Lab Technicians and High School Student Interns—Who Is Scaffolding Whom?: On Forms of Emergent Expertise

摘要

Apprenticeship and the associated support mechanism of scaffolding havereceived considerable interest by educational researchers as ways of inducting students intoscience. Most studies treat scaffolding as a one-way process, where the expert supportsthe development of the novice. However, if social processes generally and conversationsspecifically are dialogical in nature then we would expect to observe two-way processes.The purpose of this paper is to report the results of an ethnographic study of high schoolstudents' internships in a scientific laboratory. Data were collected through observation,fieldnotes, and videotaping. Drawing on discursive psychology and conversation analysis,we find that laboratory technicians and students draw on different forms of discursivestrategies to articulate knowledgeability while transacting with each other. We put forththe notion of emergent expertise to describe new forms of expertise that are not a propertyof individuals but rather the product of collective transactions. Our study illustrates theimportance of opportunities generated in the internship for both old-timers and newcomersto bring about knowledgeability. This study implies a rethinking of the role of the expertand the notion of scaffolding, which puts more emphasis on the transactional process ratherthan on learners as recipients.