Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Special Education, Counseling and Student Affairs / Doris Wright Carroll / Learning communities are considered a high impact practice. Most research has focused on the benefits for the students within learning communities. This study sought to explore what learning community leaders learn from their experiences in a learning community. The central research question was: What do student leaders experience in a classroom learning community? A phenomenological qualitative research approach was used to explore this question. Twenty-five students who had recently been a leader of a learning community in a large lecture course at a Midwest landgrant university were interviewed. The participants reflected on their position as a class leader and described in detail their experiences. To analyze the data, significant statements from each of the transcripts were organized into meaning units. The meaning units were used to formulate two codes: (a) learning communities and (b) personal development. Seven themes emerged from the data: 1) environmental elements of a learning community, 2) responsibilities of a class leader, 3) class leader roles within a learning community, 4) caring relationships, 5) self-awareness, 6) vocation, and 7) impact. Participants described learning communities as a small group of diverse students engaged in the process of learning. Participants emphasized the need for a safe learning environment, and an environment that leaders need to cultivate. Skills that were developed from learning community leaders’ responsibilities include time management and small group facilitation and throughout the experience, leaders can look forward to the development of caring and long lasting relationships with students, other peer leaders, and faculty. Participants identified that being a learning community leader impacted one’s affective, cognitive, and behavioral development, all of which resulted in one’s self-understanding and self-confidence. The experience of being a learning community leader shaped or affirmed future plans and goals and strengthened one’s identity formation as a leader. The study explored the experiences of undergraduate student leaders in the classroom. The findings of this study challenged institutions to rethink large lecture classrooms and consider integrating learning communities within large lecture classes while being intentional to provide the necessary resources and support to train peer teachers who would be asked to lead the learning communities.

This dissertation work entails three related studies on the investigation of Peer-Led Guided Inquiry student discourse in a General Chemistry I course through argumentation. The first study, Argumentation and participation patterns in general chemistry peer-led sessions, is focused on examining arguments and participation patterns in small student groups without peer leader intervention. The findings of this study revealed that students were mostly engaged in co-constructed arguments, that a discrepancy in the participation of the group members existed, and students were able to correct most of the incorrect claims on their own via argumentation. The second study, Exploration of peer leader verbal behaviors as they intervene with small groups in college general chemistry, examines the interactive discourse of the peer leaders and the students during peer leader intervention. The relationship between the verbal behaviors of the peer leaders and the student argumentation is explored in this study. The findings of this study demonstrated that peer leaders used an array of verbal behaviors to guide students to construct chemistry concepts, and that a relationship existed between student argument components and peer leader verbal behaviors. The third study, Use of Tolumin's Argumentation Scheme for student discourse to gain insight about guided inquiry activities in college chemistry, is focused on investigating the relationship between student arguments without peer leader intervention and the structure of published guided inquiry ChemActivities. The relationship between argumentation and the structure of the activities is explored with respect to prompts, questions, and the segmented Learning Cycle structure of the ChemActivities. Findings of this study revealed that prompts were effective in eliciting arguments, that convergent questions produced more arguments than directed questions, and that the structure of the Learning Cycle successfully scaffolded arguments. A semester of video data from two different small student groups facilitated by two different peer leaders was used for these three related studies. An analytic framework based on Toulmin's argumentation scheme was used for the argumentation analysis of the studies. This dissertation work focused on the three central elements of the peer-led classroom, students, peer leader, and the ChemActivities, illuminates effective discourse important for group learning. Overall, this dissertation work contributes to science education by providing both an analytic framework useful for investigating group processes and crucial strategies for conducting effective cooperative learning and promoting student argumentation. The findings of this dissertation work have valuable implications in the professional development of teachers specifically for group interventions in the implementation of cooperative learning reforms.

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