Building On Each Other's Ideas: A Social Mechanism of Progressiveness in Whole-Class Collective Inquiry

Journal of the Learning Sciences
ISSN: 1050-8406 (Print) 1532-7809 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hlns20
Building on Each Other’s Ideas: A Social

Mechanism of Progressiveness in Whole-Class
Collective Inquiry
Marc Clarà
To cite this article: Marc Clarà (2019): Building on Each Other’s Ideas: A Social Mechanism
of Progressiveness in Whole-Class Collective Inquiry, Journal of the Learning Sciences, DOI:
10.1080/10508406.2018.1555756
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2018.1555756
Published online: 11 Jan 2019.
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JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES, 00: 1–35, 2018
Copyright © 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1050-8406 print / 1532-7809 online
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2018.1555756
Building on Each Other’s Ideas: A Social

Mechanism of Progressiveness in Whole-
Class Collective Inquiry
Marc Clarà
Department of Pedagogy and Psychology
University of Lleida
In recent decades, important advances have been made in understanding how

discursive symmetry can be achieved in whole-class dialogue. However, very
little is known about how this dialogue may progress in the sense of critically
linking ideas in coherent lines of collective inquiry. This article investigates this
issue by analyzing 4 consecutive sessions of a science class with children ages 8 to
10 and identifies a social mechanism that can explain the emergence of progres-
siveness in collective inquiry. The identified mechanism consists of a series of
iterations of the sequence (Direction) → Inference ↔ Observation ↔ Consensus
→ Fixation. This sequence enables the transition from local to collective agency
and meaning. Direction creates a gap in a semantic structure, leading to the local
formation of an inference. This inference then escalates through observation and
consensus before finally being fixed through the creation of an artifact that reifies
it as a collective meaning. Based on this collective meaning, a new direction leads
to a new local inference, and the cycle begins again.
One important current of pedagogical thought has long held that education
should be based on student inquiry (Bruner, 1961; Freinet, 1960/1993; Mon-
tessori, 1948/1967; Pestalozzi, 1801/2015; Rosseau, 1762/1979). Basically, the
central idea is that learning should happen as a discovery, as a process of
looking for something, instead of happening as the imitation of normative ready-
made meanings that are offered to the learner. From a psychological point of
view, the most prominent advocates of this school of thought have perhaps been
Correspondence should be addressed to Marc Clarà, Department of Pedagogy and Psychology,

University of Lleida, Avinguda de l'Estudi General, 4, 25001 Lleida, Spain. E-mail: marc.clara@g-
mail.com
2 CLARÀ
Dewey (1916/1994) and Piaget (1969/1981). Both offered strong psychological

arguments in support of this pedagogical approach. Dewey argued that educa-
tion should be built on how children spontaneously think rather than on the
imposition of artificial formalisms; he further argued that the natural and
spontaneous way in which children learn is inquiry (Dewey, 1933/1986a). For
Piaget, processes of inquiry, which involve disequilibrium and compensation,
are central to his theory of the development of cognitive structures (Piaget,
1975/1985). Although Piaget mainly focused on inquiry as an individual pro-
cess, he also considered social interaction. Very early in his career, he distin-
guished between two forms of social interaction: constraint and cooperation.
Relations of constraint are asymmetric: One participant has more power than the
others, and knowledge is something finished that must simply be accepted.
Relations of cooperation are more symmetrical: Differences of power are mini-
mized, and all participants are free to express their views and consider those of
others, thereby enabling a real intellectual exchange. Piaget argued that only
cooperative relations provide the necessary opportunities for the kind of inquiry
that leads to cognitive development (Psaltis, Duveen, & Perret-Clermont, 2009).
This argument has been further expanded by post-Piagetian researchers, who
have argued that cooperative relations cause decentration in the child’s psycho-
logical structures (Doise, Mugny, & Perret-Clermont, 1975; Psaltis et al., 2009).
Since the late 1970s, a renewed emphasis on social interaction has emerged
in the field of educational psychology. In this context, the pedagogical tradition
of inquiry-based education has explored conceptual connections with some of
Vygotsky’s ideas (Mercer, 2000; Wells, 1999) and especially with Bakhtin’s
(1981) concept of dialogism. A central premise in Bakhtin is heteroglossia, that
is, the notion that multiple worldviews (voices) always coexist and are in
dialogue with each other. When a given worldview interacts with an alien
worldview, two aspects of that alien worldview can be considered: its degree
of authoritativeness and its degree of internal persuasiveness. Authoritativeness
refers to whether the alien worldview is normative and widely accepted as true;
internal persuasiveness refers to whether the alien worldview is something
open, flexible, and changeable or is finished and indisputable. According to
Bakhtin, true dialogue between worldviews is only possible when they are both
highly internally persuasive; in that case, each worldview can penetrate into the
other, they can both be mutually transformed, and new meaning can be gener-
ated. When Bakhtin wrote of dialogism he was not strictly referring to social
interaction; in fact, most of the time he was talking about intrapsychological
dialogue. However, his contributions echo Piaget’s distinction between social
relations of constraint (authoritative voice) and cooperation (internally persua-
sive voice). Today these two basic forms of social relations are usually referred
BUILDING ON EACH OTHER’S IDEAS 3
to as authoritative or monologic (constraint) and dialogic (cooperation; Scott,

Mortimer, & Aguiar, 2006; Wells & Mejía Arauz, 2006).
Accordingly, two aspects of social interaction are crucial in inquiry-based
education. First, interaction should be symmetrical and power imbalances in the
dialogue should be minimized: All participants’ worldviews should be expressed
in the discourse. Second, a true dialogue should be enacted between worldviews:
Ideas should penetrate and build on each other to generate new meaning.
The first issue has been widely studied and important advances have been made.
For example, the use of authentic questions by the teacher, the use of uptake and high
follow-up, the avoidance of evaluation (Nystrand, 1997; Wells, 1999), the role of
revoicing (O’Connor & Michaels, 1996), and the establishment of rules of participa-
tion (Alexander, 2017; Mercer, 2000) have all been found to reduce dialogue asym-
metries and facilitate the enactment of multiple worldviews in classroom discourse.
Much less is known, however, about the second issue (Alexander, 2017). The
dialogic progress of ideas in symmetrical social interaction is an important chal-
lenge for inquiry-based education: Research shows that it rarely happens in class-
room dialogue (Mercer & Howe, 2012; Rasku-Puttonen, Lerkkanen, Pikkeus, &
Siekkinen, 2012), and current understanding of how it may happen is very limited
(Lehesvuori, Viiri, Rasku-Puttonen, Moate, & Helaakoski, 2013; Muhonen, Rasku-
Puttonen, Pakarinen, Poikkeus, & Lerkkanen, 2016). This article aims to address
this challenge. In the next two sections I consider the issue of progressiveness and
explore how this issue can be addressed by means of a social mechanisms approach.
I then present a study of whole-class dialogue aimed at identifying a social mechan-
ism that explains the emergence of progressiveness in collective inquiry.
Progressiveness in Collective Inquiry

Bereiter (1994) proposed the important concept of progressive discourse in response
to popular interpretations of postmodernism in science education, whereby, because
there is no objective standpoint against which to judge whether something is true,
there can be no possible progress in science because there is no way to show that any
one view is better than any other. In response to these ideas, Bereiter argued that the
key assumption of science is not objective truth but progressiveness, and progres-
siveness is to be judged according to whether those involved in an endeavor agree that
the new ideas are superior to the old ones. Thus, no reference to objective truth is
necessary for the progressiveness of science. Bereiter (1994) saw the dynamics of
progressive discourse as follows: “Sometimes people with opposing views can
engage in discourse that leads to a new understanding that everyone involved agrees
is superior to their own previous understanding” (p. 6). This echoes Bakhtin’s (1981)
concept of heteroglossia, Wegerif’s (2011) idea of the dialogic space or dialogic gap,
and Ford and Wargo’s (2012) idea of oppositional voice: The main idea in all of these
4 CLARÀ
approaches is that the dialectic tension between opposing ideas leads to development
and progress; if this tension were to be closed or were not allowed to be dialogized in
discourse, no progress would be possible and nothing new could be built. Bereiter
(1994) proposed that dialogue must meet four conditions in order to enable progres-
sive discourse. First, the participants must be committed to working toward
a common understanding satisfactory to all. Second, there must be a commitment
to framing questions and propositions that can be supported/refuted by what the
opposing views consider to be evidence. Third, there must be a commitment to
expanding the body of collectively accepted—or not rejected—propositions. Bereiter
noted that expanding this body of collective propositions implies maximizing the
basis from which new conclusions may be drawn, thereby increasing the possibilities
for progress. Fourth, there must be a commitment to allowing any belief to be
subjected to criticism if doing so benefits progress.
In the educational field, the problem of progressiveness in dialogue has been
theoretically examined by a number of researchers. Scott et al. (2006), for
example, addressed this issue through the concept of the interanimation of ideas
(i.e., the degree to which ideas voiced by different participants relate to each other
or are simply a list of independent ideas). Mercer (2000, 2012) introduced the
concept of interthinking, which refers to a coordinated continued attempt to
collaboratively solve a shared problem. According to Mercer, interthinking
requires the existence of what he and Edwards (Edwards & Mercer, 1987) called
a shared mental context among the participants; that is, for interthinking to be
possible, participants need to share some meanings to at least a certain minimal
degree. The construction and expansion of this shared mental context echo
Bereiter’s third condition for progressiveness. This is also related to Roschelle
and Teasley’s (1995) concept of joint problem space. According to these authors,
collaboration can be understood as “a continued attempt to construct and maintain
a shared conception of a problem” (p. 70). This shared conception of the problem
is seen not as something in the heads of the interlocutors but as something lying
between them, as an artifact (that is essentially linguistic) that they are building
together. It consists of a semantic structure (a structure of knowledge) that the
interlocutors publicly (and primarily discursively) build and rebuild together. This
public semantic structure (public at least for the interlocutors involved) is called
a joint problem space. The public and artifactual nature of the joint problem space
was also highlighted by Sarmiento and Stahl (2008), especially in relation to
progressiveness through discontinuities: When collaboration involves different
episodes diachronically spread in time, or episodes involving different interlocu-
tors or communities, the fact that the joint problem space is a public artifact
permits bridging these discontinuities, thus allowing progressiveness over bound-
aries of time, activities, collectivities, or perspectives.
In whole-class dialogue, the issue of progressiveness has been addressed in

general from two broad lines of inquiry. One approach is built on the increasingly
common idea that interactional phases in which students dialogically express their
worldviews must be intercalated with phases in which the teacher provides the
authoritative voice. In this dialogic–authoritative dynamic, the teacher’s scientific
views can be interanimated with students’ everyday views, such that, in this sense
(i.e., that of interanimation), dialogue can become progressive (Lehesvuori et al.,
2013; McMahon, 2012; Scott et al., 2006). However, although this is a valuable
contribution, for those especially concerned about inquiry in symmetrical interac-
tion, the main problem remains unsolved: How can participants’ dialogue become
progressive prior to, or without the introduction of, the authoritative view? In other
words, how can participants come to build together, in the sense used by Bereiter,
based on the tension between opposing views, engaging in a shared and symme-
trical endeavor to make progress? One attempt to address this problem has focused
on teachers’ scaffolding within dialogic instruction. In fact, this is paradoxical, as
the notion of scaffolding implies the exercise of a certain control (authoritative
power) by the teacher over classroom discourse, whereas the notion of dialogism
implies the idea of symmetrical dialogue among the participants (where differences
of power are mitigated in discourse). Addressing the problem via the notion of
scaffolding therefore requires a reworking of the concept of scaffolding itself,
something that several authors have tried. For example, Ford and Wargo (2012)
differentiated between the discursive and ideological dimensions of dialogue. This
distinction is similar to that made by Scott et al. (2006) between the interactive and
dialogic dimensions of dialogue. The main point is that discourse can be at once
monologic, because the teacher controls its production, and dialogic, because this
teacher-controlled discourse includes and interanimates the students’ views. Thus,
the teacher can scaffold the discursive dimension of dialogue and, in its ideational
dimension, the discourse may still be dialogic (Ford & Wargo, 2012; Muhonen
et al., 2016; Rojas-Drummond, Torreblanca, Pedraza, Vélez, & Guzmán, 2013). In
this regard, Reznitskaya and Gregory (2013, p. 117) argued that in a dialogic
classroom teachers are “substantively weak” but “procedurally strong.” Similarly,
Wells and Mejía Arauz (2006, p. 420) held that “keeping the floor does not
necessarily entail also keeping control of the content of the discussion.” Therefore,
the point is to scaffold the dialogue (and therefore use monologic discursive
structures) without introducing authoritative views (thereby keeping the interaction
ideationally dialogic). It is within this framework that the IRF1 structure has been
revisited from the point of view of how it can be used for dialogic purposes
(Molinari, Mamaeli, & Gnisci, 2013; Nystrand, 1997; Vaish, 2008; Wells &
1
In the IRF structure, the teacher initiates the exchange (I), the pupil responds (R), and the
teacher follows up (F; Coulthard, M., & Brazil, D, 1981; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975; Wells, 1999).
6 CLARÀ
Mejía Arauz, 2006). Much remains to be learned about how to scaffold progres-
siveness within whole-class dialogue, but this line of inquiry seems promising, as
witnessed by the important findings on how the IRF structure may promote idea-
tional symmetry in dialogue.
However, one limitation of the discursive scaffolding approach to studying pro-
gressiveness is that it focuses on the acts of certain individual participants, especially
the teacher. It is obviously very important to understand the role of the teacher;
however, it may be argued that progressiveness in dialogue is a collective endeavor,
as it is the result of the collective interanimation of ideas. From this viewpoint, the
discursive scaffolding approach proves incomplete, and a more holistic approach may
also be needed to understand progressiveness in whole-class dialogue.
Group Cognition: The Whole and the Components

Vygotsky proposed that social interaction drives cognitive development. He famously
wrote that “every function in the cultural development of the child appears on the
stage twice, in two planes, first, the social, then the psychological, first between
people as an intermental category, then within the child as a intramental category”
(Vygotsky, 1997, p. 106). For the purposes of the present article, the most relevant
part of this statement is the idea that a single psychological function exists as a social
phenomenon, as a relationship between people. This opens up the possibility of
shifting the psychological unit of analysis from the individual to the collective. This
shift of the psychological unit of analysis has sparked several developments. In
general, three main approaches can be identified: activity theory (Engeström, 2001;
Leontiev, 1978), distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1995; Pea, 1993), and situated
cognition (Lave, 1988; Scribner, 1984). Basically, all three approaches share the
idea that (at least some) psychological functions involve artifacts and others; there-
fore, these functions cannot be understood by focusing solely on the individual. In
other words, these approaches argue that the unit of analysis must be expanded
because cognitive functions are distributed. Within this general framework, some
have also advocated the interest of understanding how this distribution of cognitive
functions happens. For instance, Salomon (1993) held that although it is possible to
study the undifferentiated whole as a single unit, it is also possible to identify
components thereof and to study how they work within the whole. He suggested
that in the phenomenon of distributed cognition as a whole, individual cognitions and
distributed cognitions reciprocally influence each other in a sort of spiral:
The general hypothesis would be that the “components” interact with one another in
a spiral-like fashion whereby individuals’ inputs, through their collaborative activities,
affect the nature of the joint, distributed system, which in turn affects their cognitions
such that their subsequent participation is altered, resulting in subsequent altered joint
performances and products. (Salomon, 1993, p. 122)
Greeno (2005) expressed a similar concern, although he outlined a notably different

strategy. His proposal was to integrate interactional approaches into cognitive psy-
chology in order to gain an articulated understanding of the social interactions of the
whole by means of the concept of participatory structure (Phillips, 1972). In this way,
the whole (in which the psychological function emerges) becomes socially articu-
lated, so the interactional role of a given individual within the cognitive whole can be
understood. According to Greeno (2005, p. 84), this kind of analysis “can consider
whether the actions of individual students contribute to the class’s progress in
achieving shared understanding.”
Both Salomon’s and Greeno’s approaches are aligned with what in the philosophy
of science is called social mechanisms. In the social sciences, the idea of social
mechanisms has often been proposed in contrast to covering-law accounts (Elster,
1998; Gross, 2009; Hedström & Ylikoski, 2010). Let us suppose an antecedent
condition, for example, whole-class symmetric interaction, and an effect observed
for this condition, for example, progressiveness. A covering-law account would study
the causal relationships between the antecedent and the effect by directly linking them
to each other and expressing this relationship in probabilistic terms (using statistical
procedures). It has been argued that in the social sciences, covering-law accounts pose
two related problems: First, absolutely regular covering laws are rarely found;
and second, covering laws cannot explain irregularities in the effect, that is, why it
sometimes happens and sometimes does not. In this context, it has further been argued
that covering laws are like explanatory black boxes; a social mechanism approach
consists of opening these black boxes and looking at “the nuts and bolts, the cogs and
wheels” that explain the effect and its irregularities (Elster, 1983, 1989, p. 3). Although
there is some disagreement about social mechanisms, there is broad consensus that
a social mechanism must have four defining characteristics to be considered as such
(Gross, 2009; Hedström & Ylikoski, 2010). First, it must describe the processes by
which, given the antecedent (e.g., whole-class symmetric interaction), the effect (e.g.,
progressiveness) is produced. Second, the mechanism must be specified at a lower
level than the level at which the explanandum exists. Third, it must unfold over time
and be structured as a temporal sequence of events. And fourth, it must be general (i.e.,
it must aim to capture the crucial elements for a process by abstracting away the
irrelevant details).
The second characteristic of social mechanisms is especially critical because it
involves deciding what constitute the components of the whole. One possibility is to
consider the components of the collective phenomenon to be individual actions. This
is the path taken by approaches similar to Greeno’s. However, this presents two main
problems. First, research on situated cognition has suggested that the way in which
individual actions and artifacts are coordinated within a given collective (or distrib-
uted) cognitive function is so flexible that it becomes unpredictable, because it
strongly depends on the specific idiosyncrasy of each situation (Lave, 1988; Nardi,
8 CLARÀ
1996). These findings suggest that individual actions are poor candidates to be
considered the components of distributed cognitive functions, as a social mechanism
specified in these terms would hardly be general—the fourth condition for a social
mechanism. Second, and most important, this approach reproduces the social–indivi-
dual dualism: Assuming that collective thinking is a social phenomenon that is made
up of individual phenomena (as water is made up of atoms of hydrogen and oxygen)
implies the assumption that the social and the individual are two categories of
phenomena, two different realms governed by different laws. This dualism has been
argued as inadequate, especially in the Vygotskian tradition. Vygotsky (1987) claimed
that in order to understand a phenomenon, the unit of analysis must maintain all of the
properties of the whole. Drawing an analogy with physics, he argued that the approach
must be molecular, not atomistic. For Vygotsky, separating analytically the social and
the individual in order to understand thinking would be like breaking the H2
O molecule in order to understand the properties of water.2 Vygotsky overcame this
dualism by focusing strongly on mediating signs, especially discourse (which the
posterior Vygotskian tradition has regarded as one type of artifact; Engeström, 1987).
The word, according to Vygotsky, is at the same time both social and individual, both
speech and thought. He argued that, on the one hand, every word is a generalization
and therefore an act of thinking. Vygotsky (1987) wrote that “thought is not expressed
but completed in the word” (p. 250). Therefore, speech and thought are not separate
phenomena: Thought happens in the word, and the word is impossible without
thought. On the other hand, Vygotsky argued that speech is primarily a means of
communication and social interaction, and consequently the word is also impossible if
it is not social. Following Feuerbach, Vygotsky (1987) wrote that the word “is
absolutely impossible for one person but possible for two. The word is the most direct
manifestation of the historical nature of human consciousness” (p. 285). In a similar
vein, Bakhtin (1991) elaborated on the social nature of discourse; he argued that even
when an utterance is articulated by a single individual, many voices are speaking
through that individual utterance: “In the makeup of almost every utterance spoken by
a social person … a significant number of words can be identified that are implicitly or
explicitly admitted as someone else’s” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 354). Therefore, if it is
accepted that the social and the individual are indivisible in thinking, it makes no sense
to maintain the hypothesis that in collective inquiry the whole is social (as opposed to
individual) and the components are individual (as opposed to social). A social
mechanism of collective inquiry cannot be sought along the lines of the social–
individual opposition.
2
For example, Vygotsky (1987) argued that when trying to understand the capacity of water to
extinguish fire, “this man will discover, to his chagrin, that hydrogen burns and oxygen sustains
combustion. He will never succeed in explaining the characteristics of the whole by analyzing the
characteristics of its elements” (p. 45).
Stahl (2016) offered a clue toward a different direction. By means of the concept of
group cognition, he suggested that in collaboration the whole is a single cognitive
process, regardless of how many people are involved in it. Although Stahl still
maintained the opposition of social–individual, he escaped from it by defining the
whole not primarily from the fact of being social (in opposition to individual) but from
the fact of enacting a unitary cognitive process. Following Merleu-Ponty, he wrote that
“the utterances of people in dialog produce a cognitive stream that is not attributable to
either speaker individually, but is a group process that only makes sense as such”
(Stahl, 2016, p. 363). He added that “the source of the creative generation and the
deductive flow can be analyzed in terms of the meanings sedimented in the phrases”
(p. 381). This echoes the emphasis on artifacts derived from the idea that collaboration
is the construction of a joint problem space. From this view, group cognition, taken as
the whole, can be defined as a unitary cognitive process consisting of the construction
of a shared semantic structure reified into public artifacts.
This definition of the whole opens up a different path for the identification of social
mechanisms: Because the whole is defined as a cognitive process, the components
may be sought in terms of cognitive operations of this process. This article is interested
in collective inquiry, understood as a type of group cognition; therefore, the task
involves the identification of the cognitive operations of collective inquiry. In fact,
these cognitive operations have been largely studied, although this has been done
mainly in situations of solo inquiry and without fully considering the social nature of
the process. For example, Dewey (1933/1986a, 1938/1986b) proposed that inquiry
consists of a continuous interplay between two basic operations: inference and
observation. Observation operates by means of facts, the objective events of the
situation, which Dewey also sometimes called conditions or data. In contrast, infer-
ence is a jump beyond these observed events; it is an act of imagination, a supposition
or hypothesis, which Dewey also sometimes called suggestion or idea. According to
Dewey,
This continuous interaction of the facts disclosed by observation and of the suggested
proposals of solution and the suggested methods of dealing with conditions goes on till
some suggested solution meets all the conditions of the case and does not run counter to
any discoverable feature of it.… [Whether a situation is] [s]imple or complicated,
relating to what to do in a practical predicament or what to infer in a scientific or
philosophic problem, there will always be the two sides: the conditions to be accounted
for, dealt with, and the ideas that are plans for dealing with them or are suppositions for
interpreting and explaining the phenomena. (Dewey, 1933/1986a, pp. 197, 199)
Dewey’s distinction between observation and inference is somewhat similar to

Piaget’s distinction between observables and coordinations (Piaget, 1975/1985),
which are the two main components in Piaget’s account of the progressive equilibra-
tion of cognitive structures. In Piaget’s terms, an observable is a fact that experience
10 CLARÀ
makes it possible to check, although he stressed the idea that observables always
involve a conceptualized fact, and not the fact in a purely objective form. He thus
proposed that an observable is better defined as a fact that the subject believes he or
she has checked. A coordination, in contrast, entails the construction of a new inferred
relationship that is not observed as a fact. According to Piaget, progressive equilibra-
tion—which in his theory is the central mechanism of cognitive development—
consists of a cyclical interplay between observables and coordinations. There is
therefore good reason to consider the operations of inference and observation to be
basic components of inquiry. These two operations will be the starting points in order
to identify a social mechanism for progressiveness in collective inquiry.
METHOD
Participants and Data Collection

This article presents a study of four consecutive weekly sessions of a science
class with children between the ages of 8 and 10. These four sessions made up
a complete teaching unit on the role of bacteria in the formation of cavities, and
each one lasted approximately 60 min. In this specific school, it was standard
practice to teach the subject of science in mixed groups of children from both
Grade 3 (8–9 years old) and Grade 4 (9–10 years old), and this was the case for
the class under study. In all, the class had 17 children: nine third graders and
eight fourth graders. The teacher was a woman with more than 30 years of
experience in primary education. The school was public and was located in
a middle-class neighborhood in the city of Lleida (Catalonia, Spain).
After obtaining the informed consent of the teacher, the school principal, and
the parents of the children involved, and after explaining to the children that
I would be conducting research in their class and that they could choose not to be
included in this research at any time, I began to gather the data. This mainly
consisted of filming the sessions using two video cameras, a static camera located
at the front of the class and another camera located at the back that I handled
during the sessions. These recordings were supplemented with conversations with
the teacher before and after the sessions, which I recorded either through audio
recording or field notes. In order to minimize the impact of the research and my
presence on regular class life, I gave no instructions at all and was careful not to
make any comments that might have influenced any aspect of the sessions.
Data Analysis
After transcribing the video recordings of the four sessions, I proceeded to analyze
them in two phases. In the first phase, I sought to identify a progressive development
of ideas in the whole-class dialogue. To this end, I began by selecting an inference that
was new for the class and that emerged as a consequence of the dialogue. The selected
inference was made by Aniol,3 a fourth grader, who around Minute 20 of the third
session exclaimed, “Ahhh!” and quickly and enthusiastically raised his hand (Jaber &
Hammer, 2016). Without waiting for the teacher to call on him, he said, “That’s it.
That’s how they eat away at the tooth! … They [the bacteria] eat away at it when they
poop.” This inference, the idea that it is the excrement of bacteria that causes holes in
teeth, is interesting for several reasons. First, it is related to a view based on the
metabolism of bacteria, which is close to the authoritative scientific explanation of the
phenomenon. Second, this idea was clearly new to both Aniol himself and the rest of
the class: Previously, the children had assumed that the bacteria ate the teeth. Third, the
idea was clearly a consequence of the whole-class dialogue: Aniol’s aha moment
came immediately after Adrià, another fourth grader, asked, “And where do they [the
bacteria] excrete waste?”
After selecting this inference, I retrospectively selected all previous speaking turns
genetically connected to it: that is, all those turns in which a previous version of the
semantic structure of Aniol’s inference was enacted. The idea was to reconstruct the
evolution of the joint problem space. Because the joint problem space is basically
a (shared) semantic structure, I conducted a semantic analysis of the data. Taking
utterances as the unit of analysis, I used procedures developed by Greimas (1989,
1992), specifically, a type of notation known as modal syntax. Basically, this notation
turns utterances into semantic structures of the type F(s)—(m)—[l]→(S^O), where
F = function, s = subject, m = modality of action, l = lexeme used for the action,
S = subject, ^/v = conjunction/disjunction, and O = object. For example, the utterance
“the bacteria poop on the teeth” would be transcoded as F(bacteria)–(do)—[poop]→(-
teeth ^ excrement). A summary of how to use this notation is provided in the
Appendix; a more complete operational protocol can be found in the first section of
Clarà (2015). This semantic analysis of utterances made it possible to identify and
select all utterances with semantic structures genetically connected to the semantic
structure of Aniol’s inference. Departing from the semantic structure (a) of this
inference, I selected the closest prior utterance with a previous version of this same
semantic structure (a′), then the previous one (a″), and so on. I also selected utterances
with semantic structures that, although different from the one that I took as the central
one, were generated as an elaboration of some part of the central semantic structure.
Taken together, these utterances were considered a unit4 of progressiveness—in other
words, a joint problem space in development. This kind of unit is somewhat similar,
for example, to what Eshach (2010) called a conceptual flow pattern and what Twiner,
Littleton, Coffin, and Whitelock (2014) have called a meaning-making trajectory.
3
All names are pseudonyms.
4
Here the term unit is used in the sense of the methodological delimitation of the phenomenon
under study. Thus, the unit here is the methodological definition of the whole.
12 CLARÀ
These approaches, however, place less emphasis on the centrality of a shared semantic
structure for the identification of the unit. In Eshach (2010), the definition of the unit is
based on the interactional responsiveness between discursive functions—responsively
related turns with the functions “come up with novel idea,” “join/develop/defend
ideas,” and “summarize previous ideas” are grouped together as a unit. In Twiner et al.
(2014), the definition of the unit is based on the identification of a topic (e.g.,
firebreaks) that is held through discontinuities (of time, participants, and interactional
structures). This approach focuses on how an individual constructs meaning from
participating in these different instances of dialogue. In contrast, in the approach
presented here the definition of the unit is based on the identification of a shared
semantic structure in development, and the focus is therefore placed on the collectivity
that shares and develop this semantic structure.
Once this unit had been identified, a second phase of data analysis was initiated
to understand how progressiveness emerged. By means of grounded theory proce-
dures (Strauss & Corbin, 1990), I looked for the explanation of progressiveness by
closely examining the utterances. I used the operations of inference and observation
as a starting point. Thus, I began the analysis by identifying these functions in the
utterances of the progressiveness unit. From there, endeavoring to maintain the
phenomenal level at which inference and observation exist, I closely examined the
remaining utterances of the progressiveness unit, identifying and coding new
operations. I then examined the data in depth to understand the sequence in
which the different operations appeared in the dialogue and how this sequence
enabled progressiveness.
All data were originally in Catalan, and the analysis was conducted in the original
language. Excerpts of data were translated into English for publication by
a professional translator, a native English speaker who was also proficient in Catalan.
The translation was discussed with me, and then the lexemes included in the semantic
structures (in modal syntax) were also translated according to the translation of the
data.
RESULTS
Progressiveness
This article focuses on a process of progressiveness that led to the inference,
in the third session, that it is the excrement of bacteria that makes holes in
teeth. This inference built on a series of previous inferences, which are
described in Table 1.
Table 1 shows the semantic trajectory leading to Aniol’s inference about the
bacteria’s excretion of waste. The progressiveness process starts with Aniol’s
inference that what causes the holes in teeth are “little creatures” inside the
TABLE 1
A Phenomenon of Progressiveness Evidenced by Inferences
Minute
Session (Approximate) Participant Utterance (Inference) Semantic Structure
1 00:34 Aniol (fourth grade) “That a cavity is a little creature that gets in Cavity = F(little creature: in your mouth)–(do)–[eat
your mouth and eats away at your teeth” away at]→(teeth ^ hole)
1 00:37 Jordi (fourth grade) “[The little creature is] like a miniature cell” Cavity = F(miniature cell: in your mouth)–(do)–[eat
away at]→(teeth ^ hole])
1 00:46 Sara (fourth grade) “I would probably actually call a cavity a germ” Cavity = F(germ: in your mouth)–(do)–[eat away
at]→(teeth ^ hole)
2 00:47 Teacher “It’s a little creature that, you know what it’s Cavity = F(bacterium: in your mouth)–(do)–[eat away
called? It’s a little creature called at]→[teeth ^ hole]
a bacterium.”
2 00:54 Paula (fourth grade) “[A bacterium is] a living being!” Bacterium = living being
2 00:56 Adrià (fourth grade) “Maybe [a bacterium] is, like, something that Cavity = F(bacterium = living being: in your mouth)–
eats the tooth” (do)–[eat]→(bacterium ^ tooth)
2 00:57 Clara (fourth grade) “[Bacteria] feed on teeth” Cavity = F(bacterium = living being: in your mouth)–
(do)–[eats]→(bacterium ^ [tooth = food])
3 00:17 Martí (third grade) “[Bacteria] excrementate” F(bacterium = living being)–(do)–
[excretes]→(bacterium v excrement)
3 00:20 Aniol (fourth grade) “Ah! That’s it, that’s [by excreting waste] how Cavity = F(bacteria = living being: in your mouth)–(do)–
[the bacteria] eat away at the tooth!” [excretes]→(bacterium v excrement ^ tooth ^ hole)
Note. The new aspects that each inference adds to the progressive semantic structure are in bold.
13
14 CLARÀ
mouth. The inferences by Jordi and Sara that follow build on this same semantic
structure but replace “little creatures” with “cells” and “germs,” respectively.
Eventually, at the start of Session 2, the teacher replaces “little creatures” with
“bacteria” but keeps the same semantic structure. Then Paula makes the new
inference that bacteria are living beings. Building on this, Adrià and Clara infer
that perhaps bacteria feed on teeth. In the third session, Martí infers that, as living
beings, they must also excrete waste. From this idea, Aniol infers that it is the
bacteria’s excrement that causes holes in teeth.
Note that three basic semantic structures are articulated in Aniol’s last inference.
The first structure refers to the conjunction “teeth ^ holes” and was basically devel-
oped in the first session, revolving around who/what is responsible for this conjunction
(the appearance of holes in teeth). The second structure refers to the conjunction
“bacteria ^ teeth,” basically developed in the second session with the idea that teeth are
what bacteria eat. The third structure is about the disjunction “bacteria v excrement.” It
was basically developed in the third session and revolves around the idea that bacteria
excrete waste. Aniol’s final inference links the three structures: Because there is
a conjunction “bacteria ^ teeth,” if bacteria are disjoined from their excrement
(bacteria v excrement), this excrement will be conjoined with teeth (excrement ^
teeth), and that conjunction explains the conjunction “teeth ^ holes.”
The question this article aims to answer is how this process of progressiveness was
articulated. The analysis made it possible to identify a social mechanism that seems to
have caused this phenomenon of progressiveness. This social mechanism can be
specified as a series of iterations of the sequence (Direction) → Inference ↔ Observa-
tion ↔ Consensus → Fixation. Inference and observation are the operations described
above along the lines of Dewey and Piaget. Direction generates the impetus to form
a new inference; it usually takes the form of questions. Consensus consists of an
agreement regarding a common semantic structure that can be considered shared by
all participants. Fixation consists of the creation of an artifact that reifies the shared
semantic structure. In the present case, fixation was achieved through writing: The
teacher wrote the consensus on the blackboard, and the pupils wrote the same thing in
their notebooks. In the following sections, I try to show how this social mechanism
worked and how it enabled the progressiveness process described above.
The Role of Observation and Consensus

The first session, and the process of progressiveness under study, began with
a question by the teacher: “What happens in our mouth when we have a cavity?”
In the next turn, Aniol made an inference to answer this question: “A cavity is
a little creature that gets in your mouth and eats away at your teeth.” In the first
example of Direction → Inference, the semantic structure of Aniol’s inference
can be expressed as follows:
cavity = F(little creature: in your mouth)–(do)–[eat away at]→(teeth ^ hole).
The teacher then sought to fix this inference by writing it on the blackboard,
but Rosó disagreed:
56 Rosó: I mean, I wouldn’t call it a creature. I’d call it something else, because if it’s
something that forms on your teeth, because (…), that forms here on your tooth, and
then they have to take it out because otherwise it stays there … and besides, they put
your tongue like this and it goes kjkjkj. It’s like they’re destroying your tooth.
57 Teacher: Yeah?
58 Rosó: Yeah.
59 Aniol: Yes, but … for me … ((raises his hand))
60 Rosó: But I wouldn’t really call it a creature.
61 Teacher: You wouldn’t call it a creature because you don’t think that’s exactly what it is.
62 Rosó: No.
63 Teacher: So what do you think it is, Rosó? It’s a tough question.
Here Rosó disagreed with what the teacher was trying to fix (Aniol’s inference)
and introduced an observation (what Rosó knew about cavities did not fit with the
idea that they are “little creatures”). In semantic terms, this can be represented as
cavity = F(no little creature: in your mouth) –(do)–[eat away at]→(teeth ^ hole).
In her observation, Rosó built on the main semantic structure proposed by Aniol
in his inference but disagreed about who the actor of the function is. This led the
dialogue in a new direction (“So what do you think it is?”). This new impetus was
met by Jordi with another inference (“like a miniature cell”), but it was followed by
another observation, and no consensus was reached on this idea either:
64 Jordi: Like a miniature cell.
65 Teacher: Like a miniature cell, you say.
66 Rosó: No, because cells make you live. I mean, this destroys your tooth.
67 Aniol: No, but I had a cavity removed (so) it was a really little miniature creature.
68 Teacher: It was a really little, miniature creature …
And the idea of the miniature cell?
69 Girl: I think that …
70 Teacher: Wait, wait, wait … a miniature cell. Would anyone agree with miniature cell?
71 (Martí): (No,) because cells are good.
16 CLARÀ
Jordi, still building on the same basic semantic structure first proposed by Aniol,
and in response to Rosó’s observation, formed a new inference about who the actor
is:
cavity = F(miniature cell: in your mouth)–(do)–[eat away at]→(teeth ^ hole).
Following Jordi’s new inference, Rosó made a new observation. This time,
she introduced a relationship between a variant of the semantic structure pro-
posed by Aniol and a new structure:
cavity = F(this = no miniature cell: in your mouth)-(do)→(teeth ^ destruction)

vs F(cells)-(do)→(you ^ life).
In this observation, Rosó introduced an association between cells and life, followed
by a contradiction between life and destruction, to rule out the inference that the
actor (of a function of “destruction”) could be a miniature cell. Aniol then made an
observation that fit with the previous idea of “little creature.” However, the teacher
seemed interested in the idea of cells and tried to see whether there was enough
consensus to fix it; there was not (“no, because cells are good”). Rosó’s observation
was quite convincing. However, shortly thereafter, another child mentioned the
word “cell,” and the teacher used the opportunity to look for a consensus on the
proposal of fixing both ideas (“little creature” and “cell”) as possibilities to be
subsequently confirmed. The consensus was reached, and both ideas were fixed.
Immediately after the teacher wrote the two words, Sara offered yet another
inference about the actor: “I would probably actually call a cavity a germ.” The
idea of “germ” was also fixed as a possibility, like “little creature” and “cell” before.
Several issues are worth noting in this episode. First, all of the participants are
working on a common semantic structure, introduced in Aniol’s first inference.
Observation, then, focuses on specific aspects of this semantic structure, in this
case the actor. For the purposes of observation, some variations in the common
semantic structure and relationships with other structures may be introduced, but
the common structure is always recognizable. Second, new inferences are formed
on specific aspects of the common semantic structure in reaction to observations.
Third, and most important, the common semantic structure cannot be fixed unless
there is an explicit consensus by all participants; clearly, fixation is not an action by
the teacher but a collective action. Fourth, agency seems to become progressively
more collective as the sequence moves toward fixation. In this episode, Aniol’s
first inference is local (in the sense that it is enacted by one participant). Further
observations by Rosó and new inferences by Jordi and Sara can be considered
more collective, but they do not involve all of the participants in the dialogue.
Consensus, in contrast, is an operation that seems to involve all participants,
similar to fixation. This last operation, however, involves the collective creation of
an (external) artifact that reifies the common semantic structure. From this point of
view, in progressive dialogue, the role of Observation → Consensus seems to be to
transit between inference and fixation, that is, to transit between local agency and
collective agency, between local meaning and collective meaning.
The Role of Fixation

Session 2 began by recalling what had been fixed in the previous session. The
teacher asked some of the children who had not talked much in the previous session
to look at their notes and explain what had been fixed from the dialogue.
47 Teacher: Alright, you start, Maria. Tell us something we said.

48 Maria: Cavities are brown or black.
49 Teacher: (…) one thing we said was that cavities are brown or black. Very good. What
else did we say? Gemma?
50 Gemma: That the little creatures, that they get in your mouth and make cavities.
51 Teacher: Sorry? Ah, that little creatures, right, get in your mouth and start … read what
you wrote down … ((reading from Gemma’s notes)) and they …
52 Gemma: eat … away ((reading))
53 Teacher: eat away at …
54 Gemma: the teeth ((reading))
55 Teacher: the teeth.
We talked about little creatures. What else did we talk about? We talked …?
56 (Maria): about cells and about …
57 Teacher: about cells. And what else did we talk about?
58 (Maria): Germs.
59 Teacher: And about germs. Okay, very good.
This exchange suggests the great importance of the artifact created in fixa-
tion. One important issue, apparent here, is that in this exchange remembering
was enacted not as an individual action but as a collective one. Thus, the
participants had to be very careful with what was fixed, and the common
structure had to be recovered in literal terms, as it was agreed (consensus) and
fixed. Another interesting issue is that those who spoke the fixed common
structure aloud had not talked much in the progressive dialogue leading to its
fixation, which underscores the collective nature of the fixed common semantic
structure.
The important role of the artifact created in fixation was made even clearer
a bit later. After recalling the common semantic structure, the teacher asked the
18 CLARÀ
children to try to draw how they imagined cavities working. The children did
this individually but seated in groups of four, and some talked with peers while
drawing. One of the pupils, Adrià, had not been present in the previous session.
In this context, the following episode took place:
231 Adrià: ((trying to begin his drawing, says to the teacher)) Well, I don’t really know (how
they work).
232 Teacher: No, well, but if … of course, you didn’t hear us. The other day we said a lot of
things that could help, right? ((to the whole class)) Tell Adrià things that might help
him draw it.
233 Júlia: I don’t know. I did it like this.
234 Martí: It’s like a creature that gets on your tooth and destroys it.
235 Adrià: It’s a creature? Really?
236 Martí: No, it’s a germ.
237 Teacher: It’s a germ? Did we decide that it’s a germ? Do we agree that it’s a germ?
Here Martí told Adrià that cavities are caused by a “creature,” and Adrià
expressed his surprise at this idea. The expression of surprise reenacted the
impetus (direction) in the dialogue regarding what causes cavities, which had
not been closed in the previous session. In response to this reenactment of
the direction, Martí told him that it was not really a “creature” but a “germ.”
The teacher then made Martí note that that was his idea, not the idea shared
by the entire classroom, and that what he was telling Adrià was not what had
been fixed. This again shows the gap between local agency and collective
agency, between local meaning and collective meaning. This collective
meaning is reified in an artifact through fixation, and this artifact is very
important because it represents what is shared by all participants in the
inquiry.
The conversation continued, and some other children said that they also
thought it was a “germ,” but then Abdel told Adrià that it was a cell. Adrià
did not know what to think, and the teacher decided it was necessary to close
this discrepancy with a small dose of authoritative voice. This opened a new
phase in the progressiveness process, which I examine in the following section.
The Role of Direction

In the middle of the second session, the teacher again faced the discrepancy, fixed
in the previous session, between whether what causes cavities is a “germ,” a “cell,”
or something else. At this point, the teacher decided it was necessary to clarify the
discrepancy in order to move on, so she introduced the idea of bacteria:
319 Teacher: (…) We were saying that it’s a little creature, right? Well, look (…), it’s a little
creature that, do you know what it’s called? It’s a little creature called a bacterium.
320 Rosó: Bacter-? Ah.
321 Teacher: Have you ever heard of bacteria before?
322 Children: Yes.
Here the teacher formed a new inference about the actor in the common semantic
structure, just as Jordi and Sara did before; however, this inference was now
authoritative. The teacher maintained the interactional symmetry in the dialogue
by immediately asking an authentic question (line 321). In the subsequent turns, the
children explained where they had heard about bacteria: For example, Paula and
Sara said that they had heard about them in second grade, when talking about human
beings and cells, and Martí said that he knew about them because his aunt had had
a cat that had died because of bacteria. However, the inference was not followed by
observation in the same sense that it was in the progressive episode seen above. In
that progressive episode, the observation focused on a specific aspect of the common
structure, the actor; here, in contrast, the actor inferred by the teacher was not
questioned through observation but rather directly accepted in the common structure
and fixed. The teacher’s inference was formed from previous inference and observa-
tion; however, once formed, the dialogic progressiveness stopped. After that
sequence, the teacher gave a new direction to the dialogue.
395 Teacher: Let’s think about what bacteria are, okay? Let’s think about it. What do you
think they’re like? Some of you said “we’ve heard of them,” “they’re related to
cells.” You’ve been saying things. You ((pointing to Rosó)) said “it will be easy for
me to think about them” … Alright. Tell us something about bacteria.
396 Rosó: About bacteria?
397 Teacher: What do you think they must be like? What are they like?
398 Rosó: Bacteria … how can I say this … like a little creature, too.
399 Teacher: A little creature.
400 Rosó: Well …
401 Teacher: When we say “little creature,” what do we mean?
402 Rosó: Something small that (moves).
403 Paula: A living being! [a living being]
The teacher introduced a new direction by asking “what bacteria are,” and Rosó
returned to the generic idea of “little creature.” Note that Rosó had questioned via
observation whether the actor in the common structure was a little creature;
nevertheless, she now proposed that it was, after having accepted the authoritative
inference formed by the teacher that it was a bacterium. Following a new impetus
by the teacher, Paula then made the inference that bacteria are living beings:
20 CLARÀ
cavity = F([bacterium = living being]: in your mouth)–(do)–[eat away at]→(teeth ^

hole).
The new inference by Paula was not formed as an authoritative one, and it
was immediately followed by a series of observations. Within this process of
observation, in which the children questioned and disagreed about whether
bacteria are living beings, Abdel came up with the following argument:
436 Abdel: If they weren’t alive, how would they move?

437 Teacher: Of course.
438 Abdel: Or when you get a cut here …
439 Teacher: Alright, but you think that bacteria move.
440 Abdel: Yes.
441 Clara: Yes, because otherwise they wouldn’t make holes in your tooth.
442(1) Teacher: ((writing on the blackboard)) They move.
442(2) Clara, you have something to add?
443 Clara: Yes, that if they weren’t living beings, then they wouldn’t eat away at the
tooth, because they would be there, they wouldn’t be able to move.
444 Teacher: Of course, so they move, right?
445 Clara: Yes.
446 Teacher: They’re alive and they move.
447 Adrià: Maybe it’s, like, something that eats the tooth.
448 Teacher: Eats, so, they must eat, or not?
449 Clara: Yes.
450 Adrià: Yes.
451 Clara: They feed on the tooth.
Abdel argued that bacteria need to move and that they cannot move if they
are not alive. Clara expanded this argument, noting that they have to move to
make holes in teeth and that therefore they must be alive. It is interesting that
these observations about whether bacteria are living beings generated new
inferences about the nature of their function in the common semantic structure:
cavity = F([bacterium = living being]: in your mouth)–(do)–[move]→(bacterium

^ tooth ^ hole).
Still on the grounds of observation of Paula’s inference, Adrià added a new

inference on the nature of the function, later expanded on by Clara, which would
have a strong influence on the group: “Maybe it’s, like, something that eats the
tooth”/“They feed on the tooth”:
cavity = F([bacterium = living being]: in your mouth)–(do)–[eat]→(bacterium ^

[tooth = food] ^ hole).
A consensus was reached on the idea that bacteria are living beings and
also that they move and eat (the tooth), and these inferences were fixed. At
this point in the dialogue, the session time was up, so it ended. In this last
episode, the inference that bacteria are living beings was accepted because
of the consensus on what bacteria need to do to make holes in teeth. In the
third session, after recalling the common semantic structure by reading
what had been fixed, the dialogue began with a slightly different direction.
41(1) Teacher: They’re living beings, right, we said, they’re living beings. Alright ((writes it
on the blackboard)), so that’s it. We’ve written everything down. They’re living
beings.
41(2) Being a living being means a lot of things, right?
42 Paula: Well, that you breathe, that you move, [that you eat]
43 Adrià: [that you can eat]
44 Clara: Well, not that you move, because plants are living beings, and they don’t move.
Here they were still recalling the common semantic structure (which had
been fixed), but when they remembered that bacteria are living beings, the
teacher made a comment that introduced a new direction: “Being a living
being means a lot of things, right?” This direction moved the inquiry away
from the common semantic structure they had been developing until that
moment and initiated a new one, which can be represented as follows:
F(living being)–(do)–[?]→(? ^ ?) = F(bacterium)–(do)–[?]→(? ^ ?).
Thus, when Paula referred to “moving” (one of the main arguments for
the idea that bacteria are living beings), Clara said, “Plants are living
beings, and they don’t move.” Therefore, in relation to this new common
semantic structure, “moving” was not valid. This structure led the children
to think in terms of living beings at a general level, but not all children
found it easy to think in these general terms, so the teacher modified the
terms of the direction a little bit:
22 CLARÀ
203 Teacher: Wait a minute. To help you think a bit more … We said a bacterium is a living
being, so think of a living being, [tell me a living being, whichever one you want].
204 Paula: [but I mean, a living being grows]
205 Clara: An animal.
206 Teacher: An animal. Which one?
207 Paula: A dog.
208 Clara: Okay, a dog.
209 Teacher: A dog, right? Let’s think about dogs. Let’s think about the characteristics of
a dog ((several children raise their hands excitedly at once)). So, you must be missing
something here ((points to the blackboard)), right? Something that happens with dogs
and that maybe, certainly, happens with bacteria ((Rosó raises her hand insistently)).
Rosó, I see you, but you’ve already talked a lot, and there are people who haven’t
talked as much, okay? Abdel, tell us.
210 Abdel: That maybe dogs (…) can be different.

211 Teacher: They can be different.
212 Rosó: Yeah, I mean, in terms of their size.
213 Martí: They excrementate.
214 Abdel: in size, in things related to the body
215 Martí: excrem … ((raises his hand))
Here, in order to think of aspects of living beings that might apply to bacteria,
the teacher invited the children to think in terms of an analogy to a dog. This
further modified the common semantic structure to
F(dog = living being)–(do)–[?]→(? ^ ?) = F(bacterium = living being)–(do)–[?]→(? ^

?).
Abdel responded by saying that there are different kinds of dogs, and
Martí said that they “excrementate.” Immediately observation began—in this
5
The fact that the teacher tried to directly fix the inference that bacteria excrete waste does not
mean that she succeeded in doing so; observation and consensus had not occurred, so the fixation
was interrupted, and observation began. This time, two inferences were formed in very quick
succession, and their observation was somewhat mixed. For the inference that bacteria excrete
waste, some children found it hard to believe that our mouths are full of excrement. However, other
children explained that because bacteria are so small, their excrement must be even smaller, which
must be why we do not see or feel it in our mouths. After this discussion, consensus was reached and
the idea was fixed. No consensus was reached on the idea that this excrement could cause holes in
teeth, so it was not fixed. Many children thought that bacteria eat teeth (indeed this idea had been
previously fixed as “bacteria eat”), and this idea was difficult to reconcile with the other idea. In the
fourth and final session of the teaching unit, the teacher finally introduced the authoritative view on
this issue.
case, the observation for Abdel’s inference (Martí’s inference seemed not to
have been heard, as many children were raising their hands and talking). The
observation began with Rosó and continued for several turns, until
a consensus was reached, and the inference was fixed. Then Rosó made
a new inference: They breathe. Again, after this inference, there was obser-
vation, consensus, and fixation. Several other inferences were made, and at
one point Paula returned to Martí’s previous inference: “And their needs?”
270 Paula: And their needs?
271 Teacher: Aaahh.
272 Martí: Excrementate!
273 Teacher: Excrementate, eh. Yes? No, it’s not [excrementate]
274 Martí: [and they vomit]
275 Teacher: It’s excrete, right, they excrete waste. ((Martí makes a disappointed gesture.))
No, no Martí, but that’s very good. It’s a very difficult word, okay?
276 Martí: ((laughing a little)) Yeah.
277 Teacher: It’s a super difficult word, so, they should excrete waste, of course, because
otherwise, if you eat, you would turn into a balloon that would get bigger and bigger
and bigger until it popped. This is a really good one, yeah? They excrete waste
((writes on the blackboard))
278 Adrià: And where do they excrete waste? (…?)
279 Teacher: Ah. Where do they excrete waste, where do they excrete? ((still writing
everything on the blackboard)) [It seems to me that where they excrete waste must be
important]
280 Aniol: [Ah! That’s it! That’s how they eat away at the tooth!]
281 Teacher: What?

282 Aniol: That’s how they eat away at the tooth.
283 Teacher: Ahhh. What, what, what? Do you think? Say that again.
284 Aniol: They eat away at it when they poop.
285 Teacher: They eat away at it.
Here, following the inference by Paula and Martí, the teacher tried to fix it
directly,5 and then Adrià asked, “And where do they excrete waste?” Note
that this question opened up a new direction, which the teacher sought to
reinforce in her next turn. This direction resituated the inquiry in the pre-
vious common semantic structure:
F([bacterium = living being]: in your mouth)–(do)–[excrete]→(bacteria v excre-

ment ^ ?).
This direction was what led Aniol to form the inference that it is the bacteria’s
excrement that causes holes in teeth:
24 CLARÀ
cavity = F([bacterium = living being]: in your mouth)–(do)–[excrete]→(bacteria

v excrement ^ tooth ^ hole).
This episode shows the important role of direction in triggering the formation of
inferences. The operation of direction basically consists of highlighting or creating
a gap in a common semantic structure, thereby generating the need to fill this gap by
means of the formation of an inference. Sometimes direction takes the form of
a question, as in the initial one (“What happens in our mouths when we have
a cavity?”), but it can also take other forms, such as a comment (“Being a living
being means a lot of things, right?”) or an expression of surprise (“It’s a creature?
Really?”). Sometimes direction is enacted by the teacher, but other participants may
also enact it, with considerable influence on the progressiveness, as in the case of
Adrià’s question “Where do they excrete waste?”
This offers insight into the entire cycle of the social mechanism: From
a common semantic structure (previously fixed) a new inference is formed,
usually prompted by direction. This new inference then escalates through
observation and consensus to fixation. From this newly fixed semantic structure,
a new direction prompts a new inference, and the cycle begins anew.
DISCUSSION
This study has identified a social mechanism that can explain progressive-
ness in collective inquiry. This social mechanism can be specified as a series
of iterations of the sequence (Direction) → Inference ↔ Observation ↔
Consensus → Fixation. In a full cycle of the sequence, all of the operations
are enacted on one and the same semantic structure. The sequence begins
with the identification or creation of a gap or incongruence in the semantic
structure by means of the operation of direction. This operation seems to be
optional (at least as a public discursive operation), which is why I put it in
parentheses in the sequence. The gap created in the semantic structure by the
direction operation triggers the formation of an inference to fill it. This
inference is then observed, and new alternative or complementary inferences
may be formed in reaction to the observation, which are subsequently
observed, and so forth (hence, the two-way arrow between inference and
observation). Observation may lead to an explicit collective agreement about
the validity of the inference (consensus); however, even when consensus has
been enacted, another observation may begin, thereby impeding fixation
(hence, the two-way arrow between observation and consensus). Once con-
sensus is finally enacted, the inference is fixed by means of the creation of
an artifact and becomes a collective meaning. From this newly fixed
common semantic structure a new direction can be enacted to provoke the

formation of a new inference, and the cycle begins again.
One cycle of the social mechanism implies a transition from local agency to
collective agency, from local meaning to collective meaning. The formation of an
inference is a locally enacted operation; it is usually enacted by an individual or by
few people. Observation is usually enacted by more people than inference is, but it
is not yet an operation of the collective, as not all participants are involved.
Consensus, in contrast, is an operation conducted by all participants. Finally,
fixation is also an operation enacted by the collective but differs from consensus
in that fixation involves the creation of an artifact that reifies the shared meaning.
From this reified shared meaning, a new inference is formed as a local meaning, and
a new cycle begins. Therefore, the social mechanism articulates the local and the
collective as a continuum. These aspects of the mechanism are represented in
Figure 1.
In this mechanism, inference and observation play an important role. This is
consistent with the work of Ford (2012), who argued that “scientific sense-
making in practice is social and epistemically based on construction and cri-
tique, and sense-making for an individual is fundamentally similar” (p. 209).
Ford’s empirical observations stress the importance of what he called critique in
collective inquiry and provide evidence for the social distribution of the func-
tions of construction (inference) and critique (observation). The importance of
the interplay between inference and observation was also stressed by Bereiter
(1994) in his second and fourth commitments for progressive discourse: framing
propositions in ways that allow others to test them and being open to criticism
regarding one’s beliefs. In fact, it could be argued that the inference–observation
interplay seems to enact Wegerif’s (2011) dialogic gap, Bereiter’s (1994) dia-
lectic opposition that generates new meaning, or Bakhtin’s (1981) heteroglossia
as a generative power. Therefore, this interplay seems to be the very substance
of inquiry, as advanced by Dewey (1933/1986a) and Piaget (1975/1985).
Accordingly, if the identified mechanism is valid, a lack of observation
would impede the emergence of progressiveness. This is indeed the case when
there is ideational asymmetry when forming the inference (i.e., when the
inference is authoritative). This inference can be built on previous observation
Collective meaning Fixation Fixation
Consensus Consensus
(Direction) (Direction) (Direction)
Observation Observation
Local meaning Inference Inference Inference etc.
FIGURE 1 A social mechanism of progressiveness in symmetric collective inquiry.

26 CLARÀ
and inferences and on a common semantic structure, and in this sense it can be
built according to the mechanism of progressiveness. However, once the author-
itative inference is formed, progressiveness stops, and there is no further
observation on this inference, even if the interactional symmetry is maintained.
An example of this, in the case examined here, is the teacher’s introduction of
“bacteria” as the actor in the common semantic structure. The lack of observa-
tion in the mechanism also happens in a type of interaction that Mercer (2000)
has called cumulative talk. In this type of interaction inferences are not author-
itative, but all are accepted at the same level without any scrutiny and without
real interanimation between them—it is an uncritical sum of ideas. This type of
talk is similar to what Reznitskaya and Gregory (2013), on the grounds of
Alexander (2005), have called pseudoinquiry. In these types of interaction, in
which observation is lacking in the social mechanism, progressiveness does not
happen.
The mechanism also suggests that although the inference–observation interplay is
necessary, it is not sufficient to enable progressiveness in collective inquiry: Con-
sensus and fixation are also required. This finding is consistent with Bereiter’s (1994)
first and third commitments for progressive dialogue: working toward an under-
standing that is satisfactory to all; and expanding the body of collectively valid
propositions, thereby maximizing the basis from which new conclusions may be
drawn. This also echoes Roschelle and Teasley’s (1995) emphasis on the idea that
collaboration consists of constructing a shared conception of the problem and their
emphasis on the artifactual nature of the joint problem space. The findings on fixation
are especially consistent with Sarmiento and Stahl’s (2008) observation that the
artifactual nature of the joint problem space permits group remembering and bridging
and that this is crucial for progressiveness. Accordingly, even if inference and
observation were present, the lack of consensus and fixation would still impede the
emergence of progressiveness in collective inquiry. In fact, this is the case with a type
of interaction that Mercer (2000) has called disputational talk. In this type of talk,
participants treat the viewpoints of others as individual threats and adopt a defensive
approach. According to Mercer (2000), in this kind of talk, “participants work to keep
their identities separate, and to protect their individuality” (p. 102). Thus, in disputa-
tional talk, there is no advancement to collective agency and collective meaning, and
consensus and fixation are lacking from the mechanism; research has shown that
progressiveness does not emerge in this type of talk (Mercer, 2000).
This study also shows the important role played by direction, which consists
of opening gaps in the common semantic structure, thereby leading to the
formation of new inferences to fill them. At least in the case presented here,
direction takes a similar form to what several authors have called wonderment
questions or uncertainty expressions (Chin & Osborne, 2008; Kirch & Siry,
2010), which are understood as questions and expressions that reflect curiosity,
puzzlement, or skepticism. In the literature, authors usually talk about wonder-

ment questions when talking about students’ questions; however, in the data
presented here, wonderment questions were provided by both the teacher and
the pupils. Research on wonderment questions has found that these kinds of
questions have a significant impact on the further development of dialogue
(Aguiar, Mortimer, & Scott, 2010; Chin & Brown, 2002), which is consistent
with the findings of this study on the role of direction.
The findings of this study, as well as the social mechanism approach taken,
complement and enrich other approaches to progressiveness in collective inquiry.
For example, the identified social mechanism provides an understanding of collec-
tive inquiry that can frame further research on teachers’ scaffolding. Thus, it would
be interesting to investigate how teachers can participate in each operation of the
mechanism to discursively scaffold dialogue. The findings and approach presented
in this article also complement approaches that study the interanimation of ideas
through the interplay between dialogic and authoritative phases in interaction
(Lehesvuori et al., 2013; McMahon, 2012; Scott et al., 2006). This study focused
on progressiveness in the dialogic phase, but this does not deny the potential benefit
of combining this dialogic phase with an authoritative one. In fact, such interplay
happened in the case presented here. As shown above, in the second session the
teacher introduced an authoritative inference that had a significant impact on the
progressiveness. The formation of the authoritative inference momentarily stopped
the progressiveness, but it also made it possible to subsequently initiate new cycles
of the mechanism. In addition, in the final session of the teaching unit, the com-
municative approach was authoritative (not dialogic), and the teacher provided and
explained the authoritative view of how bacteria cause cavities.
This study has a number of limitations. First, the discourse that the partici-
pants brought to the whole-class dialogue had origins and developments that
may have occurred outside of the registered and analyzed whole-class interac-
tion. In between sessions, children could talk about cavities in their homes, or
read about them on the Internet, or go to the library and search for information;
and in fact, children did all of these things. The experiences that children had
had with cavities, dentists, and bacteria before starting the first session also
framed the discourse they brought into the collective inquiry. Even during the
sessions, children made private comments addressed to peers seated nearby,
especially in moments of individual work. All of this history of the discourse
that children finally brought to collective inquiry was neither gathered nor
analyzed in this study, and this must be recognized as a limitation. However,
the focus of this study was not on individual trajectories of meaning (like, for
example, in the approach of Twiner et al., 2014). In the approach presented here
the focus was on shared meaning and on how the discourse brought to the
collective inquiry constitutes a joint problem space. For that reason, although
28 CLARÀ
the (precollective) history of this discourse would have undeniably enriched the
approach, what was central for the aims of this study was gathering and
analyzing the discourse that was made public to the collective involved in the
inquiry. Second, the collective inquiry analyzed here was about science, and
therefore the social mechanism suggested by the analysis may not be suitable for
collective inquiry in other fields. However, the fact that progressiveness is not
related to objective truth opens the door to the possibility that the mechanism
operates also in nonscientific collective inquiry. Third, the social mechanism
presented here was identified from the analysis of a single case and therefore
cannot be directly generalized. Case studies, however, are well suited for theory
development and hypothesis generation. In this sense, this social mechanism
should be taken as a hypothesis to be further explored and studied in future
research.
This research may have implications for educational practice. First, the social
mechanism may be promoted in whole-class dialogue to allow progressiveness.
Strategies for doing so can be inspired in those that have successfully promoted
reciprocity. On the one hand, research can focus on how the teacher, by means
of his or her discursive turns, can scaffold the social mechanism of progressive-
ness. On the other hand, rules of participation can be developed based on this
social mechanism and can be explicitly implemented in classrooms. Second,
digital platforms and tools may be developed to support the social mechanism.
A suitable approach to doing this may be principle-based design. The basic idea
of this approach is to support group monitoring of how actual dialogue is
aligned with principles of knowledge building (Zhang et al., 2018). The social
mechanism identified here informs the way in which collective knowledge
building in inquiry occurs; therefore, digital tools may be developed to represent
actual dialogue in terms of this social mechanism and may thus support group
self-regulation. Third, this development of digital metacognitive tools based on
the social mechanism may be used to optimize dialogue and progressiveness in
massive collectivities, such as massive open online courses (MOOCs), profes-
sional communities, or scientific communities.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply grateful to the school, the teacher, and the children who participated
in this research.
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APPENDIX: MODAL SYNTAX NOTATION
The following notation system was adapted and developed from contributions of
the linguist A. J. Greimas. The unit of analysis to which this notation must be
applied is the utterance. The general procedure thus consists first of segmenting
an utterance and then of transcoding it into modal syntax. The same is then done
for the next utterance, and so on.
Basically, here modal syntax is used as a way to clearly show the structural
relationships between actants in an utterance. An actant is an agent that parti-
cipates in the situation reported in the utterance, something or someone that acts
in some way. It may be a living being, or an anthropomorphic thing, or even an
inanimate object or abstract entity. Modal syntax as used here also includes
some semantically important lexemes used in the utterance. The term lexeme
can be viewed in general as a synonym for word; however, the lexeme is the
word with all of its possible meanings.
This appendix presents, first, the notation used for each element of a transcoded
utterance; second, how these elements are put together in basic semantic
structures; and finally, how relationships between basic semantic structures are
formulated.
Elements for Modal Syntax Formulation

Actants
S Subject
O Object
Basic Relationships Between Actants

→ Function
^ Conjunction
v Disjunction
= Equivalence between two actants or two functions
: Lexematic investment of an actant or a function
Formulations of Basic Semantic Structures

Function: Utterances of Doing
The basic semantic structure of a function is
F(S1)→(S2 ^ O2),
which is read as “S1’s function is to put S2 and O2 in conjunction.”

The modality of the function is indicated in parentheses as follows:
F(S1)—(do)→(S2 ^ O2),
which is read as “S1 does the function of conjoining S2 and O2.”

There are five possible modalities of the function (modalities of doing):
doing
having to do
wanting to do
knowing how to do
being able to do
The nature of the function is indicated in brackets as follows:
F(S1)—(wants to do)—[give]→(S2 ^ O2),

which is read as “S1 wants to give O2 to S2.”
To indicate the nature of the function, the lexeme that expresses that function in
the utterance being transcoded into modal syntax is used.
Qualification: Utterances of Being

The conjunction part of the basic semantic structure (S ^ O) deserves especial
consideration. This part of the structure constitutes the relationship of being that is
transformed by the function in an utterance of doing. Moreover, this relationship of
34 CLARÀ
being can also be enunciated independently and outside of any utterance of doing.
When this is the case, the basic structure of an utterance of being is S ^ O.
There are three possible relationships of being:
● Conjunction/disjunction, indicated as
(S ^ O) or (S v O)
● Actantial equivalence, indicated as

(S = S)
● Lexemic investment, indicated as
(S: lexeme)
In order to transcode the aspects of the time and space of an utterance, lexemic
investment is used as follows:
[F(S1)—(does)—[verbal lexeme]→(S1^ O)]: time or space lexeme.
Relationships Between Basic Semantic Structures

>< Reciprocal Presupposition
One structural relationship between actants is reciprocally determined by
another structural relationship between actants. For example,
F(S1)—(does)→(S2 ^ O1) >< F(S2)—(does)→(S1 ^ O2),
which is read as “S1 conjoins S2 and O1, and S2 conjoins S1and O2, but if S1
disjoined S2 and O1, then S2 would also disjoin S1 and O2.”
When the functions of two basic semantic structures related by reciprocal
presupposition are enacted by the same S, and the S or O to be conjoined is
also the same, the formulation of the relationship can be simplified. For exam-
ple, if the reciprocal presupposition is
F(S1)—(does)→(S2 ^ O1) >< F(S1)—(does)→(S1 v O1),

then it can be formulated as
F(S1)—(does)→(S1 v O1 ^ S2),
which is read as “S1 disjoins S1 and O1, and it conjoins S2 and O1, but if S1
conjoined S1 and O1, then it would disjoin O1 and S2.”
vs Contradiction
One structural relationship between actants is contradictory with another struc-
tural relationship between actants. For example,
F(S1) –(wants to do)→(S1^ O1) vs F(S2) –(wants to do)→(S1 v O1).
> Simple presupposition

One structural relationship between actants is the consequence of another
structural relationship between actants. For example,
F(S1) –(does) → (S2 v O2) > F(S2) → (S1 v O1).
+ Coexistence
One structural relationship between actants coexists with another structural
relationship between actants. For example,
F(S1)—(does)→(S1^ O1) + F(S2)—(does)→(S2^O2).
Note that when no relationship is established, that is, when a relationship is

negated, it is indicated as no ><, no vs, no >, no +. When a relationship is
established as conditional, it is indicated as if ><, if vs, if >, if +.

Building On Each Other's Ideas: A Social Mechanism of Progressiveness in Whole-Class Collective Inquiry

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Building On Each Other's Ideas: A Social Mechanism of Progressiveness in Whole-Class Collective Inquiry

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Journal of the Learning Sciences

ISSN: 1050-8406 (Print) 1532-7809 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hlns20

Building on Each Other’s Ideas: A Social

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2018.1555756

Published online: 11 Jan 2019.

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Building on Each Other’s Ideas: A Social

In recent decades, important advances have been made in understanding how

Correspondence should be addressed to Marc Clarà, Department of Pedagogy and Psychology,

Dewey (1916/1994) and Piaget (1969/1981). Both offered strong psychological

to as authoritative or monologic (constraint) and dialogic (cooperation; Scott,

Progressiveness in Collective Inquiry

In whole-class dialogue, the issue of progressiveness has been addressed in

Group Cognition: The Whole and the Components

Greeno (2005) expressed a similar concern, although he outlined a notably different

Dewey’s distinction between observation and inference is somewhat similar to

Participants and Data Collection

The Role of Observation and Consensus

cavity = F(little creature: in your mouth)–(do)–[eat away at]→(teeth ^ hole).

cavity = F(miniature cell: in your mouth)–(do)–[eat away at]→(teeth ^ hole).

cavity = F(this = no miniature cell: in your mouth)-(do)→(teeth ^ destruction)

The Role of Fixation

47 Teacher: Alright, you start, Maria. Tell us something we said.

The Role of Direction

cavity = F([bacterium = living being]: in your mouth)–(do)–[eat away at]→(teeth ^

436 Abdel: If they weren’t alive, how would they move?

cavity = F([bacterium = living being]: in your mouth)–(do)–[move]→(bacterium

Still on the grounds of observation of Paula’s inference, Adrià added a new

cavity = F([bacterium = living being]: in your mouth)–(do)–[eat]→(bacterium ^

F(living being)–(do)–[?]→(? ^ ?) = F(bacterium)–(do)–[?]→(? ^ ?).

210 Abdel: That maybe dogs (…) can be different.

F(dog = living being)–(do)–[?]→(? ^ ?) = F(bacterium = living being)–(do)–[?]→(? ^

281 Teacher: What?

F([bacterium = living being]: in your mouth)–(do)–[excrete]→(bacteria v excre-

cavity = F([bacterium = living being]: in your mouth)–(do)–[excrete]→(bacteria

common semantic structure a new direction can be enacted to provoke the

Collective meaning Fixation Fixation

Local meaning Inference Inference Inference etc.

FIGURE 1 A social mechanism of progressiveness in symmetric collective inquiry.

puzzlement, or skepticism. In the literature, authors usually talk about wonder-

APPENDIX: MODAL SYNTAX NOTATION

Elements for Modal Syntax Formulation

Basic Relationships Between Actants

Formulations of Basic Semantic Structures

which is read as “S1’s function is to put S2 and O2 in conjunction.”

which is read as “S1 does the function of conjoining S2 and O2.”

F(S1)—(wants to do)—[give]→(S2 ^ O2),

Qualification: Utterances of Being

● Actantial equivalence, indicated as

● Lexemic investment, indicated as

[F(S1)—(does)—[verbal lexeme]→(S1^ O)]: time or space lexeme.

Relationships Between Basic Semantic Structures

F(S1)—(does)→(S2 ^ O1) >< F(S2)—(does)→(S1 ^ O2),

F(S1)—(does)→(S2 ^ O1) >< F(S1)—(does)→(S1 v O1),

F(S1) –(wants to do)→(S1^ O1) vs F(S2) –(wants to do)→(S1 v O1).

> Simple presupposition

F(S1) –(does) → (S2 v O2) > F(S2) → (S1 v O1).

F(S1)—(does)→(S1^ O1) + F(S2)—(does)→(S2^O2).

Note that when no relationship is established, that is, when a relationship is

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