Wiki Interaction Tracks in Geometry Learning

The constant comparative method (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) was used to analyze preservice teachers’ discussions and interactions in wiki discussion sections regarding geometric lessons that were written by other preservice teachers in the year before. The data was compared for the following interaction aspects of knowledge building: dialogical actions, participants’ roles, and discussion tracks. Research shows that building their content and pedagogic content knowledge, the preservice teachers together with the lecturer used mainly proposing, asking, requesting, arguing, presenting, and moving the discussion forward as dialogical actions. Proposing and asking were used for various goals such as proposing various ideas and actions, and asking about different issues concerned with geometric content and pedagogic content knowledge. The lecturer asked questions more than the preservice teachers, while the preservice teachers proposed more than the lecturer. The knowledge building was collaborative in nature, and one important aspect which enabled the collaboration is the topology of the wiki discussion section. This topology enables presenting the content of the messages; not just the titles, where the contents are presented as having the same level and thus the same importance.