I think the Electronic Quills study by Rubin and Bruce is one of the
"classics." Not much of the computer research takes a cultural perspective.
Most of it focuses on learning outcomes (treatment/non-treatment) type
stuff. Many techies come from pure cognitivist backgrounds, but as they've
used the technology, they're turning toward sociocultural orientations. The
following are the benchmarks of my search to develop a sociocultural
perspective on technology.
Margaret Riel's work in the mid-80s on the computer chronicles electronic
newspaper is also well-known. Roy Pea provides something of a more recent
overview and poses some interesting questions in Gavriel Salomon's book,
Distributed Cognitions, 1993. I think that Dennis sp? Newman's work of the
1980s qualifies as "classic." It appears in Mirrors of Minds, Roy Pea and
Karen Sheingold, editors. Sheingold offers some critique of how the school
culture resists change in that same book. Of course, you've already heard
about Larry Cuban. There are others whose work -- although it doesn't set
out to be sociocultural -- winds up reflecting upon such issues: Scardamalia
and Bereiter, Marcia Linn, and Ann Brown have all done some work with tech
in the classroom, usually geared toward using it as an ed reform Trojan
Horse for science: CSILE (Computer Supported Inquiry Learning Environment,
think???) is S&B's, and Linn has her KIE (Knowledge Integration
E,,something). Much of the CoVis work at Northwestern gets at community
change issues, although not always by being explicit with sociocultural
theory. I won't repeat the Cole cites since I'm sure you've got those.
In most tech studies there's the problem of generalizability and
replicability. Each program is a hot house flower that grows BECAUSE there
are particular institutional and social forces at work. This is why Bruce
and Rubin's approach -- one that compares tech innovations across different
social communities -- is so compelling. The variation that develops around
tech use in classrooms is really what's most interesting about this cultural
tool. For theoretical grounding, I think an old 1981 article on computers
and culture by Tikhomorov is definitely one of the classics.
Louise
----------------------------------
At 04:29 PM 8/22/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Mike Cole and Margie Gallego are working on a chapter on classroom
>culture for the Handbook of Research on Teaching. They've asked me
>to pose this question to the list:
>
>What are the classic studies on the introduction of technology into
>the classroom that show that it changes classroom culture in productive
>ways?
>
>Honorine Nocon,
>LCHC
>
>