The strength of the lone wolf

In his keynote at the CSCL 2007 conference, Gerhard Fischer cited Kipling’s verse on the dialectic of group and individual. This dialectic is necessarily a primary concern for any theory of CSCL. The current issue of ijCSCL addresses this theme in diverse ways. While some established disciplines privilege the individual and others the social, theories of collaborative learning must center on the dialectical relationship between them. Approaches like cultural-historical activity theory (Engestrom 1999), actor-network theory (Latour 2007) and situated learning (Lave 1991) sketch their union in general terms. The papers in this issue take a more focused and applied approach, investigating the role of specific CSCL tools in mediating the relationship between individual and group. If one accepts Vygotsky’s (1930/1978) principle that distinctively human cognitive skills are developed in groups (socially, inter-subjectively) first and only subsequently on that basis internalized into mental (individual, inner-subjective) abilities, then one can pose the fundamental CSCL question: How can technology be used to facilitate this intersubjective-to-individual process of collaborative learning? As we have discovered in past CSCL research, this is a complex problem. One must create and coordinate: (1) a group knowledge-building space, (2) a set of individuals engaged as a group and (3) channels of interaction between the social and personal systems. Structuration theory Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (2008) 3:99–103 DOI 10.1007/s11412-008-9041-9