Students’ Epistemological Framing of Roles in a Collaborative Game Design Project

Abstract

Collaborative design is a promising context for learning disciplinary and collaborative skills, but how students frame their roles impacts their participation, and is an important consideration in designing supports for interdependent, interdisciplinary collaborative activities. We examine grade 7 students’ approaches to designing board games for science learning in an out-of-school context. Here, team roles were divided by expertise in science, concept art and game design. Our qualitative analysis of student teams’ recorded discussions identified two contrasting cases of individuals’ expectations of their own and of others’ roles, and their differing collaborative outcomes. Findings illuminate how individual expectations can shape collaborators’ epistemological framings and participation, and have implications for supporting interdependent collaboration in other design-based activities.