Problem solving and collaboration are crucial  components of the 21^st century skills and the combined ‘collaborative problem solving’ has received remarkable academic attention and been integrated into major educational frameworks such as PISA 2015 (van Laar et al. 2020; Scoular et al. 2020). While frameworks such as PISA focus on students' strategies for surmounting difficulties, academics also argue that struggling with a problem can have a unique learning potential, through reflecting on what the problem consists of (e.g., Schön 1987). A noteworthy contribution to this tradition is Manu Kapur and his notion of productive failure. Herein Kapur emphasizes that spending time on open-ended, non-scaffolded problems allows students to discuss the limits of a problem, which he found supported students’ long-term learning (Kapur 2008). In this paper, I am investigating the circumstances in artefact-based group work that facilitate or hinder students’ engagement in meaningful problem-solving conversations.

For understanding students’ discussions during problem-solving challenges, I am interested in whether students are comparing and contrasting different solutions, in so-called exploratory talk (Littleton and Mercer 2013). Several articles suggest that the use of tools and artefacts is important for how group members can work together (Knight and Littleton 2015; Wegerif 1996). The distribution of access to instruments or digital artefacts is co-constructing how individuals can take part in their groups, as exemplified in the use of all-participating-at-once at interactive tabletops vs the turn-taking when groups are collaborating around a single ipad (Fleck, Vasalou, and Stasinou 2021). As the artefacts can restrict access to task-relevant information, it influences the need for information-sharing within the group, whether that be vocal or physical through turn-taking. This focus emphasizes  the importance of the body and the near-material sphere for understanding how collaboration happens around (digital) tools in education (Gourlay 2021; Davidsen and Ryberg 2017).

Exploratory talk thus shows promise as an effective learning strategy but places demands on group communication to establish a shared understanding. With a lack of common ground (Stahl 2011), groups might turn to either advance their own ideas without discussing them (dispositional talk), or just accept others’ ideas without having any basis to challenge them on (cumulative talk) (Littleton and Mercer 2013). By investigating relevant situations where student groups face problems, this project seeks to identify mechanisms that affect the exploratory talk in group work. This is in line with a ~30 years old discussion on the sequence of sharing tools and artefacts (Wegerif 1996). This article is based on the following research question:

How is group-members’ engagement with the artefacts affecting the orchestration of the work, the establishment of common ground and their exploratory talk?

To address this question, I observe student groups at an activity center, in which 8^th graders participate in a one-day science lab. The work in this article is part of a bigger project, which through combining ethnography and sensors, badges, and cameras will investigate in what situations groups remain courageous and curious in science despite encountering challenges (Bjerre-Nielsen and Glavind 2022). While important in its own right, this ethnographic investigation is also serving to ground our analysis, and to help pinpoint indicators for a quantitative ethnographic layer of the project (Shaffer 2017).  While language has been highlighted as the primary modality to investigate exploratory talk through (Littleton and Mercer 2013), my focus is on how artefacts are part of co-creating the group work centers the physical use and showing, and the access to the resources (Fleck et al. 2009; Fleck, Vasalou, and Stasinou 2021; Davidsen and Ryberg 2017).

Due to my interest in the relationship between artefacts and students’ collaborative problem-solving, I observe group activities with different artefacts at a science center for schools. My key interest lies in the critical instants preceding groups encountering problems, as I contend that the collective understanding is vital in shaping possible strategies for solving problems in groups. As I am unable to predict when groups will face problems, I concentrate on observing the same one- or two groups throughout their visit to the center. This proposal stems from my 14 visits to the activity center between November 2023 and May 2024. I follow the students as they arrive at the center until they leave, and I select the groups as they are seated in the lab. I conduct a brief semi-structured interview with the teachers to gain insights into the class’s group work practices and use of artefacts at the school. I also ask the pupils about their experiences with group work, as well as their perception of the equipment. All data is completely anonymously collected, and teachers, students and parents are informed prior to their visit to the center. My data consists of notes and memos from the activities, focusing on the distribution and sharing of equipment and encountered difficulties within the group. I transcribe or record my observations from the notes within two days of the visit and keep a journal for reflections as well. The limited duration (one day) that each school spends at the center makes my initial positioning extra important. By choosing one or two groups I can direct my interaction to a much smaller subset of students. Additionally, interacting with different classes enables me to alter the way I am positioning myself. To gain different perspectives, I have altered between participating directly in the group activities or more distantly listening in to their conversation at the end of their table. I utilize that I meet different classes at each visit, to change the level of interaction and the way I position myself, so I sometimes engage directly with the groups, and other times is less interactive, e.g., sitting at their table and listening in on their conversations. Afterwards, I line-by-line coded the observation notes. From this structured reading of the cases, I identified situations in which the students face a problem that could lead them to exploratory talk.

Based on my initial data collection, I have made a preliminary data-analysis, which can point towards the type of results I can present in August, protruded by my continued ethnographic work. In this tentative analysis, several factors have emerged that ties students’ engagement with artefacts to students’ orchestration of group work, the formation of common ground, and the occurrences of exploratory talk. For the orchestration of their shared work artefacts are both serving as means for students to situate themselves within the group (i.e., using the artefact as a way to negotiate what roles they will take on), as a way for facilitators to generate roles within the group work. Furthermore, the artefact itself seems to provide specific divisions of labor, through the way students can interact with it. The establishment of common ground is influenced by the students’ access to relevant information, which differs across the orchestrations of group. Students who are physically separated from the central focus of their task become more reliant on their peers’ sharing of relevant information. Meanwhile, tasks less closely connected to one specific artefact may accommodate a larger number of students working concurrently but could also result in a loosely structured group dynamic. Not all student groups encountering problems engage in exploratory talk. For those who do, access to information plays a pivotal role in shaping the nature of their discussions. Groups with more dispersed workflows tend to focus on task-related details (for instance, whether the task specifies that glasses should contain water), whereas groups with more shared workflows will be more likely to address epistemic questions (e.g., what does it mean to have a high-voltage of power going through).

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