Peer talk in collaborative writing of primary school students: A conversation analytic study of student interaction in the context of inquiry learning

The thesis reports on four related studies that focus on face-to-face peer interaction in collaborative writing events of 8-12 year old students, who are engaged in projects for inquiry learning. A detailed analysis of the data with the use of Conversation Analysis, has generated new insights on two main aspects: how students create a written product together and how they share and discuss knowledge and knowing with each other. The first study demonstrates how students proffer and handle proposals for the text and procedural proposals during collaborative writing. Secondly, the analysis focuses on how the students reflect on writers’ choices concerning the intended written product. The third study displays how they are triggered to share knowledge with their fellow students. In the fourth study, the use of utterances holding ‘I know’, ‘you know’ and ‘we know’ was analysed, to understand how students relate to knowledge and knowing within their peer group. The outcomes of the research add to the current insights on collaborative writing from a sociocultural and dialogic perspective, and to the existing body of knowledge on proposal sequences and epistemics in conversation, as established by studies employing Conversation Analysis.