Inquiry and Meaning Generation in Science While Learning to Learn Together: How Can Digital Media Provide Support?

This is a study of learning situations resulting from pedagogy and digital media focusing on both collaboration and meaning generation in science and on the interactions and interdependencies of these two aspects of a learning environment. With respect to the former, special attention was given to what we call ‘learning to learn together’ (L2L2) a kind of social meta-cognition. With respect to the latter, we studied how students made sense of non-intuitive parameters in a newtonian phenomenon. The study took place in the framework of a multi-organizational European R&D project titled ‘METAFORA’. We report a design-based research study carried out in a High School in Greece where students used the projects’ specially developed on-line platform together with a Newtonian Physics microworld as a solid ground in order to interact and engage in meaningful negotiations concerning the scientific concepts integrated in the ICT tools.