Look who’s talking… And when and how: Applying Conversation Analysis to small group collaborative learning in Business Education

Abstract

Business schools globally face an increasing demand from industry to deliver graduates with advanced critical thinking, ethical reasoning and communication skills. Case studies, employing collaborative learning activities in the form of argumentation and negotiation exercises, are widely used to facilitate the acquisition of this complex skill set. However, despite its widespread use, little has been written about the micro-level processes at work when business students collaborate around solving the ethical dilemmas presented in case studies. The research aims to provide a more concrete understanding of how business students in higher education use discussion and argumentation in a face-to-face learning environment to develop the ethical, communication and critical thinking competencies required for their future careers. From a theoretical perspective, the project contributes to the learning sciences as it builds on the theory related to the cognitive processes in group learning and argumentation as a tool for learning. Furthermore, the findings are used to provide guidelines for designing collaborative exercises; intervention into group discussions; and the assessment of collaborative competencies. Conversation Analysis (CA) shed light on patterns in the collaborative process relating to the framing of issues for discussion and the occurrence of silence as either a functional or dysfunctional component of a group discussion. Positioning analysis was additionally employed to interpret the way group members resist, repair, facilitate and utilise learning opportunities. Excerpts are presented to illustrate the occurrences of conversational moves relating to issue framing, silence and the positions students adopt in the conversation. From the findings, profiles for productive and unproductive collaborative sessions emerged.