Students’ meaning making in science: solving energy resource problems in virtual worlds combined with spreadsheets to develop graphs

The aim of this study is to scrutinize the characteristics of conceptual meaning making when students engage with virtual worlds in combination with a spreadsheet with the aim to develop graphs. We study how these tools and the representations they contain or enable students to construct serve to influence their understanding of energy resource consumption. The data were gathered in 1st grade upper-secondary science classes and they constitute the basis for the interaction analysis of students?? meaning making with representations. Our analyses demonstrate the difficulties involved in developing students?? orientation toward more conceptual orientations to representations of the knowledge domain. Virtual worlds do not in themselves represent a solution to this problem.     

Computer-based 3D simulation: a study of communication practices in a trauma team performing patient examination and diagnostic work

Diagnostic work in trauma teams is critical for the patient’s condition and for the possibility of survival. It is a difficult situation to train due to the inherently unpredictable and time-critical practice when an injured patient presents in the Emergency Room (ER). Different types of simulations have been developed for specialized training of specific skills and on contribution to teamwork, but there are hardly any studies reporting on opportunities to train realistic, multidisciplinary collaboration and communicative skills in such time-critical settings. In this article we report on a collaboration-oriented simulation where a trauma team performs diagnostic work: examining a patient in an ER at a hospital. The setting studied is arranged as a design experiment and video data constitute the basis for our interaction analysis. Our main finding is that highly-specialized simulations are useful as an arena for communication training among trauma team members. Doctors and nurses manage to make the simulated representations relevant in their talk, share medical observations and examinations, and consecutively include these findings into their collaborative diagnostic trajectory.     

A Transactional Approach to Transfer Episodes

In this article we present an analytical framework for approaching transfer episodes—episodes in which participants declare or can be declared to bring prior experience to bear on the current task organization. We build on Dewey’s writings about the continuity of experience, Vygotsky’s ideas of unit analysis, as well as more recent developments in continental philosophy to develop a transactional approach that involves reconceptualizing the notion of experience. In this view, experience is not something that individuals have but an analytical category that denotes the unity of whole persons, their material and social environment, and their changing transactional relations (mutual effects on each other) across time. In the 1st part of the article, we present the theory and contrast it with past and present literature on transfer. In the 2nd part, we develop the methodological implications and analyze an episode of transfer from a technology-enhanced science education curriculum in which students were presented with analogous models of scientific phenomena across different tasks. We describe instances of recognition, of analogical reasoning, and of how students applied theoretical knowledge in terms of transactional units of change. We conclude by discussing implications with regard to further theoretical development and educational practice.     

Peers,teachers and guides: a study of three conditions for scaffolding conceptual learning in science centers

Cultural Studies of Science Education - Studies of education practices in science centers have found variation in how conceptual learning is supported, or scaffolded, on school field trips. This...     

Reconsidering meaning making and its analytical implications for cultural studies of science education

The discussion in this forum aims to push some of the ideas further and thus clarify some of the concepts used in the feature article. This includes a debate of the concepts of meaning making, procedural and conceptual learning experiences, the distinction between realism and constructivism in our research practice, and finally how to foster productive disciplinary engagement.     

Students’ conceptual practices in science education

Recent research has to a limited extent explored the characteristics of students’ conceptual practices as sociocultural phenomena in general and in science education in particular. I approach this issue by studying a group of students while solving a particular scientific problem from A to Z, and as part of this analyse how different cultural means (the knowledge domain and the tools in use) structure the students’ interactions and how their interpersonal relations change over this period of time. The aim is to illustrate how these cultural means intersect in productive and less productive ways during the students’ conceptual practices. The study has its point of departure in a design experiment where a group of four students, together with their teacher, solve different problems related to the biological phenomenon of sequencing a DNA molecule (the insulin gene). Video-recordings of the students’ interactions constitute the basis for this analysis. The cultural means strongly structure the students’ conceptual practices during their problem solving processes. Whereas the knowledge domain structured the whole process, the significant roles of the website and the computer-based 3D model of the insulin gene were especially apparent during the second part of the trajectory. The intersection of these cultural means appear productive in terms of disciplinary knowledge when the students’ became aware of how to handle this relationship. The interpersonal relations between the students and their teacher altered slightly in the beginning and became increasingly more fixed during the students’ progression.     

The process of understanding the task: how is agency distributed between students, teachers and representations in technology-rich learning environments?

In this article, we explore how students’ agency relates to both highly structured and open-ended learning environments. This is done by analysing how students’ understanding of tasks evolves through their activities in relation to the representations inscribed in two technology-rich learning environments. Based on the sociocultural approach to thinking, reasoning and learning we argue that it is necessary to include activities, artefacts and aspects of the knowledge domain in order to understand how and what the students’ learn. We conclude by arguing that the process of understanding a task is often complex and ongoing through the activity.