Process and Outcome Studies of Representational Guidance for Scientific Inquiry

External (visual and textual) representations differ in the information they are capable of capturing, in the ease of recovering information that is captured, and in the ease of identifying information that is missing. Consequently, representations may differ in how they guide learning processes. We call these differences between representations "representational guidance." Effects of representational guidance on individual problem solving are well documented, yet there is a lack of comparative research on how representational effects extend to collaborative learning situations. This paper introduces the concept of representational guidance for collaborative learning discourse and summarized the results of two studies: a laboratory study investigating differences in discourse processes, and a classroom study investigating differences in products of the investigations. The laboratory study compared three representational tools for recording and reasoning about evidence during collaborative inquiry. The tools were unconstrained text (a word processor), graphical evidence mapping and a matrix or tabular representation. Participants were provided with hypertext-based materials pertinent to a problem in which multiple explanations were proposed for a disease. Analysis of discourse transcripts was consistent with predictions concerning the amount of talk about evidential relations. The classroom study focused on the effects of representational tools and of assessment rubrics on learning to evaluate diverse sources of empirical evidence and coordinate these data with domain theories. The representational tools were graphical evidence maps and text. The assessment rubrics provided specific criteria for scientific inquiry, encouraging self-reflection and peer coaching. The results indicate that evidence mapping provides better support than prose, as evidenced by amount of information and quality of inferences recorded in classroom artifacts. The assessment rubrics improved the quality of work of students using the evidence mapping tool but not those using prose.