and learning are repor ted. The interactive learning was organized according to the principle s of a cognitive apprenticeship and applied to a technology-based lear ning environment. The purpose of the learning task was to promote the mediation of modern technological thinking and problem-solving skills for 7th grade students in a LegoTClogo environment. An on-line method was developed for step by step analysis of students' social interpreta tions and motivational orientation during the learning process. In Stu dy 1 the focus was to describe how interaction based on cognitive appr enticeship in a complex technology-based learning environment affects the students' situational motivational and emotional interpretations. It is demonstrated what are the possible processes to appear among the students by describing eight cases. The results show that only some s tudents interpreted tasks and teacher's activities in the anticipated direction of the cognitive apprenticeship model. In Study 2 six case-b ased descriptions demonstrate how students with different orientationa l tendencies in a traditional classroom learning develop their motivat ional orientation and coping strategies during the experimental lesson s. For that purpose the students' motivational orientations in traditi onal classroom lessons were evaluated with paper and pencil tests. The results indicate that the cognitive apprenticeship and technology ric h environment may maintain the student's tendency toward task orientat ion and even direct some students toward task-orientation. It is concl uded that the same instructional arrangements in two studies were inte rpreted differently and led to different cognitive and emotional proce sses among individual students. The results call fur a discussion on m ore detailed considerations of the complex interactional bases for ind ividual students' motivation and new instructional design.