Engaging with a group’s space of meaning: The tutor’s role in small-group didactics

This essay describes part of a study intended to develop an analytical understanding of learning in small groups within the research paradigm of phenomenography and the variation theory of learning, here paying specific attention to the role of the tutor in a small- group tutorial situation. The empirical study we are drawing on concerns small groups of first-year university physics students working on a problem in Newtonian mechanics on the behaviour of relevant forces when an ox pulls a box along the ground. We characterise the role of the tutor who intervenes at intervals as engaging with the space of meaning that is forming and reforming as the group discussion progresses. What is discussed is characterised using the identification of five objects of discussion, and in turn a number of dimensions of variation for each object of discussion. These are used to investigate how a space of meaning is constituted in the students’ conversation, which can have different qualities, depending on the patterns in which dimensions of variation are handled in discussion. From this analysis, in terms of these patterns and objects of discussion, we posit a proto-model for tutor intervention: preparation, interaction, and exit.