The Absence of Verbal Communication
The absence of verbal communication naturally occurs not only when students are distant, but even when they are at the same place. The instruction not to communicate verbally insured the deployment of this practice.
Cued retrospective reporting involves harsh epistemological questions: To what extent does the interaction with the experimenter reveal “what they thought in the first interaction” and/or their adaptation to the experimenter–interlocutor? Does this really reveal “what they thought” during the interaction? The semi- structured interview that was around the issues discussed in the interaction minimized possible discrepancies and validated to a large extent our interpretations.
How was the discussion perceived by the participants in eachof itsmoves? To answer this difficult question,we had at disposal the Digalomap they gradually produced, and the auto-confrontation of Judith, Fatima, and Ahmadwith the replay of themap (the fourth discussant, Rim, did not agree to participate in the auto-confrontation). The preliminary interview of the discussants provided an indispensable background to interpret the e-discussion. To keep this paper short, we do not report on the beliefs of the discussants on the role of teachers and learners in classroomdiscussions, as theywere identified in the interviews.Wewill insert some insights from the interviews to complete the interpretations of the discussion by the discussants in their cued retrospectives.
