Results and discussion

The results from the three studies in the thesis are based on analy-sis of students’ web-based written asynchronous discussions and responses (Studies I and II) and arguing (Study III). It appears that the students to various extents gradually develop an ability to make use of the meaning content and voices as an active tool for new understanding or gaining new perspectives, individually and collectively. It also clarifies that meaning; dialogue and interaction belong together. Together, these dimensions form the participatory impacts in online education. Additionally, it is clear that there is an active and creative learning process that evolves over time, when

students use their theoretical knowledge and practical experiences with others. This process leads – although to various extents - to new ways of thinking and acting.

What particularly emerges is the importance of collaborative learning, when the focus moves from the individual to the collec-tive, but also into the space within and between the written, asyn-chronous dialogues. The text with different voices breaks in the meeting within and between the dialogues with different meaning content, or in what we could term the passage through the speech zone. In this zone exists material and a sphere of influence domi-nated by the students’ own and others' words, reflections or char-acters. Differing perspectives on meaning can therefore be broken.

But you can not simply assume that students immediately have the ability to make deliberate use of the meaning content of their own and others' texts, to support their own and others' learning. This learning process appears to develop slowly and is not automatic.

There is also no clear linear progression between the three courses.

The interaction or relationship between different meaning con-tent, has the potential to help participants attune their ideas, as-suming different positions that define their standpoints within a re-ciprocity of differences. In every utterance, there are authoritative words, or more or less persuasive words, with traces of the stu-dents’ own and others' voices from different contexts. The different meanings are adopted and understood, in terms of how students interpret them. We could therefore say that there is a paradigm shift “between I and other” when students are co-actors in joint continuous, open dialogues with own and others' voices. In this zone or arena, new meaning and perspectives are generated, based on the understanding of language, culture and various phenomena, but also depending on the context and the importance of collabo-ration for learning and development.

10.5.1 Web-based primary and secondary genres

In the results, it is important to draw attention to the heterogeneity of speech and writing genres, as described by Bakhtin (1986, 2004b, pp. 61-63). The genre that appears in all three studies is es-pecially the primary (simple) genre. Here you can find the direct or immediate words which have traces of the student's own thoughts,

but also of other people's views from different contexts. In particu-lar, the meaning content in the students' responses changes to a simple everyday level between the courses and course assignments, even over time. The initiation of this learning process can be char-acterised as “exercise in social theory” (Bakhtin, 1981; Holquist, 1990, 2002, s. 37; Wertsch, 1991). But there is some variation over time, when the meaning content consolidates more or less of the student's own voice, and others' experience and/or literature-based voices.

The genre that appears to some extent in the studies is the initi-ated transformation from the primary genre to the secondary (complex) genre. The difference is that in the secondary genre, a more complex, relatively well developed and organised scientific communication can emerge. This type of communication is given a special status in an academic context. The present thesis provides examples of this type of genre, which has added a secondary level of reflection on the events that are discussed. As a scientific text, it involves theories, analyses and interpretation of students' web-based argumentation and responses. The web-web-based initiated sec-ondary genre becomes especially clear when comparisons are made between Studies I and II, with 40 students’ collective discussions and responses, and Study III, with collective arguing. In Study III, the meaning content of the 30 students’ web-based arguments (N = 253) on cases of teacher leadership becomes more complex, com-pared to the students’ responses and discussions of the seven previ-ous assignments (analysed in Studies I and II, N = 759).

The dialogic interactions between students gradually change to scientific writing, when they become shareholders and engage in co-authorship of meaning. In these relations, meaning potentials arise, as the range of meaning-mediating possibilities (Rommetveit, 2003). The students borrow each other's utterances and words from literature, and the dialogue becomes a venue for interaction and confrontation between the meaning content of arguments and responses. The relationship between thought and word is a move-ment from thought to word, and from word to thought.

10.5.2 Between I and other

The title “Between I and other” can be related to Lähteenmäki’s (2005) term “use theory of meaning”. It refers to the point when students begin to reflect on the meaning content and to different extents attain an understanding, agreement and experience mean-ingful learning. In this situated web-based "space", writer, text and reader are all included. The space is formed by the students’ under-standing of both their own texts and others’ texts, as well as com-parisons between them. In this manner, applying Bakhtin’s theories bridges across the social–individual divide.

The implications and results that the thesis highlights are that it is not enough to consider individual written, asynchronous dia-logues in order to analyse learning. It is in social and dialogic in-teractions that understanding of different meaningful meanings is clarified and develops. Based on these results, it may be concluded that the following approaches can promote learning dialogic inter-actions, in a way that stimulates students to progressively deepen and refine their understanding, as well as enabling them to express reasonable critical positions:

 Strategies for peer scaffolding and critical- and higher-order thinking. That is, to be co-actor in a joint learning process.

 Strategies for peer support with collective argumentation and providing response on concrete and literature-related assign-ments. That is, to be each other's ‘critical friends’ (Løkensgard Hoel, 2001) in a joint learning process.

This process creates the conditions for students to find structure and patterns of how learning and reasoning can be shaped, negoti-ated and confirmed “between I and other”, in a web-based con-text. Dialogic patterns and argument patterns that developed dur-ing the three studies and were illustrated in selected excerpts. These provide examples of how web-based dialogic interactions can be distinguished, identified and characterised. The analysis offers stu-dents, student groups and teachers further insights into how they can use Rommetveit’s (2003) term ‘meaning potential’, Bakhtin’s (1981; 1986, 2004a; 1986, 2004b) dialogue language concepts and Toulmin's argument model (1958), and thereby gain greater

awareness of how “arguing to learn” and “responding to learn”

can be evaluated and developed in web-based education (Amhag, Lisbeth & Jakobsson, 2009; Amhag, Lisbeth, 2010c; 2010e).