Imaginative interaction with Internet games. For children and teachers

This article explores children's imaginative interaction with Internet games in the belief that an understanding of children's life experiences is essential to effective teaching and learning within the classroom. It is underpinned by the idea that imaginative play is, at least in some part, the work of children undertaking identity practice. It focuses on a small group case study of 8‐ and 9‐year‐old children, from diverse cultural backgrounds, who were regular players on free‐access commercial Internet games. As children frequently perform imaginative narrative play both privately and in groups triggered from experiences with novels, films and television, the research initially focused on whether similar activities resulted from experiences with commercially sponsored free Internet game sites. If so, to what extent might these texts also influence children's creative output? To explore this, the children attended a weekly after‐school computer club during which they played on Internet games. During the course of the club sessions, each child was observed and interviewed about the experiences they had resulting from the gameplay. Through consideration of the children's play and opinions, the teacher researcher developed valuable insights into her students and their worlds to the benefit of her practice.     

Expert and novice solutions of genetic pedigree problems

This study compared the problem-solving performance of university genetics professors and genetics students, and therefore fits the expert versus novice paradigm. The subjects solved three genetic pedigree problems. Data were gathered using standard think-aloud protocol procedures. Although the experts did not differ from the novices in terms of the number of correct solutions obtained, there were significant differences favoring the experts in terms of the completeness and conclusiveness of the solutions. The experts identified more critical cues in the pedigrees which were used to generate and test hypotheses, they tested more hypotheses by assigning genotypes to individuals in the pedigrees, and were more rigorous than the novices in the falsification of alternative hypotheses. The experts varied their problem-solving strategy to suit the particular conditions of problems involving rare or common traits. Novices did nor recognize the need to make such modifications to their strategies.     

University students' perceptions of influences on external studies

Fifty‐three external university students and a comparison group of 51 on‐campus social and political theory students responded to a written questionnaire on their perceptions of the factors influencing their external studies. Responses were obtained to objective questions and by written open‐ended advice to two hypothetical prospective external students.

In both sets of responses students identified family, job and life circumstances as major influences on external university study.. Advantages of external study were self‐reliance and finances, and disadvantages were related to access to the library and academics' demands. Students expressed preference for studying on‐campus or by the combination of campus and external courses which was available at the university. The study provides base‐line data about students' perceptions of contextual frames or constraints on external study.     

Levels of experience: an exploration for learning design

The purpose of this paper is to introduce an organizer that I developed while working at the Institute for Educational Research in Jyväskylä, Finland.1 While I have referred to it in an earlier paper (Bopry, ), I have not formally described it in a published article. The organizer is based on my understanding of second order cybernetic theory, in particular the enactive theories of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. It has helped me analyse instructional situations and has informed my practice. My task in this paper is to describe the organizer, relate it to the theoretical framework from which it has emerged and provide a warrant for its use in the field of educational technology. While I shall provide examples of how the organizer has been used, an extensive elaboration of its potential for learning design will appear in a second paper.

Les niveaux d’expérience: une exploration visant à l’apprentissage du « design »

Le but de cette étude est de présenter un organiseur que j’ai mis au point pendant que je travaillais à l’Institut de Recherche Educative de Jyväskylä en Finlande.1 Academy of Finland grant no. 37189. Je l’avais mentionné dans un article précédent (Bopry, 1998) mais je ne l’avais pas décrit de façon formelle dans un article destiné à la publication. Cet organiseur se fonde sur ma compréhension de la théorie cybernétique du deuxième ordre et en particulier des théories d’accomplissement de Humberto Maturana et de Francisco Varela. C’est ce qui m’a aidée à analyser des situations pédagogiques et à enrichir ma pratique. Mon rôle dans cet article est de décrire l’organiseur, de le relier au cadre théorique d’où il est issu et de fournir des garanties pour son usage dans le domaine de la technologie éducative. Ici je fournirai des exemples de la façon dont cet organiseur a été utilisé et une étude plus vaste de ses possibilités en matière de design pédagogique paraîtra dans un deuxième article.

Erfahrungsniveaus: Eine Untersuchung für Unterrichtsentwürfe

Mit diesem Beitrag soll ein Organisator vorgestellt werden, den ich entwickelte, als ich am Institut für Bildungsforschung in Jyväskylä, Finnland arbeitete.¹ Während ich schon in einer früheren Arbeit (Bopry, 1998) darauf verwiesen habe, fehlt noch eine formelle Beschreibung in einem veröffentlichten Artikel. Der Organisator basiert auf meinem Verständnis der “second‐order cybernetic theory”, vor allem der “enactive theories” von Humberto Maturana und Francisco Varela. Er hat mir geholfen, Unterrichtssituationen zu analysieren und hat meine praktische Arbeit geprägt. Meine Aufgabe in diesem Papier ist, den Organisator zu beschreiben, ihn auf den theoretischen Rahmen zu beziehen, in dem er entstanden ist, und eine Anleitung zu seinem Gebrauch im Bereich der Bildungstechnologie zu liefern. Während ich Beispiele dafür beifügen werde, wie der Organisator verwendet worden ist, erscheint eine umfassende Darstellung seines Potentials für Unterrichtsentwürfe in einem zweiten Papier.     

Researching Early Schooling: poststructural practices and academic writing in an ethnography

Locating oneself as a poststructuralist not only emphasises multiple readings of texts, but generates data comparable with this location. This article considers some possibilities in researching everyday happenings at primary school. Reading and producing discourses, rather than texts only, involves bringing into play our own subjective understandings. Writing differently then becomes a methodology for the analysis of what we have recorded as research data. For the study of sites and events, one possibility is for deconstructions to follow a form of ethnography. However, with poststructural theories and their related academic practices, the research choices are different. An effect of this difference is that the timings and resolutions of gathering, presenting and analysing data are dislocated. These dislocations may be read as an enactment of a radical philosophy. They may also be read as a puzzle to be resisted, but which is nevertheless constructed to match today's cultural shifts and to challenge the nature of researching.