Showing papers in "The Journal of the Learning Sciences in 2005"

Commonsense Conceptions of Emergent Processes: Why Some Misconceptions Are Robust.

Abstract: This article offers a plausible domain-general explanation for why some concepts of processes are resistant to instructional remediation although other, apparently similar concepts are more easily understood. The explanation assumes that processes may differ in ontological ways: that some processes (such as the apparent flow in diffu sion of dye in water) are emergent and other processes (such as the flow of blood in human circulation) are direct. Although precise definition of the two kinds of pro cesses are probably impossible, attributes of direct and emergent processes are de scribed that distinguish them in a domain-general way. Circulation and diffusion, which are used as examples of direct and emergent pro cesses, are associated with different kinds of misconceptions. The claim is that stu dents' misconceptions for direct kinds of processes, such as blood circulation, are of the same ontological kind as the correct conception, suggesting that misconceptions of direct processes may be nonrobust. However, students' misconceptions of emer gent processes are robust because they misinterpret emergent processes as a kind of commonsense direct processes. To correct such a misconception requires a re-repre sentation or a conceptual shift across ontological kinds. Therefore, misconceptions of emergent processes are robust because such a shift requires that students know about the emergent kind and can overcome their (perhaps even innate) predisposition

How Does Technology-Enabled Active Learning Affect Undergraduate Students' Understanding of Electromagnetism Concepts?

Abstract: Educational technology supports meaningful learning and enables the presentation of spatial and dynamic images, which portray relationships among complex concepts. The Technology-Enabled Active Learning (TEAL) Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) involves media-rich software for simulation and visualization in freshman physics carried out in a specially redesigned classroom to facilitate group interaction. These technology-based learning materials are especially useful in electromagnetism to help students conceptualize phenomena and processes. This study analyzes the effects of the unique learning environment of the TEAL project on students' cognitive and affective outcomes. The assessment of the project included examining students' conceptual understanding before and after studying electromagnetism in a media-rich environment. We also investigated the effect of this environment on students' preferences regarding the various teaching methods. As part of the project, we developed pre-...

The Transfer of Scientific Principles Using Concrete and Idealized Simulations

Abstract: Participants in 2 experiments interacted with computer simulations designed to foster understanding of scientific principles governing complex adaptive systems. The quality of participants' transportable understanding was measured by the amount of transfer between 2 simulations governed by the same principle. The perceptual concreteness of the elements within the first simulation was manipulated. The elements either remained concrete throughout the simulation, remained idealized, or switched midway into the simulation from concrete to idealized or vice versa. Transfer was better when the appearance of the elements switched, consistent with theories predicting more general schemas when the schemas are multiply instantiated. The best transfer was observed when originally concrete elements became idealized. These results are interpreted in terms of tradeoffs between grounded, concrete construals of simulations and more abstract, transportable construals. Progressive idealization ("concreteness fading") allow...

Learning to Collaborate: An Instructional Approach to Promoting Collaborative Problem Solving in Computer-Mediated Settings

Abstract: Effective collaboration in computer-mediated settings among spatially distributed people is a precondition for success in many new learning and working contexts but it is hard to achieve. We have developed two instructional approaches to improve collaboration in such settings by promoting people's capabilities to collaborate in a fruitful way and furthering their understanding of what characterizes good collaboration. The rationale is that strategies necessary for a good and effective computer-mediated collaboration may be conveyed to people by exposing them to an elaborated worked-out collaboration example (observational learning) or by giving them the opportunity to learn from scripted collaborative problem-solving. An experimental study was conducted that compared learning from observing a worked-out collaboration example with the learning effects of scripted collaborative problem-solving, the effects of unscripted collaborative problem-solving, and a control condition without a learning phase. The exp...

Toward an Understanding of How Threads Die in Asynchronous Computer Conferences

Abstract: Previous computer conferencing research has been concerned with the organizational, technical, social, and motivational factors that support and sustain online interaction. This article studies online interaction from a different perspective. Rather than analyze the processes that sustain discourse, the following research examines how and why discussions shut down. A computer simulation of asynchronous threaded interaction suggests that certain common online habits, when practiced by many people, can adversely affect the lifespan of some threads. Specifically, the widespread practice of focusing attention on unread notes during computer conferencing sessions can produce a starvation condition that hastens the death of some threads and reduces the likelihood that inactive threads will become active again. The longevity of a thread, therefore, is partially affected by the kinds of routines that online participants follow when they use a computer conferencing interface. The educational implications of this f...

Knowledge Convergence in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning: The Role of External Representation Tools

Abstract: This study investigates how two types of graphical representation tools influence the way in which learners use knowledge resources in two different collaboration conditions. In addition, the study explores the extent to which learners share knowledge with respect to individual outcomes under these different conditions. The study also analyzes the relationship between the use of knowledge resources and different types of knowledge. The type of external representation (content-specific vs. content-independent) and the collaboration condition (videoconferencing vs. face-to-face) were varied. Sixty-four (64) university students participated in the study. Results showed that learning partners converged strongly with respect to their use of resources during the collaboration process. Convergence with respect to outcomes was rather low, but relatively higher for application-oriented knowledge than for factual knowledge. With content-specific external representation, learners used more appropriate knowledge resources without sharing more knowledge after collaboration. Learners in the computer-mediated collaboration used a wider range of resources. Moreover, in exploratory qualitative and quantitative analyses, the study found evidence for a relation between aspects of the collaborative process and knowledge convergence.

Shifting Engagements in Figured Worlds: Middle School Mathematics Students' Participation in an Architectural Design Project

Abstract: Project-based curricula have the potential to engage students' interests. But how do students become interested in the goals of a project? This article documents how a group of 8th-grade students participated in an architectural design project called the Antarctica Project. The project is based on the imaginary premise that students need to design a research station in Antarctica. This premise is meant to provide a mean- ingful context for learning mathematics. Using ethnography and discourse analysis, the article investigates students' engagement with the imaginary premise and curricu- lar tasks during the 7-week project. A case study consisting of scenes from main phases of the project shows how the students took on concerns and responsibilities associated with the figured world proposed by the Antarctica Project and how this shaped their approaches to mathematical tasks (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998). Participating in the figured world of Antarctica and evaluating situations within this world was important for how students used mathematics meaningfully to solve problems. Curricular tasks and classroom activities that facilitated students in assuming and shifting between roles relevant to multiple figured worlds (i.e., of the classroom, Antarctica, and mathematics) helped them engage in the diverse inten- tions of curricular activities.

Technology-Mediation and Tutoring: How Do They Shape Progressive Inquiry Discourse?

Abstract: In higher education, there is a challenge to gain the full benefit of the potentials of learning technology for collaborative knowledge advancement and for scaffolding practices of academic literacy and scientific argumentation. The technology, ideally, would be used to provide support that enables students to deal with more demanding tasks than they could otherwise handle. We investigated the benefits of learning technology by examining the role of technology-mediation and tutoring in directing students' knowledge production in inquiry-based learning. A comparative analysis of inquiry discourse was conducted for 3 conditions between nonmediated and technology-mediated inquiry processes, the latter both tutored and nontutored. Qualitative content analysis was employed to examine how the scale of scaffolding related to the nature of knowledge produced. Furthermore, a descriptive analysis of the progression of discourse was conducted to examine evidence for deepening the question-explanation process, develo...

Explaining Behavior Through Observational Investigation and Theory Articulation

Abstract: Conducting observational investigations of behaviors and processes is an important method for generating scientific knowledge. This article describes a methodology for assisting students in the processes of observational inquiry and theory articulation and its instantiation in a set of digital video tools. We describe a high school biology curriculum where students use these tools to investigate video clips of animal behavior and develop theories about how and why these behaviors evolved. We focus our discussion on an investigation model that scaffolds students through the processes of observing and explaining video as data and the computational and curricular supports that were designed to make these processes explicit. We conclude with a presentation of preliminary results to illustrate the types of explanations that emerged from working with the software and curriculum and a discussion of issues that emerged during the course of the research.

Individual Cognitive Structuring and the Sociocultural Context: Strategy Shifts in the Game of Dominoes

Abstract: In this article, I explore the relation between the sociocultural and individual cognitive structuring as elementary school students, high school students, and adults play the strategic game of dominoes. I present data from a study in which players at each level were observed and video-recorded during domino tournament play. Findings reveal the cognitive and mathematical skills players developed as well as how those skills were fundamentally integrated with shifts in the activity structures of the game as players got older. Implications for understanding cognition and context and for teaching and learning are discussed.

"You Have to Count the Squares": Applying Knowledge in Pieces to Learning Rectangular Area

Abstract: This article extends and strengthens the knowledge in pieces perspective (diSessa, 1988, 1993) by applying core components to analyze how 5th-grade students with computational knowledge of whole-number multiplication and connections between multiplication and discrete arrays constructed understandings of area and ways of using representations to solve area problems. The results complement past research by demonstrating that important components of the knowledge in pieces perspective are not tied to physics, more advanced mathematics, or the learning of older students. Furthermore, the study elaborates the perspective in a particular context by proposing knowledge for selecting attributes, using representations, and evaluating representations as analytic categories useful for highlighting some coordination and refinement processes that can arise when students learn to use external representations to solve problems. The results suggest, among other things, that explicitly identifying similarities and differ...

Concepts and Categories

Abstract: Conceptual structures-what they are, from whence they come, and the nature of their relation to things in the world-have been sources of controversy within the cognitive sciences (cf. Fodor, 1975, Smith & Medin, 1981). Similarly, there has been a long-standing interest within the social sciences concerning how social categories such as Black/White, Christian/Muslim, or doctor/patient are constituted and made relevant through social practices (Jayyusi, 1984; Sacks, 1992). These two lines of inquiry, though carried out within mutually distinct disciplinary traditions, are not independent. Social categories embody conceptual distinctions, whereas certain kinds of concepts (concepts related to gender and ethnicity would be prominent examples) have undeniable and pervasive social consequences. This article explores the interface between conceptual structures as studied by cognitive scientists and social category work. Our vehicles for exploring this complex and multidisciplinary terrain are Fodor's (1998) Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong and Bowker and Star's (1999) Sorting Things Out: Classification and It's Consequences. The task, as always, is one of making sense of a complex topic area while demonstrating its relevance to the learning sciences. The first commentary, by Stella Vosniadou, Costas Pagondiotis, and Maria Deliyianni (this issue), addresses this task by first explaining how Bowker and Star (1999), on the one hand, and Fodor (1998), on the other, depart from traditional treatments of concepts within the cognitive sciences. They then provide a

The Game, the Pieces, and the Players: Generative Resources From Two Instructional Portrayals of Experimentation

Abstract: Descriptions of disciplinary practices can suggest visions of authentic classroom activities. Designing activities that are effective, however, requires an additional framework for identifying a discipline's generative resources–that is, those learning targets that enable students to make disciplinary sense and progress in subsequent situations. This study represents an empirical exploration of the generative resources supported by alternative descriptions of experimentation, 1 focusing on its logical aspects and another on its measurement aspects. Each description of experimentation was portrayed in 1 of 2 concurrent 6th-grade units. In a broad capture of learning outcomes, assessment data suggest particular dimensions of learning–characterized here as game, pieces, and players–account for students' subsequent generative behavior. Striking differences in disciplinary facility were apparent from what students learned from these contrasting units, highlighting the instructional importance of supporting gen...

A collective case study of the use of ICT in Economics courses: A sociocultural approach

Abstract: Based on a collective case study of the use of an economics Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tutorial-based package, WinEcon, in 3 British schools, this article examines the activity structures that exist in ICT-mediated lessons situated within their broader sociocultural contexts. Activity theory and its highly developed ideas of the sociocultural conceptions of human nature and cognition are adopted to frame the study. By drawing together Gifford's (1997) mediated learning model and Cole's (1995) culture as garden metaphor, the former captures the activities mediated by students, teachers, ICT, and non-ICT tools in the course, and these are situated in the latter's broader sociocultural settings of the school, education system, and society at large. Although the article provides an account of the use of WinEcon in economics courses, its emphases are on the issues and problems of ICT integration: course objectives, teaching and learning tools, participants, sociocultural constraints, acti...

How Children Learn the Meaning of Words and How LSA Does It (Too)

Abstract: For long psycholinguistics has tried to answer the question “how children learn the meaning of words?” Paul Bloom answers the question in his book with the same title. He argues that the mind does not have a module for language acquisition. Instead, children learn the meaning of words by a set of general cognitive abilities, including the ability to infer intentions, to perceive the world in terms of objects and events, and the ability to understand syntactic structures. As discourse psychologists we have to emphasize that children likely do not learn the meaning of words through learning words. Instead, it seems more likely that the meaning of words is acquired through discourse. Discourse can take the form of conversations by oneself, with others or by others, situated in time and space. In fact, one could argue that children learn—at least in part—words solely by understanding their relation in context. This is how some computational techniques approximate the meaning of words, sentences, paragraphs and texts. One such common technique is Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). LSA is a statistical, corpus-based, technique for representing world knowledge. It computes similarity comparisons for terms and documents by taking advantage of the fact that particular words occur in particular documents. LSA takes quantitative information about co-occurrences of words in documents (paragraphs and sentences) and translates this into an multidimensional space. In short, the input of LSA is a large coTHE JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES, 14(2), 301–309 Copyright © 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Cognitive Work and Material Practice

Abstract: A rose is a rose is a rose, but, as Rogers Hall (this issue) reminds us, a witch must have hair pulled to be seen by a boy to be a witch. Our categories—those that make a difference of some kind, and they all do in the long run—come bundled with tests. The witch might be tested by her coven for her knowledge of the holy days, by herself through her ability to travel astrally, by her Inquisitor through dowsing in water, by the devil (in Jules Michelet’s version [1862]) through her relationship with an incubus, or, in Dahl’s version, by a little boy pulling her hair. And at the end of the day the judgment is made: This person with the white kidskin gloves and the wide-brimmed hat is or is not a witch, under a given description of witches (Hacking, 1995). So many tests, so little time: Perhaps this is the mantra both of our emergent education system and of our global socioeconomic move to database the world. This rich and thoughtful set of commentaries poses the question of what difference a theory can make. Hall’s compelling image of the thin person haunts the three texts; all pose the question of how to create a learning environment for this wiry entity. I begin by briefly going through the texts to disambiguate where possible clear positions that were not well stated in Sorting (as well, of course, as fuzzy positions thatwerewell stated).This isshortwork:Allof thereadingswerecarefulanddeep. The question of realism is a background theme for both Fodor and ourselves. Dogan and Nercessian (this issue) point to our use of Latour’s (1987) deployment of the argument that reality is that which resists. We did not mean this in the sense that reality resists definition. The use we endeavor to make of it is to counter the position that you can say just about anything about anything: To the contrary, some statements, actions, and tests will encounter the resistance of reality. However, we do also hold that this resistance can never be turned into pure collaboration: There THE JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES, 14(1), 157–160 Copyright © 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

From the Pragmatics of Classification Systems to the Metaphysics of Concepts

Abstract: Concepts and categories are the building blocks of cognition. They allow us to interpret our experiences, to connect them to prior knowledge, to reason, and to make predictions. One could not imagine a theory of learning without a theory of concepts, and sure enough psychologists have been concerned about concepts and categories for a long time now. As we all know, there are three main psychological theories about concepts. Following Smith and Medin (1981), we can distinguish the classical view, that is, that concepts are defined by certain necessary and sufficient properties, from the prototype and exemplar views, that is, that concepts are represented by a prototype or a specific exemplar. More recently, psychologists have developed various theory-based views, consisting of concepts that are embedded in theory-like structures that constrain them. Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star (1999) in Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences, and Jerry Fodor (1998) in Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong, come to tell us that these three approaches to concepts and cate-

What Does It Mean to Learn the Meaning of Words

Abstract: (2005). What Does It Mean to Learn the Meaning of Words? Journal of the Learning Sciences: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 293-300.

Word Learning, Intentions, and Discourse

Abstract: I am very grateful to Aaron Cicourel, Penelope Brown, Max Louwerse, and Mat thew Ventrura for their constructive comments. Aaron Cicourel provides a helpful summary of my book and his commentary offers a good place to enter the discus sion for readers who have not yet read How Children Learn the Meanings of Words. Brown and Louwerse and Ventura raise some critical questions with regard to the text to which I will speak in turn.

Reconstructing the Learning Sciences

Abstract: “A REAL WITCH always wears a wig to hide her baldness. She wears a first-class wig. And it is almost impossible to tell a really first-class wig from ordinary hair unless you give it a pull to see if it comes off.” “Then that’s what I’ll have to do,” I said. “Don’t be foolish,” my grandmother said. “You can’t go ’round pulling at the hair of every lady you meet, even if she is wearing gloves. Just you try it and see what happens.” “So that doesn’t help much either,” I said. “None of these things is any good on its own,” my grandmother said. “It’s only when you put them all together that they begin to make a little sense.” (“How to recognize a witch,” Roald Dahl, 1997, p. 219)

Passive Kids, Aggressive Book

Abstract: Paul A. Zoch's Doomed to Fail is a searing critique not only of American class rooms, but of American educational research as well. Essentially, Zoch traces what he describes as the failure of American education to the posture of passivity that it forces on students. The rhetoric of most reform efforts, Zoch argues, places stu dents in the role of inert recipients of educational innovation; all of the responsibil ity for the students' learning is thereby placed on the overburdened shoulders of teachers, and the children themselves are let off the hook:

Word Meaning and Ecological Validity

Abstract: At the present time, there is a rather large literature on child language development that primarily focuses on the period of approximately 10 to 44 months. There are few links between what has been learned about basic issues in developmental psycholinguistics and the extent to which it is possible to predict success in school and, in particular, whether what has been learned about early language develop ment and the ability to acquire a reasonable level of literacy. Another gap exists vis-a-vis cross-cultural differences in language acquisition and sociocultural dif ferences within the United States. It is also difficult to equate measures of language acquisition measured under controlled laboratory conditions (and even recordings in the home) with the kinds of social ecologies that are involved in home settings over the course of a day. These issues currently have profound importance to re search in the learning sciences. Bloom's book takes up the fundamental question of how children acquire the sense of words in the first place. At the outset, Bloom notes that children could not learn the meaning of words without possessing certain nonlinguistic mental capacities, including whatever the children attribute to the minds of others as they seek to make sense of their external world. It is the "rich mental life" of humans that makes word learning appear so ef fortless and relentless in childhood. I assume the reference to a "rich mental life" includes the child's expanding knowledge of her or his physical and sociocultural environments. How we assess this "rich mental life" or practices remains illusive.

Word and Thought: Interpretative Procedures, Cultural Learning, and Semantic Analysis

Abstract: (2005). Word and Thought: Interpretative Procedures, Cultural Learning, and Semantic Analysis. Journal of the Learning Sciences: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 281-284.

How DOORKNOB Gets Its Meaning

Abstract: (2005). How DOORKNOB Gets Its Meaning. Journal of the Learning Sciences: Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 127-137.