ABSTRACTS

MCA Abstracts -Vol. 13 (2)

The Collective Mediation of a High Stakes Accountability Program:
Communities and Networks of Practice

Paul Cobb, Kay McClain
Vanderbilt University

This article describes an analytic approach for situating teachers' instructional practices within the institutional settings of the schools and school districts in which they work. The approach treats instructional leadership and teaching as distributed activities and involves first delineating the communities of practice within a school or district whose enterprises are concerned with teaching and learning and then analyzing three types of interconnections between them: boundary encounters, brokers, and boundary objects. We illustrate the analytic approach by focusing on one urban school district in which we have conducted an ongoing collaboration with a group of middle-school teachers.  In doing so, we clarify the critical role that school and district-level leaders can play in mediating state and federal high-stakes accountability policies.  We conclude by discussing the implications of the analysis for the process of up-scaling and the diffusion of instructional innovations.

Dynamics of Situation Definition

Dongseop Park and Yuji Moro
University of Tsukuba Tennodai

Situation definition is the process and product of actors’ interpretive activities towards a given situation. By reviewing a number of psychological studies conducted in experimental settings, we find that the studies have only explicated a part of the situation definition process and have neglected its dynamic aspects. We need to focus on the dynamic nature of the situation definition, which is constructed, maintained and altered interactively. We characterize situation definition in terms of three dimensions. First, a variety of agents and objects shape the situation definition (“mutiple-componentiality of situation definition”). Second, various views concerning the situation definition co-exist (“heterogeneity in situation definitions”). Third, the participants have equal responsibilities for defining the situation, usually with asymmetry of roles (“co-construction of situation definition”). To gain a more holistic understanding of situation definition, we introduce the “notion of fluctuation,” which captures both the plasticity and the development of situation definition. We present observational data collected in a naturalistic setting to demonstrate fluctuations in situation definition. These fluctuations appeared in various forms, including a “reversal of one situation definition to another,” a “deviation from the dominant situation definition,” a “restoration of the original situation definition,” a “parallel progression of multiple situation definitions,” and a “hybridization of multiple situation definitions.” Specific shifts in activity, polysemy of objects, and conflicts and negotiations among participants over initiating the activity lead to the fluctuations in the situation definition.

Very Young Children’s Development in Movie-Making
John Matthews
Nanyang Technological University

In this study, the author gave a group of six to eight very young Chinese Singaporean children (between 2 and 4 years of age) three identical digital video cameras, plus tripods, and tracked their development in moviemaking over a 2-year period. The children were allowed to explore the cameras freely, though the investigators offered advice and support as and when necessary. Prior to this study, the author had made detailed longitudinal studies of British and Asian children’s representational development in pencil and paper technologies. The present author was interested to find out whether insertion of a very different, electronic, moviemaking medium into development would change developmental histories fundamentally, or whether it was possible to discern key patterns of development and developmental principles, despite change in media. Previous studies suggested that, by changing the medium, the new tools of representation would reconfigure development, emphasizing aspects of representational thinking less apparent in other media. For example, physical paint redirects the child’s development of linear shape, but key structures persist despite a new interest in color and texture. Claire Golomb’s work also shows that giving young draftspersons clay, instead of crayons or pencils, also causes interesting developmental variations, but that key patterns of action still persist.