Perspective-Taking as a Tool to Examine Engaging in Differences During Shared Meaning-Making

Abstract

Supporting students to develop shared meaning-making skills across differences is a critical educational goal. This study built on a series of studies to explore ways to address this goal and examined how diverse teams engaged with their differences around politically charged topics in a text-based CSCL tool. We conceptualized engaging in differences as the extent to which team members position, coordinate, and negotiate their identity-related narratives and different perspectives during their shared meaning-making and as a form of perspective-taking. We then collected and analyzed the discussions of 13 diverse teams over four-time points. Our analysis suggested that teams engaged in five communication patterns while engaging in differences in their narratives and perspectives around charged topics: Egocentric, subjective perspective-taking, reciprocal perspective-taking, mutual perspective-taking, and societal- symbolic perspective-taking.