Chapter 6 - Collaborative Competence

Summary

This chapter introduces the concept of collaborative competence. A broad view of how collaboration has been defined and studied within fields ranging from human–computer interaction to team cognition to dialogic education and collaborative problem-solving is discussed. Contexts for researching such processes have included shared narrative and experiential awareness of internal states, among other nontraditional procedures. The account of collaborative competence presented here synthesizes key aspects of prior findings while proposing a more broadly applicable theory and method for understanding development as a collaborative process. Accordingly, collaborative competence allows for an assessment of interactive quality along multiple dimensions. These include the extent to which all participants contribute to a shared activity as well the cognitive and social-emotional complexity of the collaboration. Elements of collaborative complexity include jointly created conceptual understandings, shared meanings, and the degree of emotional attunement and social reciprocity that characterize both the processes and products of the collaboration.