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DOI: 10.1039/C3RP00081H (Paper) Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 2013, 14, 576-588

Exploration of peer leader verbal behaviors as they intervene with small groups in college general chemistry

Ushiri Kulatunga and Jennifer E. Lewis*
Department of Chemistry, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave. CHE205, Tampa, FL 33620, USA. E-mail: jennifer@usf.edu

Received 15th June 2013 , Accepted 17th August 2013

First published on 29th August 2013

Abstract

Current literature has emphasized the lack of research into verbal behaviors of teachers as a barrier to understanding the effectiveness of instructional interventions. This study focuses on the verbal behaviors of peer leaders, who serve as de facto teachers in a college chemistry teaching reform based on cooperative learning. Video data obtained throughout a semester of General Chemistry I from two different peer leaders, each interacting with a different group of students, was subjected to two rounds of qualitative data analysis. First, Toulmin's argumentation scheme was used to characterize the arguments constructed by group members during peer leader intervention. Next, verbal behaviors exhibited by the peer leaders during intervention were examined. Findings of this study showed that peer leaders used an array of verbal behaviors to guide students to build chemistry knowledge, and that a relationship existed between student argument components and peer leader verbal behaviors, with data most frequently emerging in response to short questions from the peer leader, and warrants in response to probing and clarifying questions. The findings from this study have implications for professional development of teachers at all levels, specifically for demonstrating the interplay between group intervention strategies and student discourse within cooperative learning groups.

Introduction

Cooperative learning is a student-centered instructional reform that began in the 1960s and is currently prevalent at the college level (Springer et al., 1999; Johnson et al., 1998, 2007). Cooperative learning is achieved when students work together in groups to accomplish shared learning goals (Johnson and Johnson, 2002). Cooperative learning has shown to be an effective student-centered pedagogical approach that promotes positive student learning outcomes (Webb, 1989; Slavin, 1996; Johnson and Johnson, 2002; Kose et al., 2010; Kirik and Boz, 2012). Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) (Gosser et al., 2010; Mitchell et al., 2012), Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) (Lewis and Lewis, 2005; Moog and Farrell, 2008), and Problem-Based Learning (PBL) (White, 2007) are some of the currently popular cooperative learning instructional approaches at college level (Eberlein et al., 2008).

In spite of these college instructional reform methods, research has demonstrated that one of the main barriers to the implementation of such student-centered instructional reforms is the inadequate training in pedagogy for college science and mathematics faculty (Wright and Sunal, 2004; Walczyk et al., 2007; Al-Amoush et al., 2012). A study conducted by Walczyk et al. (2007) also found that college faculty who did receive training were more likely to consult instructional innovation resources as support for teaching; therefore, professional development regarding teaching is vital for the sustainable implementation of cooperative learning at the college level.

For the successful implementation of cooperative learning, the teacher must be equipped with the necessary skills (Sharan, 2010; Sharan and Tan, 2013). The teacher must employ effective group monitoring (Johnson and Johnson, 1990) and intervention (Brodie, 2001; Hamm and Adams, 2002) strategies for cooperative learning to be effective. An evaluation (Cohen et al., 2004) of teacher training programs, however, found that teachers learned more about routine administrative tasks (e.g. composing groups, assigning roles) than about group intervention strategies (e.g. when and how to intervene, use scaffolds, promote interaction, or otherwise guide the group process).

Group monitoring and intervention requires the teacher to engage in productive discourse, e.g., questioning and exploratory talk, that helps students reason (Mercer et al., 2004; Webb et al., 2004; Webb, 2008; Ding et al., 2007). Studies have also demonstrated that students do not provide explanations for conclusions (Meloth and Deering, 1999; Chinn et al., 2000), elaborate on responses or ask high-level questions (King, 2002) without teacher guidance or explicit instructions to provide justifications. In a study conducted over a 20-year period on teacher interactions by Galton et al. (1999), however, the percentage of time teachers spent on directly providing students facts and procedural directions increased from 57% to over 80% of total teacher discourse. This finding is disconcerting, since research suggests that teacher discourse should comprise strategies such as scaffolding, probing, questioning, and challenging student ideas, rather than direct teaching, in order to help students attain higher level cognitive processing for successful learning (King, 2002). Recent research (Kennedy, 2004) also has demonstrated that instructional approaches have not changed despite many reform efforts. Teacher-centered beliefs are still dominant among teachers (Al-Amoush et al., 2012) and scaffolding practices are rare (Van de Pol et al., 2011). Therefore, examining the range of verbal behaviors exhibited by teachers continues to be important. It is also important that professional development programs focus on teacher discourse that can guide students to supply reasoning and explanations, such as the development of skills for prompting, questioning, and otherwise scaffolding student group work.

In order to provide professional development programs focused on teacher discourse, it is important to understand the current state of the art of teacher discourse during cooperative learning. Previous studies have investigated teacher discourse in cooperative learning environments at primary, middle, and high school levels. A study that examined teacher discourse in middle school cooperative learning found that instructional practice was mostly recitation and procedural (Webb et al., 2006). On the other hand, a study that explored high school teacher discourse during cooperative learning found that teachers used an array of mediated-learning behaviors such as asking cognitive and metacognitive questions, challenging students' perspectives, and scaffolding student learning (Gillies and Boyle, 2008). Research has also shown that teachers who received training in specific communication skills and questioning strategies used more challenging and scaffolding behaviors, resulting in improved reasoning and problem-solving skills of primary school children (Gillies and Khan, 2008, 2009). All of these studies investigated teacher discourse during cooperative learning with K-12 students, and there is a lack of research on teacher discourse on this topic at the college level. Literature has also suggested that there is a general lack of research on teacher discourse during cooperative learning (Hertz-Lazarowitz and Shachar, 1990; Gillies and Boyle, 2008; Webb, 2009). Our study begins to address this literature gap by investigating teacher discourse during group intervention in a cooperative-learning-based teaching reform at the college level.

Peer-led Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (peer-led POGIL) is a weekly implementation of cooperative learning within a college general chemistry course (Lewis and Lewis, 2005, 2008). Peer-led POGIL is an adaptation of POGIL, which is a student-centered instructional reform with the objectives of promoting both content mastery and skill development, where skills include both those that are more content-specific (such as interpretation of graphical data) and those that might be termed broader thinking skills (such as scientific argumentation). POGIL curricular materials, known as ChemActivities, are based on a guided inquiry model and are intended for use by students working in small groups during class time, with the instructor facilitating rather than providing direct instruction. These paper and pencil materials frequently employ a learning cycle approach comprising three phases: exploration, concept invention, and application (Karplus, 1977). In the exploration phase students explore a model, which can include data, figures and/or equations, and answer basic questions about the information provided in the model. In the concept invention phase, students are asked to make connections among different pieces of information from the model. These connections are intended to support the introduction of a particular chemical concept, with the formal name of the concept withheld until the end of this phase. Finally, in the application phase, students answer questions that require the application of the introduced concept. A POGIL instructor, in this adaptation a peer leader but more commonly a faculty member, is expected to guide students to recognize that they can answer the questions in the curricular materials using the information provided.

The peer leaders who facilitate these weekly POGIL sessions in lieu of faculty are upper-level undergraduate students who have done well in the general chemistry course or chemistry graduate students. To avoid confusion for readers from other contexts, it should be noted the term peer leader is commonly used in the United States to denote an advanced student functioning as an instructor for a group of less-advanced students rather than to denote student–student interactions among students at the same level. This study explores peer leader discourse by examining the verbal behaviors of peer leaders during group intervention. Collectively examining both the teacher and the student discourse can help researchers understand better how instructors are interacting with students during group intervention. For our setting, an argumentation framework was used to analyze the student discourse in conjunction with the verbal behaviors of the peer leader.

The role of argumentation in science discourse has been gaining recognition recently. Research has shown that student argumentation has resulted in improved understanding of science concepts and better reasoning skills in elementary school children (Simon and Maloney, 2007), high school students (Jimenez-Aleixandre et al., 2000; Zohar and Nemet, 2002) and college students (Nussbaum et al., 2008). However, studies on argumentation have found that students have difficulty explaining phenomena based on data (Sandoval and Millwood, 2005; McNeill and Krajcik, 2007). Students also often do not provide scientific explanations to support claims (Kuhn and Reiser, 2005; McNeill and Krajcik, 2007). Teacher intervention strategies can impact students' scientific explanations (McNeill and Krajcik, 2008) and argumentation (Mork, 2012; Kaya, 2013). Findings of a study conducted by Evagorou and Osborne (2013) on collaborative argumentation suggest that teachers should be aware of the challenges students face when constructing arguments and come up with the appropriate scaffolding strategies to promote argumentation. It is important, therefore, to investigate whether instructors can prompt students to provide data and scientific reasoning as the students work in groups to construct chemistry knowledge. Combining the verbal behavior categories for teacher discourse with an argumentation framework for student discourse allows the investigation of the relationship between instructor verbal behaviors and student argumentation in our setting.

Recent studies have used argumentation as a tool to investigate student discourse specifically in college chemistry courses. Toulmin's argumentation scheme (Toulmin, 1958) has been used to analyze physical chemistry students' conceptual progress and normative classroom practices in POGIL classrooms (Cole et al., 2011; Becker et al., 2013). Becker et al. focused on students' development of particulate-level justifications for claims in thermodynamics. Cole et al. analyzed more general conceptual progress of students studying thermodynamics. Even though the findings of both of these studies revealed that the instructor's role was important in scaffolding student arguments during whole class discussions, the research focus was not on the interactive discourse between the teacher and the students during small group intervention. One interesting finding from Cole et al.'s study, that the quality of student discourse varied on different days, led to these researchers calling specifically for research into which “discourse interaction patterns” between teacher and students would support productive argumentation. Our work answers this call.

In our study, peer leader discourse during group intervention was coded with verbal behavior categories established by Gillies (2004, 2006) and Egan (2002), and student discourse was coded with Toulmin's argumentation scheme (1958). We address the following specific research questions:

(1) What types of verbal behaviors do peer leaders exhibit as they intervene with small student groups?

(2) What is the relationship, if any, between student argumentation and peer leader verbal behaviors?

(3) How do the peer leaders use verbal behaviors to help students build chemistry knowledge?

Method

Peer-led Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) setting

The peer-led POGIL sessions were held for a General Chemistry I course at a large public university in the southeastern United States. The students worked in small groups of 3–4 on targeted chemistry concepts presented via published guided inquiry materials, ChemActivities (Moog and Farrell, 2008), in weekly (50 minute) peer-led POGIL sessions. The class sizes ranged from 20–24 students, comprising a total of 5–6 groups per class. The student groups were mixed ability based on prior achievement in mathematics as represented by SAT or ACT scores.

The General Chemistry I students attended two regular chemistry lectures and one peer-led POGIL session each week. Each peer-led POGIL session began with a quiz and a brief introduction by the peer leader. The students then worked on the ChemActivities on chemistry concepts that they had not yet seen in lecture within small groups, typically for 20–35 minutes. The students were asked to discuss each question and come to a consensus answer within their group. Students were also assigned roles within groups to promote cooperative work. The roles rotated weekly to spread the responsibility among all group members. For any given class meeting, the Manager was responsible for monitoring group progress, which included making sure all group members were working on the same question at the same time as well as checking for understanding before the group moved to the next question. Formally, the Manager was the only group member allowed to initiate conversation with the peer leader, although this rule was not always enforced. The Reflector was responsible for assessing group function and reflecting on strengths and areas for improvement that could lead to better interactions among group members. The Recorder was responsible for writing down the group consensus answers to every question in the ChemActivity and for making this work visible and legible for monitoring by the peer leader during class. Although the peer leader reserved the option to call on any group member at any time, the Presenter was responsible for presenting and discussing the group's work as needed and was expected to be able to explain what the Recorder had written. If a group was not functioning well, the peer leader could ask the group member in the appropriate role to address the problem before attempting a direct intervention.

Typically during a session the peer leader facilitated one or two whole-class discussions to address difficult concepts, although the majority of class time was spent in small group discussion, with the peer leader moving around the room to monitor and intervene with each small group as needed.

Curricular materials

ChemActivities are paper-and-pencil POGIL curricular materials especially designed for use in cooperative groups with the peer leader (instructor) functioning as a facilitator. As previously mentioned, the activities are based on a learning cycle structure that entails exploration, concept invention, and application phases with questions that guide students through an exploration of data, figures, or verbal descriptions to build chemical concepts. In this way, these materials are different from typical worksheets in which students apply already-learned concepts to new problems; rather, the materials are designed to introduce students to new concepts. The ChemActivities are intended to promote analysis and interpretation, discussion, and student articulation of reasoning. The 15 ChemActivities in the semester of this study introduced general chemistry concepts such as conservation of mass and balanced chemical equations, limiting reagents, specific heat and thermochemistry, coulombic potential energy and its relationship to chemical bonding, the shell model of the atom, periodic trends, ionic bonds, Lewis structures, molecular polarity, and intermolecular forces, as part of a standard first semester General Chemistry I course for science majors.

Peer leader training

The instructors facilitating the weekly POGIL sessions were peer leaders, undergraduate or graduate students who received mandatory weekly training and support from the course coordinator, a faculty member with both chemical and pedagogical training. During the first hour of each training session, 8–16 peer leaders worked in groups of four on that week's assigned ChemActivity as if they were the general chemistry students. The faculty member who led the training sessions modeled the desired behavior of a peer leader in an instructional role in a guided inquiry setting, which included monitoring the groups and intervening as necessary. In this way peer leaders experienced cooperative learning as modeled by the trainer, a learning method that research has shown to be effective (Koutselini, 2009). Even though the peer leaders were not provided a specific argumentation framework, during interventions the faculty member encouraged the peer leaders to provide data and reasoning and to communicate with the other members of the small group.

During the second hour of the weekly training sessions, peer leaders developed their plans for facilitation of that week's ChemActivity with their own students. In developing these plans, they took into account not only their own experiences doing the activity as led by the faculty member, but also tried to predict what their students' experiences were likely to be. Their basic approach was to pinpoint troublesome sections of the activity and note them as especially important to monitor. In general, each peer leader's facilitation plan for a particular activity was individual, though all were aware of the general stricture that the plan should support students in working through the activity on their own, consonant with a guided inquiry approach. As the term continued and the peer leaders had more experiences to draw upon, they also shared information about practical concerns, such as strategies for time management in the classroom. By the middle of the term, the peer leaders also mock-led small portions of an activity during a training session while their fellow peer leaders and the faculty member observed and provided feedback. At no time were the peer leaders trained specifically with the verbal behavior categories or with the argumentation scheme used in this study.

For this study, discourse between a peer leader and a small group of students in the context described above was analyzed in order to gain a better understanding of effective group intervention strategies. As will be described below, verbal behavior categories were used to investigate the role of the peer leader's discourse, and Toulmin's argumentation scheme was used to analyze the student discourse.

Data source

A semester (Spring 2008) of video data on two small student groups in General Chemistry I was used. Maximum diversity sampling (Daniel, 2012) guided the selection of the peer leaders (instructors) and the groups. Peer leader 1 was a chemistry doctoral student with three years of teaching experience as a graduate teaching assistant. Peer leader 2 was a senior undergraduate student with several years of chemistry coursework, including general chemistry, but this was her first experience in a teaching role. Both peer leaders are female. The diversity of the larger group of peer leaders is such that revealing racial/ethnic information would insufficiently mask identity, but the two peer leaders also did not have race/ethnicity in common.

The two student groups were selected to represent two different group compositions with respect to sex and race/ethnicity to achieve maximum diversity, since literature (Webb, 1984) suggests that group composition in terms of sex and race/ethnicity can impact group interactions. The student group in peer leader 1's class was composed of three females (two Asian, one Black) and one male (Black). The student group in peer leader 2's class was composed of four White male students. Both groups were mixed ability with respect to incoming mathematics preparation. The demographics of the two student groups are provided in Tables 1 and 2. Student group composition remained constant throughout the semester. All students and peer leaders in the study gave informed consent for video recording during class time.

Table 1 Group A demographics
Student Sex Race/ethnicity Year SATM Course grade
Scott M White Junior 550 A
Mike M White Senior 440 B
Joe M White Sophomore 620 B
Ron M White Junior 420 C

Table 2 Group B demographics
Student Sex Race/ethnicity Year SATM Course grade
Janet F Asian Sophomore 580 C
Michiko F Asian Freshman 540 B
Sam M Black Freshman 530 F
Monifa F Black Sophomore 610 A

A total of 20 videos, 10 from each class, were used for the analysis and comprise the entire semester of group work. All videos were transcribed; transcripts were coded while watching the videos. During the coding of transcripts, peer-led episodes were identified. A peer-led episode began when the peer leader was in close proximity to the student group and started interacting with the group. The episode ended when the peer leader left that group. Student discourse during these peer-led episodes was coded with the analytic framework based on Toulmin's argumentation scheme. If the student discourse during the peer-led episode contained at least a claim, data, and warrant (argument core), the episode was coded as a “peer-led argument”. For the data collected over the semester, a total of 23 peer-led episodes were observed for peer leader 1, and 65% of these episodes were peer-led arguments. For peer leader 2, a total of 34 peer-led episodes were observed, and 67% of these episodes were peer-led arguments. Each statement made by the peer leader in every speech turn during a peer-led argument was coded with a verbal behavior category. Most of the time each speech turn contained only one statement, however, in some instances a speech turn contained multiple statements.

Coding

The coding comprised two frameworks for this study, verbal behavior categories for peer leader (instructor) discourse analysis and Toulmin's argumentation scheme for student discourse analysis. Verbal behavior categories proposed by Gillies (2006) and effective communication skills that have shown to promote student group learning (Gillies, 2004, 2006) were combined and adapted to this study, resulting in eight verbal behavior categories (Table 3) to fit our college-level peer-led POGIL setting. For example, the category “disciplines” was not used, since it is more suitable for younger students. The category “teacher control” was modified to direct teaching to indicate instances where the peer leader (instructor) lectured to the students instead of facilitating. The category “mediates” was expanded to four different communication skills (probing & clarifying, acknowledging & validating, confronting discrepancies & clarifying options, offering suggestions) that have been shown to mediate learning (Gillies, 2004, 2006).
Table 3 Peer leader verbal behavior categories
Category Example
Direct teaching Electrons in the outermost shell are referred to as valence electrons.
Cl is very electronegative. Na isn't. This is an ionic bond.
 
Short questions How many electrons?
How many molecules do you have of carbon dioxide?
What is the q for the nucleus of a carbon atom?
 
Encouraging Good! Fully confident.
This will be a good learning experience.
 
Maintaining Are you done with your homework?
Go put that on the board so everyone will know.
 
Probing & clarifying So why did you answer that for 10?
What can you tell me about resonance?
So how did you all know that alkanes were nonpolar?
 
Acknowledging & validating Okay, so it's the smallest.
That's right.
 
Confronting discrepancies & clarifying options But I just don't see how those variables are going to work out. So just use…use that…and have it…
So what you're saying is that the largest effect on the melting point is the size. But I've just showed you that these sizes are the same. And they're very different.
 
Offering suggestions So why don't you try to calculate the specific heat of all three groups?
Why don't we look at the equation for E?

The eight verbal behaviors used to analyze instructor discourse in our setting are shown in Table 3 along with examples from the data set coded under each verbal behavior category. Direct teaching describes discourse where the peer leader directly lectured or provided information to the students without guiding and facilitating. Short questions are questions that have an expected answer and receive an unelaborated response. Short questions can be answered from prior knowledge or information provided in the models of the ChemActivities. Probing & clarifying behaviors elicit student responses that require synthesis or analysis of information, or application of previously learned concepts. Encouraging describes peer leader verbal behaviors that praise the students for doing well on a task, expressing value or satisfaction. Maintaining is the code given to an expression whose function is to keep the classroom activity moving forward. Acknowledging & validating refers to behaviors the peer leader uses to let the students know that they are on the correct path, providing reinforcement. Confronting discrepancies & clarifying options captures situations when the peer leader notices and points out a discrepancy in the student responses, for example, students using information different from that given or employing more than one approach to a problem, or suggests that there are different options. Offering suggestions describes behaviors where the peer leader provides specific guidance to students to take a step toward solving a problem, without directly providing the answer.

One of the coders was the first author. The second coder was a chemical education doctoral student who coded 20% of the transcripts with peer-led episodes. Cohen's kappa for the inter-rater reliability on verbal behavior categories was 0.8, which is substantial agreement (Landis and Koch, 1977).

Toulmin's argumentation scheme (Toulmin, 1958) was used as the analytic framework for analyzing student arguments. In Toulmin's model of argumentation, an argument has specific components. The claim is the conclusion at which one arrives upon considering the data. The data consists of evidence, information, facts or procedures that lead to the claim. The warrant explains how the data or evidence leads to the claim. These three fundamental components (claim, data, warrant) comprise the core of the argument. Higher quality arguments may contain a backing (authority for the warrant) or a rebuttal (counter claim or a refutation of an argument component) (Erduran et al., 2004; Evagorou and Osborne, 2013). Although some authors have referred to the potential difficulty of identifying the separate components of an argument in Toulmin's argumentation scheme (Kaya, 2013), this study involved two independent coders in identifying the student argument components. The first author was one of the coders. The second was a chemistry education doctoral student from another institution who had used Toulmin's framework in her own research. Cohen's kappa for the inter-rater reliability on the argument components of the student discourse on 10% of the arguments was 0.64, which is substantial agreement (Landis and Koch, 1977).

Since previous research (Kuhn and Reiser, 2005; McNeill and Krajcik, 2007) has shown that students can have difficulty supporting their conclusions with data and explanations, we were interested in examining whether the students provided these supports when generating responses for chemistry questions in this study. Therefore, for examining the relationship between peer leader verbal behaviors and student argumentation, verbal behaviors that elicited data (evidence) and warrants (explanations) specifically were examined.

Results and discussion

Findings with respect to the first research question, “What types of verbal behaviors do peer leaders exhibit as they intervene with small student groups?” are presented here. The analysis revealed that all eight verbal behavior categories were present for both peer leaders (instructors). The distribution of the verbal behavior categories with respect to each peer leader for the data from the whole semester is presented in Table 4. Peer leader 1 engaged in 15 peer-led arguments (across the 10 peer-led sessions) in which a total of 153 coded statements emerged. Peer leader 2 engaged in 23 peer-led arguments over the same time period, in which a total of 250 coded statements emerged.
Table 4 Distribution of peer leader verbal behaviors
Verbal behavior category Percentage of verbal statements
Peer leader 1 Peer leader 2
(N = 153) (N = 250)
Short questions 38 34
Probing & clarifying 20 14
Maintaining 16 20
Acknowledging & validating 10 13
Offering suggestions 7 8
Confronting discrepancies 4 2
Direct teaching 3 7
Encouraging 1 2

As can be seen from Table 4, the distribution of the different verbal behaviors was similar for both peer leaders. A chi-square test of independence revealed no statistically significant difference in the distribution pattern of the verbal behavior categories for the two peer leaders (χ2(7) = 4.78, p = 0.687). Short questions, probing and clarifying, and maintaining were the most commonly observed behaviors for both peer leaders. It was promising to find that peer leaders more often used short questions, probing and clarifying, and suggestions to guide students instead of direct instruction, in alignment with the peer-led POGIL objectives. For both peer leaders, short questions were exhibited about twice as often as probing and clarifying. All four types of specific communication skills, probing & clarifying, acknowledging & validating, confronting discrepancies, and offering suggestions, that literature has shown to mediate learning (Gillies, 2004) are exhibited by both peer leaders.

The second research question, “What is the relationship, if any, between student argumentation and peer leader verbal behaviors?” also led to meaningful findings. In order to address this research question, data and warrant components of the arguments were examined to see which peer leader verbal behaviors elicited these argument components. The analysis of all the data components elicited for the total peer-led arguments constructed during the semester revealed that for peer leader 1, 64% and for peer leader 2, 61% of the data components emerged from short questions. The analysis of all the warrants revealed that for peer leader 1, 61% and for peer leader 2, 62% of the total warrants emerged from probing & clarifying verbal behaviors (Table 5).

Table 5 Verbal behavior categories and argument components
Verbal behavior Data (%) Warrants (%)
Peer leader 1 Peer leader 2 Peer leader 1 Peer leader 2
(N = 42) (N = 33) (N = 23) (N = 29)
Short questions 64 61 17 24
Probing & clarifying 21 24 61 62

These findings, that most of the data emerged from short questions and most of the warrants emerged from probing & clarifying, make sense in terms of the argumentation framework. Since data mostly comprises information (e.g. molecular weights, number of protons, electrons) that students use to arrive at a claim, short questions posed by the peer leaders tend to elicit the missing data. Since peer leader probing with prompts such as “why”, “how”, or “explain” and peer leader requests for clarification both tend to elicit explanations, which are the warrants of arguments, probing & clarifying behaviors mostly allow students to express missing warrants.

To move beyond a simple relationship between discrete prompt–response pairs, it was important to examine both the student and peer leader discourse throughout an intervention episode to understand the cumulative process of peer-leader-assisted argumentation. An example of a peer-led argument is presented in Fig. 1 to illustrate the relationship between the peer leader verbal behaviors and argument components. For context, this argument occurred in the POGIL session on the ChemActivity “Atomic Size” while the students were working on the question, “What trend in atomic radius is observed as one moves from left to right across a period?” While this particular interchange involves only one student directly interacting with the peer leader, the others, based on the video, are listening. In this peer-led argument the peer leader intervenes with the small group by first determining the student's belief about what the current task is, a maintaining verbal behavior, followed by a short question to start the process of determining whether the student is able to fully express an argument for the previous task. The student replies to the short question with the answer (claim), that the atomic radius decreases and provides the information, “because the core charge increases”, (data) that was used to arrive at the answer. The peer leader continues with probing and clarifying verbal behavior by asking, “Why does that happen?” and is rewarded with an explanation of the link between the data and the claim, “there's a greater charge pulling the electrons inward”, which serves as the warrant. Finally, the peer leader acknowledges and validates the student's answer, as can be seen in the final statement in Fig. 1.


Peer-led argument, from atomic size activity, with a single student in which peer leader verbal behavior codes are shown in bold italics and student argument component codes are shown in all capital letters.
Fig. 1 Peer-led argument, from atomic size activity, with a single student in which peer leader verbal behavior codes are shown in bold italics and student argument component codes are shown in all capital letters.

Although this episode demonstrates that the student was able to supply an argument, a peer leader's strategy of using a series of verbal behaviors to see whether an argument can be produced can also reveal problems with student reasoning. The two vignettes that follow demonstrate peer leader use of a variety of verbal behaviors to guide students to build a correct argument.

For context, the first of these vignettes is from the ChemActivity “The Ionic Bond”, and Fig. 2 presents the student discourse prior to peer leader intervention. The students are trying to answer the question, “Which would be expected to have stronger ionic bonds: NaCl or NaF? Explain your reasoning”.


Student argument, from the ionic bond activity, in which student argument component codes are shown in all capital letters.
Fig. 2 Student argument, from the ionic bond activity, in which student argument component codes are shown in all capital letters.

As illustrated in Fig. 2, the students are providing some evidence (data) to support their claim that NaF has stronger ionic bonding than NaCl. However, they have not explained how the evidence connects to the claim and are aware that their explanation is not “very scientific”. In other words, the students have not provided a warrant to build a complete argument. When the peer leader intervenes, as shown in Fig. 3, she begins with a short question (1), followed by probing and clarifying (3), as before, but this time the student she has asked does not succeed in supplying a warrant (4).


Peer-led argument, from the ionic bond activity, in which peer leader verbal behavior codes are shown in bold italics and student argument component codes are shown in all capital letters.
Fig. 3 Peer-led argument, from the ionic bond activity, in which peer leader verbal behavior codes are shown in bold italics and student argument component codes are shown in all capital letters.

When the student has difficulty supplying a warrant, the peer leader offers the suggestion (5) to use the Coulomb's law equation (force α − [(q1 × q2)/d2]) provided at the beginning of the activity. Student 1 attempts to answer; however, the peer leader specifies that student 2 should answer (7), which is coded as “maintaining” since she is requiring the student who was originally asked to address the question to do so. Student 2 provides a piece of evidence (data) that the “distance from the nucleus to the valence electron is closer” (9–11) but does not fully connect this new data to the claim that NaF has stronger ionic bonding. The peer leader acknowledges this answer (12) and proceeds to focus the students' attention on the mathematical relationship between two variables in the equation by probing the meaning of that relationship (14). The students need to correctly interpret the relationship between the variables, the Coulombic force (force) and the distance between the two centers of the ions (d), in order to provide the justification that connects the evidence to the claim (15). In other words, the peer leader's probing & clarifying verbal behavior is eliciting the warrant to complete the student argument that was incomplete prior to the intervention. Once the warrant has been expressed, the peer leader acknowledges and validates the response (16) and checks in with a short question to see if the other students agree. In this episode, the peer leader guides the students with questions to help them interpret the Coulomb's law equation and to use it as support for their evidence (the smaller size of the fluoride ion) in understanding why NaF has stronger ionic bonding than NaCl. The questioning strategy used by the peer leader is in alignment with the peer-led POGIL objective of supporting students in recognizing that they have access to all of the information necessary to address the questions in the ChemActivity.

Similar guidance from a peer leader can assist when students are missing both the warrant and the data. The second vignette (Fig. 4) illustrates a peer leader guiding students to provide the data to build an argument where initially the students only have a claim. For context, the students are working on the ChemActivity “Lewis Structures”, and addressing the question, “Predict the C–C bond length for a molecule with a C–C bond order of 1.5”. A table comprising the molecular structure, C–C bond order and C–C bond length for the organic compounds ethane, ethane, ethyne, and benzene is provided in the activity.


Segment of peer-led argument, from Lewis structures activity, in which peer leader verbal behavior codes are shown in bold italics and student argument component codes are shown in capital letters.
Fig. 4 Segment of peer-led argument, from Lewis structures activity, in which peer leader verbal behavior codes are shown in bold italics and student argument component codes are shown in capital letters.

This peer-led episode begins in the same way, with the peer leader asking a short question to find out the group's answer to a specific question (1). Student 2 provides the claim, the answer to the posed question (2), after which the peer leader probes the students to find out how they arrived at that answer (6). Student 1 provides some evidence (data) by referring to taking an average (8). In order to move the students toward a fuller explanation of the data, the peer leader asks a series of short questions (9, 11, 14, 16, 18), and provides some encouragement (14). This pattern of questioning demonstrates the way in which, when an expected scientific justification is not received for a probing & clarifying verbal behavior, the peer leader can focus on ensuring the students understand the data before moving to the rest of the argument. This combination of probing & clarifying followed by short questions was very common, particularly when students were not recognizing that relevant data could be found earlier in an activity. For example in Fig. 5, the peer leader again begins with probing and clarifying (1) and then switches to short questions (6) to elicit the data after hearing an incorrect claim (4). The ensuing confusion is resolved only when the peer leader's continued short questions result in the students finding the relevant data (23) themselves.


Segment of peer-led argument, from atomic size activity, in which peer leader verbal behavior codes are shown in bold italics and student argument component codes are shown in capital letters.
Fig. 5 Segment of peer-led argument, from atomic size activity, in which peer leader verbal behavior codes are shown in bold italics and student argument component codes are shown in capital letters.

After ensuring that the students can articulate the data clearly, the peer leader can move back to probing and clarifying to elicit the warrant, again using short questions as needed until the students are able to produce this final component of the core of an argument.

Argumentation, while an important goal in this setting, is not the only goal; in addition to building arguments, students are expected to build chemistry knowledge. The findings for the third research question shed light on how peer leaders use verbal behaviors to help students build chemistry knowledge, for example to fix an incorrect claim. The vignette in Fig. 6 is a peer-led episode in which the peer leader helps the students to recognize that they have made a mistake, and to correct it. For context, the students are working on a series of questions from the ChemActivity “Coulombic Potential Energy” about determining the potential energy of a hypothetical atom when the peer leader intervenes.


Peer-led argument segment, from Coulombic potential energy activity, in which peer leader verbal behavior codes are shown in bold italics and student argument component codes are shown in all capital letter.
Fig. 6 Peer-led argument segment, from Coulombic potential energy activity, in which peer leader verbal behavior codes are shown in bold italics and student argument component codes are shown in all capital letter.

As can be seen in Fig. 6, the peer leader begins the intervention by probing and clarifying, asking the students to explain their answer (1–3). Student 4 provides a wrong claim, that the potential energy cannot be negative, as a response to her question (2). Based on student responses, the peer leader then offers a suggestion that students should look at the provided Coulombic potential energy equation in order to solve this problem (6) and guides them through each variable in the equation with a series of short questions (7–13). With her suggestion, the peer leader is bringing in a piece of key information (the Coulombic equation) that students had missed. The short questions continue as the peer leader draws attention to the types of particles in a hypothetical atom (14–22). She acknowledges the students' responses (23) and helps them build the full warrant by helping them put the different pieces of information together, asking another short question (23) and receiving the final piece of the puzzle (24–25), allowing her to point out the discrepancy between the students' new knowledge and their original incorrect claim. Functionally, the peer leader was able to use a combination of verbal behaviors to engage the students in challenging their own previous response.

This peer-led episode illustrates how a peer leader can help a group to correct an incorrect claim by using verbal behaviors to uncover and correct a misunderstanding. This episode is focused on resolving an incorrect understanding of the relationships among variables in an equation, which may appear to be a basic concept. The students, however, need to be able to correctly interpret the Coulombic potential energy equation to build relationships between multiple course concepts, such as ionization energy, atomic radius, and potential energy, a set of ideas that students find very challenging. The student discourse following this peer-led episode revealed that students were able to construct arguments with correct scientific justification and articulate relationships among these difficult concepts. The students would not have been able to achieve this if the peer leader had not initially helped them to resolve their misinterpretation of the equation and to understand that potential energy can be positive or negative.

In these intervention episodes the peer leader used some short questions that elicited expected responses, which may seem trivial if taken alone. Peer leader discourse, however, is better thought of as a collection of mediated-learning behaviors (probing & clarifying, offering suggestions, acknowledging & validating, and confronting discrepancies) accompanied by short questions. Research has demonstrated that the combination of short questions with mediating behaviors promotes instructional scaffolding (Turner et al., 2002), creates a series of reciprocal discourse that helps students focus on the activity and produce explanations (Gillies and Khan, 2008), and fuels engagement and triggers more student questions (Zuckerman et al., 1998), all of which help students learn.

As seen in these episodes, the data analysis revealed some common scaffolding strategies the peer leaders used to guide students to build chemistry knowledge via argumentation. With the use of these strategies, peer leader helped students locate relevant data, build justifications (warrants) for their claims, and correct incorrect claims in the process of building chemistry knowledge. These strategies are consistent with verbal behaviors that have been observed by researchers studying teacher discourse in cooperative learning environments (Gillies and Boyle, 2008; Gillies and Khan, 2008). Suggesting the use of a relevant mathematical equation or guiding students through equations to help resolve incorrect understanding of relationships among variables are other unique strategies observed in our college chemistry POGIL setting where use of equations is prominent. Ultimately, it is a collective of verbal behaviors that seems to help students to build chemistry concepts without the peer leader having to provide direct instruction.

Conclusions

Combining Toulmin's argumentation scheme with the verbal behavior categories provided a fruitful framework for examining peer leader (instructor) interventions with small student groups. Focusing on verbal behaviors, understanding their relationship with student argumentation components, and noting their incorporation into guiding strategies provides a way to examine the functions of teacher discourse in group interventions. In this study, peer leaders employed a variety of verbal behaviors, including behaviors that previous literature has shown to mediate student learning in cooperative learning environments (Gillies and Khan, 2008, 2009). Most of the existing literature investigating teacher discourse is at the K-12 level and focuses on classroom teachers (Gillies, 2006; Gillies and Boyle, 2008; Webb et al., 2006). The findings from this study add to this body of literature by demonstrating that similar verbal behavior categories are useful for understanding the ways in which college chemistry instructors can work with small groups.

The findings revealed a relationship between peer leader verbal behaviors and student argumentation. A combination of short questions and probing & clarifying behaviors elicited scientific evidence (data) and scientific justifications (warrants) from the students. Peer leaders scaffolded students with a range of verbal behaviors to help them build more challenging argument components, such as warrants. Prior research has demonstrated not only the difficulties students face when having to support claims (Kuhn and Reiser, 2005; McNeill and Krajcik, 2007), but also that (McNeill and Krajcik, 2008) students may not receive much support from teachers for building scientific reasoning. Since literature (Jimenez-Aleixandre et al., 2000; Zohar and Nemet, 2002; Nussbaum et al., 2008) has demonstrated that student argumentation leads to better understanding of science concepts and reasoning skills, effective teacher discourse resulting in student argumentation is crucial to students' learning of science. The simple scaffolding strategies used by the peer leaders in this study to help students build scientific evidence and justifications therefore have the potential to be of use in helping to improve science learning.

Overall, this study revealed that peer leaders guide students to build chemistry knowledge through scaffolding strategies instead of via direct instruction, which is in alignment with the peer-led POGIL objectives and consistent with effective group intervention strategies that help students reason (Mercer et al., 2004; Webb et al., 2004; Webb et al., 2008; Ding et al., 2007). The scaffolding strategies that have emerged from this study are resonant with prior work suggesting that teachers should engage in strategies such as probing, questioning student perspectives, and challenging students to promote higher level cognitive processes of students (King, 2002). We have not shown evidence of students being explicitly metacognitive as a result of interactions with the peer leader. It may be that such explicit metacognition requires a different distribution of verbal behaviors than seen here, or a different set of curricular materials. A limitation of this study is that it is small and focused, encompassing only two peer leaders and their interventions with one small group each over the course of a semester; however, two very different peer leaders (based on experience) and two very different groups (based on demography) were selected in an attempt to mitigate this limitation. Certainly in the future, the discourse of more student groups and peer leaders could be collected and analyzed to get a broader understanding of this particular cooperative learning environment. It is also the case that this study used only video and audio data with transcripts as a data source. Additional data sources, such as students' written work, student interviews, and real-time classroom observations, could shed more light on the nature of interactive discourse and student learning in the group environment. Additionally, even though we investigated the presence of argument elements and the different levels of arguments in the student discourse with Toulmin's argumentation framework, we did not assess the quality of the overall student discourse during group work. Mercer et al.'s (2004) criteria for exploratory talk would be an excellent analytic tool for examining the quality of student discourse. The student discourse in the small groups could be analyzed with Mercer et al.'s criteria (e.g. sharing relevant information, inviting all members to contribute, challenges and alternatives made explicit and negotiated) to examine how students work cooperatively to build chemistry knowledge. It would also be interesting to investigate the relationship between the peer leader's scaffolding strategies and the quality of students' exploratory talk as they learn chemistry concepts. In this study, we have also chosen to focus only on student discourse during interactions with peer leaders, leaving un-mediated group discourse for another investigation.

The findings from this study have implications for professional development, specifically for those engaged in implementation of cooperative learning or other pedagogical approaches based on small groups. The two instructors in this study received the same weekly training and exhibited similar verbal behavior patterns. Previous research also has shown that teachers who are trained with specific communication skills (Gillies and Khan, 2008, 2009) and argumentation strategies (Kaya, 2013) tend to use more challenging and scaffolding strategies to support student learning. Since effective group monitoring and intervention strategies are vital for the successful implementation of cooperative learning (Johnson and Johnson, 1990; Brodie, 2001; Hamm and Adams, 2002), explicit tools for professional development are valuable. The verbal behaviors that were shown to be effective for different tasks during group work in this study can be presented as tools. For example, teachers can be provided with the type of verbal behaviors that can be used to maintain the student activity, to promote argumentation, and to encourage students during group activity. Demonstrating that a range of verbal behaviors is necessary to support group work may help teachers to reflect on and to improve their own practice. We also believe that it will be important to share with teachers examples of scaffolding strategies that display different degrees of guidance, and to ask explicitly how even relatively effective strategies could be improved. Such reflection should enable teachers to develop a fuller understanding of how the level of guidance can either support or impede students' engagement in thinking for themselves as they move from novices (such as the peer leaders in this study) to experts.

The findings from this study can be used by teachers (K-12) and college instructors to understand what effective discourse can look like when implementing cooperative learning. The combination of two analytic frameworks characterizing students and instructor discourse separately that is presented in this study may also be helpful in future studies of group learning environments.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Janelle Arjoon and Nicole Becker for their contributions to this work. This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DUE-0618758. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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