Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We have been studying collaboration in the context of children conducting science investigations in British primary classrooms. The classroom is the site of action where learning occurs and it is the teacher who plays the key role in manipulating the learning environment and selecting and structuring tasks to achieve the best learning effect for all children. In this paper we describe our general approach and focus in particular on the data we collect to explore how children's conceptual understanding of evaporation progresses. The paper highlights some of the messages emerging about how collaboration can sometimes enhance learning, and sometimes thwart it.