From designing artifacts to learning science: A dialectical perspective

How students come to know phenomena in terms of abstract concepts and theories through hands-on activities remains one of the open problems in science education. In this study, we develop a theory of learning science through design activities by employing a dialectical view of human activity that explicitly combines the mental and material in the same, irreducible unit of analysis. Dialectical contradictions embodied by this unit, here conceptualized as resistance experienced from a first-person perspective, constitute the inner forces that drive designing. Drawing on a large database of artifact designing constituted during a four-month unit on simple machines, we examine how resistance, in its dialectical relation to contradiction contributes to the unfolding design process and to the learning of scientific concepts and manual process skills during design. First, an inner contradiction emerges in the designers' lifeworlds as an unintended outcome or a breakdown and thereby changes the perceived world of a designer collective. Second, the dialectic of contradiction and resistance realized in this manner constitutes a moment unfolding culture of science in its concrete form embodied in individual designers and therefore contributes to the production and reproduction of culture. We conclude with a reflection on the implications our study makes to a non-dualist view of knowing and learning. SungWon Hwang is a research fellow of Science Education Research Center at Hanyang University in Korea. She received her Ph.D. from Seoul National University in 2002 and conducted her postdoctoral research at the University of Victoria. Her research projects are focused on the dialectical, embodied nature of human practice, learning, and identity in science activities, recently in the situation of crossing the boundaries of culture and language. She is a co-author of the book, Participation, Learning, and Identity: Dialectical perspectives (Lehmanns, 2005) with Wolff-Michael Roth, Yew Jin Lee, and Maria Ines M. Goulart. Wolff-Michael Roth is Lansdowne Professor of Applied Cognitive Science at the University of Victoria. His research focuses on knowing and learning science and mathematics across the lifespan and from kindergarten to professional practice. His recent publications include Toward an Anthropology of Graphing: Semiotic and Activity Theoretical Perspectives (Kluwer, 2003), Talking Science: Language and Learning in Science Laboratories (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), Doing Qualitative Research: Praxis of Method (SensePublishers, 2005), Learning Science: A Singular Plural Perspective (SensePublishers, 2006), and, with A. C. Barton, Rethinking Scientific Literacy (Routledge, 2004).