The next section of my thesis deals with ‘improvable objects’, an idea introduced in Wells’ book ‘Dialogic Inquiry’. Wells credits the idea to Bereiter and Scardamalia in 1996

‘This focus on an “improvable object,” as Bereiter and Scardmalia (1996) term it[…]’

so I go and read their chapter.

Can’t find the term. Well, Scardamalia is spelled wrong in the reference, so maybe the date’s wrong. If it’s a term introduced by  Bereiter, maybe he reuses it in his later book (2002). Nope. Maybe it’s in Bereiter and Scardamalia’s earlier book? Nope. Maybe it’s in one of their earlier articles? Nope.

So, naturally, I google it. And find that this blog is number one hit for “improvable object”. So not much help t/here. Lots of people cite Wells 1999 and Bereiter and Scardamalia 1996. Maybe I missed it? Then I find the 2002 book in Google books. It definitely doesn’t mention improvable objects. Finally I track down a downloadable PDF of the 1996 chapter and do a word search. No improvable objects, but only ‘improvable human constructions’ – in this case, mathematical ideas. I can see a strong connection between the two phrases, but they’re not the same.

I must have wasted about four hours on this. The original mis-phrasing of the reference was compounded by subsequent writers not bothering to check. Grrrr.

I’m trying to tighten up my first analysis chapter – which was probably trying to do too much at once. It’s really difficult to do – partly because the chapter is about 16,000 words long, which makes it unwieldy to work with, and partly because I was rather pleased with how it flowed, so it’s a wrench to pull it to pieces and start again.

I’m following a thread of postings in a FirstClass conference – and I’m quoting the first seven in the thread, so my argument has to be structured around those seven in chronological order – which imposes constraints on how I develop my argument.

My orginal versions addressed the questions

• How do tutors and learners using asynchronous dialogue carry along and develop ideas across postings?
• How do tutors and learners use asynchronous dialoue to build and maintain a collaborative group?

I’ve decided that these  are too wide, so I’ve narrowed it down to

• How do groups use postings in asynchronous dialogue to make decisions?

My seven pieces of data are then going to support discussion of group summaries, typography, delicate objects, proposal patterns, challenges, failures and powerful synthesis.

I’ve now got more of an idea of what my supervisors meant about subsequent chapters ‘falling out’ of my initial analysis. Some of the things I have identified as important don’t fit in with discussion of decision making, so they need to be bumped on into another section. At the moment my second analysis chapter is going to be on how attachments are used to supplement postings and develop exploratory talk – and the third chapter is going to be something about the challenges of group trajectories/timescales clashing with individual trajectories/timescales.