Peer Collaboration among Children in aFree Drawing Task: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Objective.
This paper presents an exploratory and micro-analytical study of peer collaboration among children
in a free drawing task. The characteristics of this process were also analyzed according to age group and
socioeconomic context.
Method.
Cross-sectional research in which 82 children were grouped into 41 dyads.
They were 4-, 8- and 12-years-old, belonging to advantaged and disadvantaged socioeconomic contexts. Each
dyad performed a collaborative free drawing task. The main instrument was observation. The interaction was
analyzed from two approaches: social modality of execution, and specific verbalization. Each approach was
coded by a different system of categories. The data was processed by factorial and cluster analysis.
Results.
Data showed three global interactive modalities: dissociative (mainly associated with 4-years-old dyads),
mixed (collaborative-asymmetrical) and cooperative (the last two mainly associated with 8- and 12-years-
old dyads). Also detected were specific associations between mixed modality – disadvantaged context and
cooperative modality – advantaged contexts.
Conclusion.
The study offers new evidence on two main issues in
recent studies on peer collaboration: a) the focus on the micro-analysis of interaction; b) the growing interest
on more open-ended tasks compared to traditionally addressed tasks (problem solving and tasks in science or
mathematics). Also, the current paper allows analyzing action and language jointly in collaborative interaction,
considering that they were studied separately in most of investigations.