Sasha A. Barab

Design-Based Research: Putting a Stake in the Ground

The emerging field of the learning sciences is one that is interdisciplinary, drawing on multiple theoretical perspectives and research paradigms so as to build understandings of the nature and conditions of learning, cognition, and development. Learning sciences researchers investigate cognition in context, at times emphasizing one more than the other but with the broad goal of developing evidence-based claims derived from both laboratory-based and naturalistic investigations that result in knowledge about how people learn. This work can involve the development of technological tools, curriculum, and especially theory that can be used to understand and support learning. A fundamental assumption of many learning scientists is that cognition is not a thing located within the individual thinker but is a process that is distributed across the knower, the environment in which knowing occurs, and the activity in which the learner participates. In other words, learning, cognition, knowing, and context are irreducibly co-constituted and cannot be treated as isolated entities or processes. If one believes that context matters in terms of learning and cognition, research paradigms that simply examine these processes as isolated variables within laboratory or other impoverished contexts of participation will necessarily lead to an incomplete understanding of their relevance in more naturalistic settings (Brown, 1992).1 Alternatively, simply observing learning and cognition as they naturally Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Sasha A. Barab, School of Education,

Making Learning Fun: Quest Atlantis, A Game Without Guns

This article describes the Quest Atlantis (QA) project, a learning and teaching project that employs a multiuser, virtual environment to immerse children, ages 9–12, in educational tasks. QA combines strategies used in commercial gaming environments with lessons from educational research on learning and motivation. It allows users at participating elementary schools and after-school centers to travel through virtual spaces to perform educational activities, talk with other users and mentors, and build virtual personae. Our work has involved an agenda and process that may be called socially-responsive design, which involves building sociotechnical structures that engage with and potentially transform individuals and their contexts of participation. This work sits at the intersection of education, entertainment, and social commitment and suggests an expansive focus for instructional designers. The focus is on engaging classroom culture and relevant aspects of student life to inspire participation consistent with social commitments and educational goals interpreted locally.

Smart People or Smart Contexts? Cognition, Ability, and Talent Development in an Age of Situated Approaches to Knowing and Learning

Intelligence, expertise, ability and talent, as these terms have traditionally been used in education and psychology, are socially agreed upon labels that minimize the dynamic, evolving, and contextual nature of individual-environment relations. These hypothesized constructs can instead be described as functional relations distributed across whole persons and particular contexts through which individuals appear knowledgeably skillful. The purpose of this article is to support a concept of ability and talent development that is theoretically grounded in 5 distinct, yet interrelated, notions: ecological psychology, situated cognition, distributed cognition, activity theory, and legitimate peripheral participation. Although talent may be reserved by some to describe individuals possessing exceptional ability and ability may be described as an internal trait, in our description neither ability nor talent are possessed. Instead, they are treated as equivalent terms that can be used to describe functional transactions that are situated across person-in-situation. Further, and more important, by arguing that ability is part of the individual-environment transaction, we take the potential to appear talented out of the hands (or heads) of the few and instead treat it as an opportunity that is available to all although it may be actualized more frequently by some.

Designing and Building an On-line Community: The Struggle to Support Sociability in the Inquiry Learning Forum

In this paper we describe the sociotechnical structures of the Inquiry Learning Forum (ILF), a Web-based professional development tool designed to support a community of inservice and preservice mathematics and science teachers creating, sharing, and improving inquiry-based pedagogical practices. Founded in our previous research and consistent with our pedagogical commitment, the technical structures of the ILF have been designed around a “visiting-the-classroom” metaphor. This decision was based on our belief that teachers need to be full participants in, and owners of, their virtual space for meaningful interaction to occur. The hallmark of this environment is that teachers with a broad range of experience and expertise can come together in an on-line environment to observe, discuss, and reflect on pedagogical theory and practice anchored to actual teaching vignettes. The goal of this paper is to share how we instantiated our pedagogical commitments and to describe the challenges we faced during the design, development, implementation, and analysis of the ILF. Toward this end, we walk the reader through our design and implementation process, highlighting our change in focus from usability to sociability issues, and movement from conceiving the ILF as an electronic structure to a sociotechnical interaction network.

Curriculum-Based Ecosystems: Supporting Knowing From an Ecological Perspective

The goal of this article is to advance an ecological theory of knowing, one that prioritizes engaged participation over knowledge acquisition. To this end, the authors begin by describing the environment in terms of affordance networks: functionally bound potentials extended in time that can be acted upon to realize particular goals. Although there may be socially agreed-upon trajectories specifying the necessary components of a network activated for realizing a particular goal, the particular network engaged by an individual is dependent on adopted intentions and available effectivity sets, the attunements and behaviors that an individual can enlist to realize an affordance network. Thus, to help clarify the challenges of connecting learners to ecological systems through which affordance networks are activated, the authors use the term life-world, which refers to the environment from the perspective of an individual. Building on their characterization of affordance networks, effectivity sets, and life-worlds, the authors offer an ecological focal point for curricular design.

Constructing virtual worlds: Tracing the historical development of learner practices.

This study explores learning and instruction within a technology-rich, collaborative, participatory learning environment by tracking the emergence of shared understanding and products through student and teacher practices. The focus is not only on the interactions among students or between students and teachers, but on student-resource interactions, especially student-technology interactions. In a 1-week camp, students worked in activity groups with 3-dimensional modeling software to develop virtual worlds. Holistic accounts of 2 activity groups in the camp are presented, emphasizing the focus of the activity, group dynamics including the role of the teacher, and the historical development of learner practices. Then, a network methodology is used to trace the history of interactions accounting for the emergence, evolution, and diffusion of learner practices. The findings suggest that becoming knowledgeably skillful with respect to a particular practice or concept is a multigenerational process, evolving in terms of contextual demands and available resources. The tracings further reveal the reciprocal nature of learning and doing, with building conceptual understanding occurring in relation to local conditions and practices, and doing practices being a part of student learning.

Using Activity Theory to Understand the Systemic Tensions Characterizing a Technology-Rich Introductory Astronomy Course

In this report of our research on a computer-based three-dimensional (3-D) modeling course for learning astronomy, we use the central tenets of activity theory to analyze participation by undergraduate students and instructors, illuminating the instances of activity that characterized course dynamics. Specifically, we focus on the relations of participant (student) and object (3-D models and astronomy understandings) and how, in our course, object transformations leading to scientific understandings are mediated by tools (both technological and human), the overall classroom microculture (emergent norms), division of labor (group dynamics and student-instructor roles), and rules (informal, formal, and technical). Through analysis of the data, we interpreted and then focused on two systemic tensions as illuminative of classroom activity. With respect to the first systemic tension, we examined the interplay between learning astronomy and building 3-D models. Results suggested that instead of detracting from the emergence of an activity system that supported learning astronomy, model-building actions frequently coevolved with (were the same as) astronomy-learning actions. With respect to the second tension, we examined the interplay between prespecified, teacher-directed instruction versus emergent, student-directed learning. Our results indicated that it was rarely teacher-imposed nor student-initiated constraints that directed learning; rather, rules, norms, and divisions of labor arose from the requirements of building and sharing 3-D models.

Transformational Play: Using Games to Position Person, Content, and Context

Videogames are a powerful medium that curriculum designers can use to create narratively rich worlds for achieving educational goals. In these worlds, youth can become scientists, doctors, writers, and mathematicians who critically engage complex disciplinary content to transform a virtual world. Toward illuminating this potential, the authors advance the theory of transformational play. Such play involves taking on the role of a protagonist who must employ conceptual understandings to transform a problem-based fictional context and transform the player as well. The authors first survey the theory and then ground their discussion in two units that, as part of their design-based research methodology, have simultaneously given rise to and been informed by their theory of transformational play. They close with a discussion of research and design challenges.

Using Activity Theory to Conceptualize Online Community and Using Online Community to Conceptualize Activity Theory

In this article we describe the evolving structure of the Inquiry Learning Forum (ILF), a sociotechnical interaction network (STIN) designed to support a Web-based community of in-service and preservice mathematics and science teachers sharing, improving, and creating inquiry-based pedagogical practices. Specifically, we apply activity theory as an analytical lens for characterizing the process of designing and supporting the implementation of this online community. Our findings lend support for three implications. First, activity theory can provide a useful analytical tool for characterizing design activity, especially in terms of illuminating the challenges of designing something like community. Second, as one moves toward trying to design a community, particularly one in which the members will be expected to engage in new practices that challenge their current culture, many tensions emerge. Third, consideration of the ILF as a STIN was a necessary conceptual step in our understanding of the ILF and the transactional nature of people and tools. It is our conception that activity theory and STIN are synergistic theoretical frameworks that, when taken together, can provide a richer view of design activity and community functioning than either can offer in isolation.

A MUVE towards PBL Writing: Effects of a Digital Learning Environment Designed to Improve Elementary Student Writing.

Abstract Two major obstacles to using problem-based learning methods with writing in elementary school classrooms are the time it takes to design the learning environment and the time required for students to interact at their own pace with ill-structured problems used to spur student writing. This study examined whether game elements could be used along with Problem Based Learning (PBL) in a digital learning environment to improve student writing. Results from this study included statistically significant decreases in teacher time spent answering procedural and directional questions, increased voluntary student writing, and improved standardized achievement scores on writing tasks.