Vexing questions that sustain sensemaking

Current science education reforms highlight the importance of students making sense of scientific ideas. While research has studied how to support sensemaking in classrooms, we still know very little about what drives students to pursue and persist in it on their own. In this article, we use a set of parallel case studies of undergraduate students discussing introductory physics to show how certain student-generated, vexing questions both initiate and sustain students' sensemaking processes. We examine affective and linguistic markers in student discourse in paired-clinical interviews to demonstrate both of these functions of vexing questions and detail their role in the explanations students construct. We conclude by discussing the implications of this analysis both for supporting sensemaking in classrooms and for studying it in research.     

The realness of risk: gene technology in Germany

This paper examines the material relations of risk within a dispute about the hazards of manufacturing human insulin using gene technology, and the r?le played by the referent 'real risk' in the technical performance of risk in that dispute. It draws on recent work in science and technology studies that extends actor-network theory to examine the performance of reality in scientific practice. The multiplicity of risks in the dispute, and the links made and unmade between them, are examined. I argue that in the dispute, risks were contingently linked and separated around a referent 'real risk' that emerged within the recombinant DNA debate of the late 1970s. I contrast my account of risk with realist and relativist accounts, each of which values risk as an abstract entity. In my account, risk's value is contingent upon sets of material relations that link hazards and procedures for their minimization. Risk's realness emerges as some risks are linked and others separated, working a multiple/singular relation in an ontological politics of risk.     

Understanding teenagers' personal contexts to design technology that supports learning about energy consumption

Energy sustainability is prevalent in political and popular rhetoric and yet energy consumption is rising. Teenagers are an important category of future energy consumers, but little is known of their conceptions about energy and energy saving. We report on empirical research with two groups of teenagers. This is part of ongoing work to design learning technologies that support teenagers learn about personal energy consumption. In this paper we describe our analysis and methodology, which are shaped by the Ecology of Resources (EoR) design framework [Luckin, R. (2010). Re-designing learning contexts: Technology-rich, learner-centred ecologies. London and New York, NY: Routledge]. Our findings informed the development of an EoR model of the participants' personal context, which includes their world resources (people, tools, knowledge, skills, and environment) and their personal resources (conceptions, motivations and concerns around energy consumption). We discuss the range of methods we employed to understand learners' personal contexts. These findings contribute to our understanding of how to explore teenagers' personal contexts and have implications for the design of technology to support learning about personal energy consumption.     

Organisational perspectives on the local management of schools: Papua New Guinean case studies

Associated with the economic adjustments of recent years, there is a trend in many countries for governments to devolve responsibility for logistical support to schools. This paper is a study of factors that can influence the local management necessary for the provision of this support. Drawing from two, largely rural, studies in Papua New Guinea (a national survey and a detailed analysis of community management of 13 schools in a single area), the paper describes the school, its Board of Management and the community as a trio of organisations with theoretically complementary objectives. It points to the inadequacy of general cultural explanations for Board inability to sustain operations over time. It claims that Board members, people in the communities they represent and teachers all have private expectations of their association with schools, which if not met, will undermine commitment. Ensuring these are met, with secondary regulatory action, can reduce the frequency of organisational troughs of apathy. As it is, in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere, the prospect of expectation fulfilment associated with socio-economic advantage means that those with least to gain may refuse to become involved with education systems.