Observing complex systems thinking in the zone of proximal development

Our paper builds on the construct of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) (Vygotsky in Mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1978) to analyze the relationship between students’ answers and the help they receive as they construct them. We report on a secondary analysis of classroom and interview data that was collected with 1st and 2nd grade students completing a short scaffolded inquiry project designed to help them learn about how honeybees collect nectar. We explore how the progression of questions reveal students’ understanding of complex systems by examining how students’ progression through the questions tended to become more sophisticated as we increased support. We further compare two complex-systems perspectives, Component-Mechanism-Phenomena and agent-based approaches, to see how each would categorize students’ explanations. Findings demonstrate the value of the ZPD as an analytic framework in exploring students’ systems understanding in terms of the nature of questions (e.g., sequencing, type of question) and multiple conceptual models (e.g., component-mechanisms-phenomenon, single agent or aggregate behaviors), and how this might impact students’ groupings according to their ability and subsequent instructional support.     

An Adapted Structurational Framework for the Emergence of Communication Networks

Although structuration theory (ST) has endured a considerable influence in communication research across various domains, there remains a paucity of quantitative empirical research using ST as a viable framework. The purpose of this article is to develop an adapted structurational framework to explain the emergence of communication networks. The adapted framework distinguishes between relational states/events and internal/external structural rules. For analysis, we introduce multipanel relational event modeling, a technique using processual inference that can empirically demonstrate the recursive nature of system and structure. As an introductory example of both the framework and method, we examined communication, using cell-phone data, of students living in the same dormitory from September 2008 through February 2009. Our results demonstrated how different structures (i.e., perceived social relations and internal/external structural rules) are reproduced and transformed over time. Our research has implications for communication research dealing with recursivity, event-driven network analysis, the changing nature of the phone call, and the promise of computational communication science.     

Pre-Service Early Childhood Educators' Perceptions of Math-Mediated Language

This study argues that maximizing early childhood educators' abilities to create social opportunities for co-construction of knowledge rests on two understudied assumptions, one theoretical and one empirical. Theoretically this study rejects the notion of language as an impartial conveyor of knowledge in favor of one in which math and language interact. This alternative framework is termed Math- Mediated Language (MML) and argues that the perception of common terms that adults possess is an important part of the knowledge that practitioners possess about linking conceptually related linguistic and mathematical knowledge. Empirical findings from a survey recording participants' reactions to seven categories of terms with mathematical meanings and three categories of distracter terms were analyzed. The data indicated that when asked to think about math, practitioners more readily accessed words for operation terms than relational terms. Additionally, participants demonstrated stronger tendencies toward additive terms conveying addition or subtraction concepts over multiplicative ones conveying multiplication or division concepts. The findings point to patterns in the ways that participants view mathematical language demonstrating that language interacts with even simple interpretations of basic mathematical terminology. The implications of this are that practitioners interpretations of everyday language may influence their ability to see opportunities for teaching mathematical concepts not only in the context of an explicit math lesson but throughout the broader early childhood curriculum.     

Comparing US and Japanese Elementary School Teachers' Facility for Linking Rational Number Representations

Using cognitive ethnography as a guiding framework, we investigated US and Japanese fourth-grade teachers' domain knowledge of key fraction representations in individual interviews. The framework focused on revealing cultural trends in participants' organization of knowledge and their interpretations of that organization. Our analyses of the interviews, which included a representation sorting task, indicated three major differences that defined US and Japanese teachers' approaches to rational number representation: (1) Japanese teachers interpreted all rational number representations as conveying primarily mathematical information, whereas US teachers interpreted only some representations as conveying primarily mathematical information; (2) the US teachers focused more intently on part-whole relations than Japanese in their interpretations; and (3) Japanese teachers more easily linked rational number representations to more advanced upcoming content in the curriculum. A review of US textbooks used by the teachers reflected their consistency with US teachers' interpretations of the representations. These findings imply that strong cultural differences underlay the approaches that teachers in both nations take to rational number representation and that these differences may help explain established cross-national differences in student reasoning.     

Personal persistence,identity development,and suicide: a study of Native and Non-native North American adolescents

The cross-cultural program of research presented here is about matters of temporal persistence--personal persistence and cultural persistence--and about solution strategies for solving the paradox of "sameness-in-change." The crux of this paradox resides in the fact that, on threat of otherwise ceasing to be recognizable as a self, all of us must satisfy at least two constitutive conditions. The first of these is that selves are obliged to keep moving or die, and, so, must continually change. The second is that selves must also somehow remain the same, lest all notions of moral responsibility and any commitment to an as yet unrealized future become nonsensical. Although long understood as a problem demanding the attention of philosophers, we argue that this same paradox arises in the ordinary course of identity development and dictates the different developmental routes taken by culturally mainstream and Aboriginal youth in coming to the identity-preserving conclusion that they and others are somehow continuous through time. Findings from a set of five studies are presented. The first and second studies document the development and refinement of a method for parsing and coding what young people say on the topic of personal persistence or self-continuity. Both studies demonstrate that it is not only possible to seriously engage children as young as age 9 or 10 years in detailed and codable discussions about personal persistence, but that their reasoning concerning such matters typically proceeds in an orderly and increasingly sophisticated manner over the course of their early identity development. Our third study underscores the high personal costs of failing to sustain a workable sense of personal persistence by showing that failures to warrant self-continuity are strongly associated with increased suicide risk in adolescence. Study four documents this same relation between continuity and suicide, this time at the macrolevel of whole cultures, and shows that efforts by Aboriginal groups to preserve and promote their culture are associated with dramatic reductions in rates of youth suicide. In the final study we show that different default strategies for resolving the paradox of personal persistence and change--Narrative and Essentialist strategies--distinctly characterize Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth.     

Planning responses to demographic change

The United Kingdom faces a decline in the 18-year-old cohort from 900,000 + in the mid-1980s to 600,000 + in the mid-1990s. Will a third of the universities close? More important, will industry and commerce cope with the potential reduction in skilled manpower production? A method is described for forecasting graduate numbers and their quality by discipline, and suggestions are made about ways in which society could react so as to influence unacceptable trends.     

Video-mediated interviews to reveal multiple voices in peer collaboration for mathematics learning in groups

Peer collaboration in schools can be a locus for negotiation of power and cultural norms. Set in the context of ethnically and linguistically diverse urban schools, this study discusses the possibilities and limitations of utilizing video-mediated interviews to reveal multiple voices. Our research method is based on video-recorded peer-to-peer interactions wherein a small group of students engaged in mathematics tasks, as well as video-mediated interviews with individual students while watching the video of themselves engaging in group work. Using the theoretical framework of ideological and sociohistorical nature of voice and figured worlds, our analysis revealed the ideologies and sociohistorical norms that influenced the ways in which the students collaborate with their peers. Based on our analyses of the video-mediated interviews, we raise awareness of potential conflicts that could affect the generation and development of ideas through collaboration. We also discuss ways to use video-mediated interviews as a methodology to interrogate the norms underlying collaboration among students in school settings.     

The Monets,Van Goghs,and Renoirs of Science Education: Writing Impressionist Tales as a Strategy for Facilitating Prospective Teachers’ Reflections on Science Experiences

A particularly useful pedagogical strategy for beginning a dialogue with prospective teachers about the ways in which their experiences and beliefs shape their development of professional knowledge is writing impressionist tales. Impressionist tales are a form of autobiography that portrays one highly personal perspective on a significant moment in time. In this pedagogical practice article, we describe our use of impressionist tales, summarize the assumptions underpinning our use of impressionist tales in science methods courses, provide several examples of our students’ tales, and discuss the pedagogical advantages and the teacher educator’s role in using impressionist tales to promote reflective thinking among prospective elementary science teachers.