Michelle K. McGinn

Inscriptions: Toward a Theory of Representing as Social Practice

We argue for a new theoretical perspective on representations. This perspective has its roots in recent scholarship in social studies of science and technology and is centered around the notion of inscriptions, graphical representations recorded in and available through some medium (e.g., paper, computer monitor). Methodologically, researchers have begun to investigate the construction and development of inscriptions, the transformations they undergo, the roles they play in social situations, and the (rhetorical) purposes for which they are deployed. As a result of this research, the social practices of inscription users came into focus, and individual mental activity was deemphasized. Inscriptions and inscription-related practices highlight aspects of representations and representing not captured by other theoretical frameworks. This framework has considerable implications for thinking about representations and representing, organizing classroom learning environments, and designing curriculum materials.

Differences in Graph-Related Practices between High School Biology Textbooks and Scientific Ecology Journals.

Our research program is concerned with the trajectory of individuals from their initial participation in science-related activities to their full participation in scientific research. This study was designed to provide answers to questions about (a) the practices required for reading graphs in high school textbooks and scientific journals, and (b) the role of high school textbooks in the appropriation of authentic scientific graph-related practices. For our analyses, we selected five leading ecology-related journals and six representative high school biology textbooks. Although there were no differences in the total number of inscriptions used in journals and textbooks, there were significant differences in the frequency with which Cartesian graphs were used. To allow more detailed analyses, an ontology of graphs was developed. Our fine-grained analyses based on this ontology yielded qualitative differences between the uses of graphs and associated captions and main text as they appeared in high school textbooks and scientific journals. Scientific journals provided more resources to facilitate graph reading and more elaborate descriptions and interpretations of graphs than the high school textbooks. Implications of this study are outlined as they relate to (a) producing graphs, captions, and main text in high school textbooks; and (b) teaching and researching graph-related practices from anthropological perspectives.

Differential Participation During Science Conversations: The Interaction of Focal Artifacts, Social Configurations, and Physical Arrangements

Recent conceptualizations of knowing and learning focus on the degree of participation in the practices of communities. Discursive practices are the most important and characteristic practices in many communities. This study was designed to investigate how the content and form of classroom discourse was influenced by different combinations of artifacts (e.g., overhead transparencies, physical models), social configurations, and physical arrangements. Over a 4-month period, we collected data (video-taped activities, interviews, ethnographic observations, artifacts, and photographs) in a Grade 6-7 science class studying a unit on simple machines. Four different activity structures differed in terms of the social configuration (whole class, small group) and the origin of the central, activity-organizing artifact (teacher designed, student designed). This study describes how different artifacts, social configurations, and physical arrangements led to different interactional spaces, participant roles, and leve...

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Over the past 2 decades, ethnographic, historical, and philosophical studies of science and technology have revealed the central role inscriptions play in the construction of knowledge. Inscriptions take this central role because they can be circulated intact, as immutable mobiles, in large actor networks. Inscriptions reduce the complexities of lived experience into a small number of dimensions: In the process of their production, the lives, work, and voices of those being inscribed and of many who participate in their inscription are made invisible and deleted. Inscriptions are produced and circulated in complex actor networks. Some actors take crucial positions in network at obligatory passage points, which confer power. Inscriptions are boundary objects when they are used in multiple communities. In this situation, inscriptions can be used to articulate and coordinate the activities across different communities despite their different inscription-related discourses and meanings. In this article, we first develop the analytical framework in which inscription and actor network are the central notions. We then exemplify this framework in a case study of grades and grading practices. Our analyses indicate how one type of inscription, grade, and its associated practices are aspects of knowledge and power, in Foucaults sense, that bring about and stabilize an educational actor network. We conclude by showing how the framework can be used to provide constructive poststructuralist analyses and how the efforts of critical and liberation pedagogies are undercut by the stability of existing networks and the grade-based technologies of differentiation they embody. J Res Sci Teach 35: 399–421, 1998.

Applications of Science and Technology Studies: Effecting Change in Science Education.

Researchers in science and technology studies appear to be more concerned with descriptions and explanations of social phenomena than with the potential applications of their findings. Science and technology studies should strive to change society by contributing to the design of learning environments that form future generations of producers and consumers of scientific and technological knowledge. In this article, the authors (a) illustrate how they used research findings from science and technology studies to design alternative learning environments and (b) summarize their principal findings from six years of ethnographic research in these learning environments. They conclude by pointing out some of the caveats inherent in theirapproach and by suggesting areas in science education of interest to science and technology studies.

Deinstitutionalising School Science: Implications of a Strong View of Situated Cognition.

Psychological models of learning have been shaped by information processing models for four decades. These models have led to teaching models based on information transfer from teachers to students. However, recent research in many fields shows that information processing models do not account for much of human competence in everyday scientific and lay contexts. At the same time, situated cognition models have been developed that better account for competence in widely differing situations. The implications of situated cognition are rather different from those of information processing. Teaching and learning are no longer conceived simply in terms of information transfer but as increasing participation in everyday practices. Conceiving of science learning as a trajectory of increasing participation asks educators to rethink the purpose of science education from preparing scientists to preparing citizens to participate in public enactments of science, and this entails deinstitutionalising school science to take science beyond the classroom walls.

Living ethics: a narrative of collaboration and belonging in a research team

In this paper, we document and describe our collaboration on a project investigating individuals’ experiences of identity, participation, and belonging in higher education. We pay particular attention to the formal set of principles that we developed to govern collaboration, ownership and authorship within the research project and the ways that those principles are enacted in our team. Through our collaboration, we have come to acknowledge our research team as a space of belonging where all team members are accepted and welcomed. This sense of belonging provides a personal perspective on collaboration that is missing in most studies of research collaboration. We use the motif of ‘living ethics’ to capture defining qualities of the relationship deliberately cultivated between and among research team members. Through this narrative inquiry, we advance theoretical understandings of the notions of collaboration, belonging, and ethical research practices that can serve as potential models but not a blueprint for other research collaborations.

The Participant as Transcriptionist: Methodological Advantages of a Collaborative and Inclusive Research Practice:

This article documents an innovative approach to interview-based research known as the participant-as-transcriptionist method. In the participant-as-transcriptionist method, the participant serves as the transcriptionist, with editorial control to create the transcript from an interview. In the article, we address three key methodological advantages of the participant-as-transcriptionist method. First, the participant-as-transcriptionist method is inclusive for a range of researchers, disabled or otherwise. Second, the participant-as-transcriptionist method can incorporate a sense of collaboration in the researcher-participant relationship. Third, participant-transcriptionists can create quality transcripts that represent the participants voice. Throughout the discussion, we interweave quotes from fieldnotes taken by the interviewer (the first author) and a participant-transcriptionist (the second author) as they describe their experiences using the participant-as-transcriptionist method in a research study.

Toward a New Perspective on Problem Solving

Educating students to become successful problem solvers has been a goal of education at least since Dewey. However, the kinds of problems students do in school to practice their problem-solving competence have little to do with the problems they will need to solve in everyday settings. We briefly critique traditional conceptions of problem solving, propose a different framework for theorizing problem solving, describe how innovative curriculum design was informed by this new conception, present a case study of problem solving in one of these curricula, and summarize research findings from our classrooms that support the new conception of problem solving. L’un des buts de l’enseignement a ete, du moins depuis Dewey, de montrer aux eleves a resoudre des problemes. Toutefois, les problemes que doivent resoudre les eleves a l’ecole ne ressemblent guere a ceux qu’ils devront regler dans leur vie quotidienne. Les auteurs presentent d’abord une breve critique des conceptions traditionnelles de la reso- lution de problemes, puis proposent une conception nouvelle. Ils decrivent comment cette nouvelle conception les a guides dans l’elaboration de programmes scolaires en sciences; ils presentent d’ailleurs une etude de cas afin de donner un exemple des competences developpees par les eleves dans ces programmes. Ils terminent leur article par une breve presentation des principaux resultats de plusieurs recherches ethnographiques sur l’apprentissage de la resolution de problemes a l’ecole.

Assessing students’ understanding about levers: better test instruments are not enough

This study was designed to investigate variations in students’ responses to lever problems across multiple assessment contexts and formats. Prior to and at the end of a four‐month science unit on simple machines, grade 6/7 students prepared semantic maps, wrote responses to application questions, discussed their written answers, and modelled solutions to practical problems using physical materials. We present data from pre‐ and post‐instruction interviews to show that students’ responses varied in kind and extent across assessment contexts and formats. Such variations in performance are consistent with situated cognition theories which assert that competence is heterogeneous across situations and is a function of interactions between individuals and the contexts in which they perform. Based on these findings, implications are drawn regarding more productive means of assessing students’ understanding in classrooms.