Judith’s Reaction

Judith’s reaction on Ahmad’s request to summarize the discussion is first quite negative. Although Judith wants to end discussions with something agreed upon, she mentions that the two other discussants were stuck. Quite naturally, in Turn 42, she opposes Ahmad’s request to include their contributions in the summary by writing they don’t contradict, they are not connected since their previous contributions were superficial. Ahmad’s reaction at Turn 44 (We don’t say ‘contradict’ or ‘connected’, we say ‘two positions’ and whether it’s possible to integrate them in a composite sentence) refers explicitly to Judith but she does not accept yet this explanation and asksWhy is it needed?. But Judith is open to Ahmad’s position. She progressively understands Ahmad and she comments then: He explains…he simply wants to tie them, and he says ‘we don’t have to decide among them but to connect them in one sentence’ and leads to the direction of a summary. And quite naturally, her final comment is Indeed, I agreed with him. Although she does not react to Ahmad in Digalo, his intervention deeply impinges on her appraisal of the role of the moderator as somebody who tries to put together all arguments, even small, those I thought to be not necessarily right and important […] in order to summarize.

Later on, in the discussion, Judith sees in Ahmad’s summary at Turn 47 a successful combination of ideas of all discussants: Indeed, this is what I tried to say… so, this is why I agreed with him… His formulation is sensitive… He doesn’t say one must study the parents too in all research [what the other discussants thought] but he says that it is necessary to study the teacher and the rest is important too (what Judith thought). This formulation is surprising for Judith after all the discussants expressed their opinion and tried to decide ‘who is right’ because, as she claimed in her interview, discussions are places for competition between ideas. With such a view, it is indeed surprising for the moderator to summarize by combining. The moderator is for her a secretary who helps the group attaining its goal. But as she reports in her auto-confrontation on what she felt during the discussion, she changes her own view (and as we will claim in the discussion section — she learns) and appreciates Ahmad’s move: His formulation was nice. He didn’t just say ‘everybody agrees’… I didn’t think in that way (laughs). Judith comments on turn 48 by appreciating very much Ahmad’s the importance of the discussants in his summary, although they didn’t write the summary: This is beautiful […] He summarizes the discussion and writes ‘my summary’ because this is what he understood. He checks whether his understanding is correct. This is very important. Quite naturally she agrees with this summary at Turn 49.

After Judith commented on the moves of the discussion map with the replay function of the Digalo tool, she praised the moderator as somebody responsible who leads the group to go deep into the content: He knew to observe us from the top…to bring a question that brings a new angle. For Judith, this was a new insight that leads the moderator to combine ideas (she confessed that she did not play this role when she was a moderator, the week before). Nevertheless, she saw that Fatima and Rim did not react to Ahmad’s summary. She interpreted this phenomenon as something to take care of, that originated from what she considered as their weak competences: How can we force weak students to participate…in order to gain as much as the others? One should be aware of the personal characteristics of students in order to adapt to them the goal of the activity and its formulation. I have been one of those with high motivation and obedient. If I am told to participate to a discussion, I do it…