Analyzing Equality of Participation in Collaborative Inquiry: Toward a Knowledge Community

Abstract

This paper shares preliminary findings from a designed-based study of the Knowledge Community and Inquiry (KCI) model for secondary science curriculum. We investigate the impact of the model on students' cooperative knowledge construction and their understanding of the science of climate change. Working closely with a science teacher, we co-designed a 10-week curriculum unit with small group and whole class collaborations across two participating classrooms. We present detailed analysis of the wiki content created by two groups of students, revealing a positive correlation between students' contribution to collaborative inquiry activities and their achievements in the curriculum. This finding suggests the need for increased scaffolding to support symmetric participation in collaborative inquiry so that both high and low achieving students benefit from such collaborative science curriculum activities.