Analysis of the Refinement of Shared Mental Model in Science-Gifted Students' Collaborative Problem Solving Process

To understand the synergy of collaboration and to apply this understanding to education, an analysis of how a team solves a problem and the sharing of their mental models is needed. This paper analyzed two things qualitatively to find out the source of synergy in a collaborative problem-solving process. First, the sharing contents in team mental model and second, the process of sharing the team mental model. Ten gifted middle school students collaborated to solve an ill-defined problem called sunshine through foliage problem. The gifted students shared the following results after the collaboration: First, scientific concept prior to common idea or the idea that all group members have before the discussions; second, unique individual ideas of group members; and third, created ideas that were not originally in the personal mental model. With created ideas, the team model becomes more than the sum of individuals. According to the results of process analysis, in the process of sharing mental model, the students proposed and shared the most important variable first. This result implied that the analysis of the order of sharing ideas is important as much as finding shared ideas. Also, the result shows that through their collaboration, the gifted students' shared mental model became more refined and expanded as compared to their individual prior mental models. It is recommended that these results can be used to measure shared mental model and develop collaborative learning models for students.