Relational phenomena in collaboration

The dimensions above described can be thought of as core socio-relational dimen-sions pervading any interaction, and therefore any collaboration. One or more of

these socio-relational dimensions are involved in diverse socio-relational phenom-ena that contribute to influence collaborative relationships. If some may hinder collaborative learning, some others have well-known facilitatory effects on group learning (e.g., psychological safety). The following paragraphs will review some of them in the context of collaborative learning and problem-solving. Some appear very close or even identical to the core socio-relational dimensions afore-described.

Some others involve combinations of these dimensions in more complex phenom-ena.

In a pioneering work on the role of socio-relational processes in interaction, Bales (1950b, 1970) defined what he called positive and negative socio-emotional areas that actually contain specific socio-relational phenomena occurring in group inter-action. His process analysis method is based on the analysis of communication acts, i.e., communication that is comprehensive enough to allow reaction in relation to its content by the receiver. Positive communication includesshowing solidarity, ten-sion releaseandagreementwhile negative communication is aboutdisagreement, showing tensionandshowing antagonism. Since agreement/disagreement refers more to the socio-cognitive domain than on the socio-relational one (i.e., agreement and disagreement have to do with the content and not with the relationship between people), we do not develop them here as socio-relational processes. Tension re-lease/showing tension may be related to emotional arousal/composure. The shows solidarity category (later recalled asseems friendly) concerns mostly communica-tion acts intended to improve interpersonal relacommunica-tionships such as raising other’s sta-tus, expressing sympathy, encouraging others, reassuring others, expressing grat-itude, expressing satisfaction etc. Shows tension release (later recalled as drama-tizes) includes communication acts such as jokes or laughs dedicated to alleviating tension in the group. Dramatizing particularly implies wordplay, double entendre, figure of speech, analogy, anecdote, etc. (Hirokawa & Poole, 1996). Shows tension reflects acts that exhibit conflict between people. Communicative acts may include a request for help, withdrawal from the interaction or marks of disconcertment or confusion. Finally, show antagonism (later recalled as seems unfriendly) overtly refers to personal attacks. It concerns any communication act intended to deteri-orate interpersonal relationships such as deflating other’s status, interrupting the other, discrediting the person, placing him or her at a disadvantage, etc.

Bales also characterized the socio-relational position of an individual in a group along three basic continuums: dominant-submissive, friendly-unfriendly, instrumental-emotional. Different combinations of these three dimensions are in-tended to shape the socio-relational profile of an individual. For example, a dom-inant, unfriendly and emotional person will probably be seen as hostile and non-cooperating (Littlejohn et al., 2017). Each of these dimensions has to be consid-ered along a continuum, which means that an optimum has to be found to ensure an optimal socio-relational profile. For example, a too dominant leader or a too

diffuse group responsibility both appear detrimental to collaboration. In the first case, group participants will experience difficulty to contribute to the group, as the leader’s opinions will generally get the upper hand. This phenomenon sometimes goes hand in hand with the Abilene paradox, a situation where group members do not manage to express their true feelings. Therefore, most group members follow a path that the majority disapproves. Conversely, when the responsibility is too dis-seminated into the group, no one will take responsibility for the group advancement.

Attentional engagement and willingness to negotiate In Barron (2003), twelve tri-ads of 6th-grade students (ages 11–13) with high-potential in mathematics should re-solve mathematical problems elaborated from the videoJourney to Cedar Creek. These problems consisted of solving problems regarding the main character’s trip Jasper Woodbury. For example, Jasper, who had just bought a boat, would like to take it home before sunset but different concerns arose (time, fuel, lights). The students, equipped with the relevant numerical information and the different concerns had to decide about the feasibility of the plan in answering different questions. The au-thor computed a score allowing her to differentiate the more from the less-successful groups. Then she assessed some potential variables that could explain the observed outcomes discrepancies between groups. No difference was found between the more and the less-successful groups regarding prior mathematical achievement, the total number of turns, the mean number of turns per person and the number of correct proposals. They also considered the differences in terms of interaction patterns be-tween higher and lower successful groups. Results showed that more-successful groups accepted three times more correct proposals than less-successful groups, dis-cussed correct proposals two times more and rejected or ignored correct proposals two times less. Moreover, in the more-successful groups, almost all the correct pro-posals were considered (accepted or discussed) by at least two of the other group members (i.e., those who did not give the proposal). In the less-successful groups, two-third of the correct proposals were not considered by the two other group mem-bers. Thus, Barron highlighted a critical lack of transactivity (see section 5.1.1) in less-successful groups. The author proposed a hypothesis that could explain this lack of transactivity in less-successful groups. She examined whether students’ cor-rect proposals were dicor-rectly or non-dicor-rectly related to the immediately preceding problem space (i.e., the subproblem at stake). She showed that it was the case 98% of the time in the more-successful groups compared to only 40% in the less-successful groups. Therefore, a possible explanation for the lack of transactivity could be that less-successful groups are not topically aligned, i.e., correct proposals are not in line with the subproblem at stake in these groups. However, this finding cannot fully ex-plain the lack of transactivity occurring in less-successful groups since almost 50% of the correct proposals were actually topically aligned and still rejected. According to

the author, two main socio-relational causes may explain this finding. First, joint at-tention hardly occurs in less-successful groups, despite the use of strategies (nonver-bal and ver(nonver-bal) for recruiting and maintaining it. The lack of attentional engagement appears to be due to both implicit (some students were sometimes too self-focused to pay attention to others’ ideas) and explicit (some students did not have the will to dedicate attention to others) reasons. The other socio-relational cause outlined by the author was the unwillingness to negotiate a shared problem space in less-successful groups. This was revealed by the tendency of some students to dominate the problem solving task, preventing the willingness and openness to be influenced by the others.

Social support and resistance Janssen et al. (2012) analyzed collaborative pro-cesses from 101 groups of secondary education students in a computer-based en-vironment (VCRI) designed to support collaborative learning on inquiry tasks and research projects. They developed a coding scheme in which they categorized col-laborative messages into predefined task-related (content space) and social activities (relational space). In this study, the relational space included both the processes related to managing group behavior (e.g., grounding, group coordination) as well as what we refer to as relational processes as part of this thesis. These socio-relational activities such as greetings, social support (e.g., joking, social talk, disclos-ing personal information) or social resistance (e.g., sweardisclos-ing, cursdisclos-ing) accounted for 15.3% of the messages. Exploratory factor analysis showed that these activities can be grouped into a single factor that the researchers called performing social activ-ities. Furthermore, using multiple regression analysis, researchers uncovered that these social activities negatively predicted group performance.

Respect Rogat and Linnenbrink-Garcia (2011) used the term socioemotional inter-actions to describe what we call socio-relational processes as part of this thesis, i.e., the extent to which group members are respectful and supportive of each other and get along as a group. In the study, researchers focused on the following specific pos-itive interactions: active listening and respect, inclusion (including a group member or the whole group), and group cohesion. Conversely, negative interactions were also considered and the following interactions were especially targeted: exclusion (explicitly discouraging other’s participation), disrespect, low group cohesion. In general, groups with high social regulation quality (i.e., monitoring, planning, and behavioral engagement) have more positive socio-relational interactions. These pos-itive socio-relational interactions tend to decrease along with group socio-cognpos-itive regulation quality.

Management of face The management of the images of ourselves and others, i.e., the management of “face” is also a socio-relational phenomenon that can affect col-laboration. Baker et al. (2013) reported that the way people challenge an idea affects

how much the owner will defend it. Notably, the degree of aggressiveness is likely to change the argumentative strategy used. For example, a harsh way of disagree-ing (e.g., claimdisagree-ing that the other’s idea is useless) makes it more likely that the one who proposed the idea would defend it even harder. In this case, challenging the others’ ideas can involve more than a mere epistemic conflict and people may take it as a personal attack. Therefore, in defending their idea, people mostly defend themselves. At the same time, the informational benefit coming from the person challenging the idea is largely overlooked by the one who feels devalued, who may become stubborn and even rebellious (Linnenbrink-Garcia & Pekrun, 2011).

Tension and relaxation Andriessen et al. (2011) also emphasized the need to con-sider the role of socio-relational aspects in collaborative interactions, as a way to gain insight into the collaborative dynamics. These authors define collaborative learning as a continuous cycle of tensions and relaxations at both cognitive and relational levels. The different utterances that occur in the collaboration each embed an id-iosyncratic potential to increase or alleviate tensions. For example, tensions may arise at a socio-relational level from touches of sarcasm or personal attacks, while irrelevancy claims and questions may provoke tensions at a socio-cognitive level.

Conversely, making jokes, at a socio-relational level, or finding a compromise, at a socio-cognitive level, may alleviate such tension. More generally, the authors pos-tulate that the level of tension is likely to increase in collaborative settings when in-dividuals’ knowledge, intentions or way of communicating diverge. Although this tension may be a source of collaborative gain since it correlates with socio-cognitive conflict and triggers mutual adaptation, it could also be detrimental to the collab-oration if too much tension occurs. Conversely, a too low level of tension or the unwillingness to increase tension between collaborators may hinder collaboration quality as well, leading to more quick consensus building. Hence, an appropriate level of tension has to be found to ensure optimal collaboration. Furthermore, ten-sion is not an all or nothing phenomenon. Remanent tenten-sion can diffuse in time and interfere with the next argumentative episodes. For example, as the authors ob-served it in case studies, the argumentative process may go deeper if it follows an episode of high tension. In other terms, social tension would precede and stimulate socio-cognitive conflict. The authors claim that collaborators need to establish an optimal level of tension between them to build an efficient collaborative working relationship.

Psychological safety Wegerif (as cited in Kreijns et al., 2003, p. 341) stresses that

“forming a sense of community, where people feel they will be treated sympathet-ically by their fellows, seems to be a necessary first step for collaborative learning.

Without a feeling of community, people are on their own, likely to be anxious, de-fensive and unwilling to take the risks involved in learning”. This statement is con-sistent with the idea that group members need some degree of psychological safety

when it comes to collaborating. Team psychological safety is a shared belief that the group is safe and allows for risk-taking. It reflects the possibility for the teammates to adopt behaviors such as experimenting, trying things and make mistakes, asking for help, or reflecting critically without having to deal with group disapproval or being seen as ignorant, incompetent, harmful or disruptive. The role of the group leader appears crucial in this process, promoting or inhibiting psychological safety within the group (Decuyper et al., 2010)

Conflict escalation When social cohesion (i.e., emotional bonds between group members such as liking, caring, closeness) is too low, conflict escalation may arise in groups. It can be defined as a progressive increase in both the intensity of the conflict and the severity of tactics used in pursuing it (Jordan, 2000; Rispens et al., 2010). Conflict escalation can take form, for example, when mutual negative attitudes and suspicion pervade each other’s intentions, obstructiveness and lack of helpfulness increase, repeated episodes of critical rejection of ideas appear or conflicting group members want to take power at the expense of the other using threats or coercion (Deutsch, 2008).

In summary, collaborative problem-solving implies a relational dimension, which refers to the kind of relationships that exists between group mem-bers. This dimension is distinct from but interacts with socio-motivational and socio-cognitive dimensions. Socio-relational processes include relational themes highlighted by Burgoon and Hale (1984) (e.g., dominance, trust) that combine each other to create various relational phenomena (e.g., psychologi-cal safety, conflict espsychologi-calation).