Co-construction

Abstract: Co-Construction: A Facilitator for School Reform in School, Community and University Partnerships* Unlike some models, Talent Quest is not prescriptive but a co-constructive Talent Development Model for school reform Co-construction, although more time consuming and labor intensive, has the potential of yielding the transformational outcomes, which go beyond the school doors Based on the field experiences of CRESPAR staff members, this paper will operationalize the definition of co-construction and review the literature on related constructs It will also present the need and rationalization for co-construction in order to maximize the schooling experience and outcomes for all key stakeholders The challenges for co-construction are presented along with strategies for successful implementation outcomes A suggested paradigm of key leverage areas for co-construction are offered with examples from field sites encompassing experiences from elementary to middle and high school settings Maximizing student academic achievement and social competence in public schools in underresourced urban communities continues to be a major concern and quandary for American school districts and state education departments (Boykin, 2000; Helge, 1989; Sanders, 2000) In recent years, partnership programs, between underresourced urban public schools and varying stakeholders, have emerged and proliferated as one of the most effective proven strategies to provide human, material, and financial resources to improve student academic and social competence (Beaumont & Hallmark, 1998; Kemple, Poglinco, & Snipes, 1999; Morse, 2001; Osguthorpe, Harris, Harris, & Black, 1996; Sanders, 2000) More broadly, integrating community development and school reform (Ferguson & Dickens, 1999; Harkavy, 1996,1998) with schools include entities such as families, faithbased communities, universities, the federal, state and local governments, foundations, non-profit and for-profit organizations Recognizing the many contributions that school, community, and university partnerships have made in educating students placed at risk, many policymakers, practitioners, and advocates have encouraged and even mandated the creation of these partnerships as a priority to improve student educational outcomes (Becker, 1999; Clark, 1991; National Governor's Association, 1990; US Department of Education, 1994) These recommendations call to action all stakeholders, especially colleges and universities, to build and sustain partnerships to enhance student academic achievement and social competence Collaboration, which is the notion of two independent entities working together equitably toward a common goal, is central to effective school-community partnerships (Beaumont & Hallmark, 1998) However, greater specificity in theory and application is needed to operationalize partnerships in working effectively with schools to improve student academic achievement and social competence The purpose of this article is to (a) define the concept and application of co-construction in school and community partnerships with an emphasis on college and university partnerships and (b) suggest how these partnerships can most effectively improve student academic achievement and social competence It presents six areas of information: (a) a review of literature on partnership definitions, history, and examples; (b) challenges to and facilitators of partnerships; (c) the definition of co-construction and examples of coconstruction at Talent Quest interventions in schools from Howard University's Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At-Risk (CRESPAR); (d) challenges to and facilitators of co-construction; (e) the value of co-construction in improving student academic achievement and social competence; and (f) implications for education research, policy, and practice In this article, when referring to partnerships with higher education institutions, university is used to be inclusive of college institutions …

Abstract: Kim, Haeyeon. (2002). Collaborative turn completion in Korean conversation. Language Research 38(4), 1281-1316. Co-construction, or collaborative turn completion, is one of the attempts to explore interactional and sequential nature of conversation. This research explores the questions of how grammar is shaped by the interaction between speaker and hearer and what social actions are involved in the interaction in Korean. After examining types and frequency of co-construction in Korean conversational data, this research discusses roles and functions of the four most frequently used clausal connectives -nuntey, -ko, -myen, and -nikka as a way of characterizing co-construction in terms of semantic, pragmatic properties of the connectives. This inquiry also discusses contexts for the occurrence of co-construction, critically reviewing the claims that pragmatic factors coming from politeness or 'private territory of information', late projectability, and delay of the delivery of the final component are responsible for the production of co-construction. This research shows that co-construction is produced basically by next speaker's efforts to collaborate with current speaker based on shared or assumed knowledge. It shows that semantic, pragmatic properties and social actions are also responsible for the production of co-construction by exploring semantic, pragmatic properties of clausal connectives used in co-construction. In addition, this study explores what social actions are involved in the production of co-construction, focusing on the relationship between social actions and grammar in talk-in-interaction. Finally, this research shows the interactive nature of co-construction, suggesting the need to explore the relationship between interaction and grammar which is constantly shaped by the interaction between speaker and hearer.

Abstract: This chapter introduces the notion of the ‘Innovation Story’ as a methodological approach to public policy evaluation, which builds in greater opportunity for learning and reflexivity. The Innovation Story is an adaptation of the case study approach and draws on participatory action research traditions. It is a structured narrative that describes a particular public policy innovation in the personalised contexts in which it is experienced by innovators. Its construction involves a discursive process through which involved actors tell their story, explain it to others, listen to their questions and co-construct knowledge of change together. The approach was employed to elaborate five case studies of place-based leadership and public service innovation in the United Kingdom, The Netherlands and Mexico. The key findings are that spaces in which civic leaders come together from different ‘realms’ of leadership in a locality (community, business, professional managers and political leaders) can become innovation zones that foster inventive behaviour. Much depends on the quality of civic leadership, and its capacity to foster genuine dialogue and co-responsibility. This involves the evaluation seeking out influential ideas from below the level of strategic management, and documenting leadership activities of those who are skilled at ‘boundary crossing’ – for example, communicating between sectors. The evaluator can be a key player in this process, as a convenor of safe spaces for actors to come together to discuss and deliberate before returning to practice. Our approach therefore argues for a particular awareness of the political nature of policy evaluation in terms of negotiating these spaces, and the need for politically engaged evaluators who are skilled in facilitating collective learning processes.

Abstract: This thesis examines the underlying sociotechnical dynamics in the development of an online chat device via Internet –Internet Relay Chat (IRC). It argues that this device is constantly co-constructed by a set of human and non-human actants organized in sociotechnical networks called “IRC networks”, and that there is no clear distinction between users and designers of the system. The research seeks to understand the modalities of, and the motives for this co-construction. The problematics stands at the intersection of two research fields: the sociology of innovation –in the context of science and technology studies (STS), and computer-mediated communication (CMC) studies. It draws on recent theoretical developments suggesting that the role of users in the construction of technical systems has been underrated, particularly in the case of digital artifacts, which seem to offer more “plasticity” in response to usage. While the notion of a user being not only an actor of, but also a contributor to technical devices is becoming widely accepted today, it is important to note that the nature of this contribution is generally limited to the contents. The case of IRC is interesting in that it shows how users can contribute to the design of the device itself. The research relies on a conceptual framework based on three theoretical approaches in STS: social construction of technology, actor-network theory and the “ecological” model of social worlds. These three approaches are combined to provide elements of a co-construction theory which, compared with classical innovation models, redistributes agency among the actors of the development of a sociotechnical device. Thus, even the roles of user and designer appear to be co-constructed in the process. The concepts of community of practice and “arena of technical skillfulness” are called upon in the analysis of the actors’ social motives for their engagement in this co-construction. At the methodological level, the research is a case study focused on the genesis and the evolution of two major IRC networks: EFnet and Undernet. The specific object of study is a series of controversies that arose between 1990 and 2001 and which led to qualitative leaps in the evolution of these networks. The main methods mobilized are discourse analysis and online ethnography, combined with inquiry techniques used in STS for the study of sociotechnical controversies. Concretely, the inquiry protocol consisted of three components: a) online observation; b) content and discourse analysis of a corpus of documents available online and the archives of four mailing lists and two Usenet newsgroups; c) synchronous and asynchronous online interviews with twelve key actors of IRC development. Identifying “critical moments” in IRC development helped find controversies and structuring events. Their analysis led to isolate the notion of service as pivotal to understand the modalities of co-construction of the device. First understood in its usual sense (related to the notion of user as customer ), services were gradually “translated” into increasingly elaborate programs, which almost became black boxes: official “robots” (or bots ), also known as IRC services . On EFnet, this process has long been stifled by administrators. But users have developed their own strategies to fill the gaps of the original technical protocol, notably by creating their own bots in order to protect their channels. By contrast, promoters of the Undernet have ensured that their network would stand apart from EFnet by putting service to users and user involvement in the device at the core of their project. On the Undernet, the concept of channel service is a hybrid one: it is a service both in the organizational sense, and in the technical sense of “bot”. Such definitional “fuzziness” of the notion of service in IRC actors’ discourse is an indication of its status as a boundary object around which different “philosophies” of online chat are articulated. These views sometimes diverge to the point of creating technical boundaries between IRC networks, and therefore, between different communities of chat practice.