Dual-T project investigates how ICT can support learning activities involving sharing and reflection about professional experience in order to harmonize school learning with practical experience. In this study we tested the effects of low and high scaffolding on collaborative writing activities on professional procedures. We expected longer, more correct texts to emerge from strongly scaffolded activities than from weakly scaffolded activities. Theoretical frame Recent research on initial

more »

... onal training education has shown the existence of a gap between field knowledge and knowledge taught in vocational schools (Filliettaz, 2008). One of the main issues concerns knowledge and skill transfer between school and workplace (Eraut, 2004) . In our project, we are interested in identifying original technological support and pedagogical designs for professional skills learning and transfer in vocational educational training (VET). In this context, we adopt a "writing-to-learn" approach (Hayes and Flower, 1980; Hayes, 1996) . It assumes that writing promotes the acquisition of knowledge, since domain knowledge should be retrieved, reorganized and incorporated into a linear and understandable form. Extending this cognitive view, Galbraith (1999) claims that knowledge transformation leads to knowledge constitution, which makes writing a promising instructional tool. Professional procedure learning and transfer is a critical issue in VET. Anderson's ACT-R (1993) model claims that procedure acquisition is based on learning from declarative traces of initial problem solving. Writing could then be a powerful tool for constructing and refining the declarative representation of procedures. Moreover, confrontation between learners' conceptions and experiences should promote reflexive thinking and epistemic monitoring, embodied in the written productions (Crook, 1994; Littleton & Light 1999; Spek, Johnson, Dice & Heaton, 1999). In addition, collaborative writing activities should support not only individual knowledge acquisition but also the collaborative dimension of domain knowledge building. Tynjälä, Mason and Lonka (2001) show that studies of the effects of collaborative writing on learning are still rare (Gielen, Dochy, Tops, Peeters, 2007; Keys, 1995). Most of the research is done on the improvement of the writing process and writing skills. We consider that a peer collaborative approach to writing-to-learn in a VET context should be valuable in terms of knowledge building, procedure understanding and acquisition. Thus, in this research we are interested in investigating the impact of collaborative writing activities on the construction of a mutual declarative representation of the procedures. This is the basis for deep understating of procedures thus for acquisition and transfer. Computer supported collaborative writing to learn activities can be supported by many types of tools. Considering our context and the population we are working with, we turned mainly towards wiki tools. One of the main advantages is the powerful information sharing and collaboration features that we used for other activities in this research project. They also afford users the added advantage of reducing the technical skill required to use these features, by allowing students to focus on the information and collaborative tasks. Using scaffolding to engage students in reflection and deeper data processing has been shown to be successful in a number of domains. Research noted that different type of scaffolds may leave to different learning effects (Ge&Land, 2004 , Rosenshine, Meister & Chapman, 1996 . In this study we intended to use scaffolding in order to support for better writing to learn activities thus for deeper reflection, knowledge organization and transfer. We built the guiding questions on the basis of the work of Lin & Lehman (1999) and respecting the "how", "why" main approaches.