Attached below is my review of Griffin et al.'s chapter
(chapter 5) in the book, Contexts For Learning. I started
out to write a short review but alas ended up writing an
extended essay review (7 pages single-spaced with references
and footnotes). To provide you with an advanced organizer
for reading this essay review, I'll outline the main points
of my review as follows:
(1) Griffin et al.'s accomplishment: Discovering the
computer program as a bona fide (albeit hidden)
classroom co-participant, and illustrating ways of
revising the program to make it a more liberal and
flexible co-interactant... i.e., creating and
reconstituting the possible constraints and resources
that the computer program can impose on and afford to
classroom interactions
(2) Addressing the problem of institutionalizing innovative
computer programs (or other artifacts and practices) in
the school context:
(i) The need to consider the existing larger embedding
socio-cultural, institutional, normative and
motivational contexts for the incorporation of
innovative artifacts/practices: taking a situated
and activity theoretical perspective (Ref.:
Engestrom)
(ii) The need to design "formative experiments" based
on findings from "naturalistic observations" in a
particular context,
(iii) The need for partnership and mutual communication
between researchers and practitioners in the zone
of proximal development of educational contexts:
the mutual reconstitution of researchers and
school practitioners
I hope this will make interesting reading for you for the
weekend! Please comment and respond!
Cheers,
Angel
------------------------------------------------------------
From Griffin et al.'s Formative Experiment to the Mutual
Reconstitution of Researchers and School Practitioners
By Angel M.Y. Lin (October 12, 1995)
Modern Language Centre
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
252 Bloor St. W., Toronto, ON M5S 1V6, Canada
E-Mail: MYLIN who-is-at OISE.ON.CA
A review of: "Creating and Reconstituting Contexts for
Educational Interactions, Including a Computer Program", by
Peg Griffin, Alexandra Belyaeva, Galina Soldatova, and the
Velikhov-Hamburg Collective, in Ellice A. Forman, Norris
Minick, and C. Addison Stone (Eds.), Contexts for Learning:
Sociocultural Dynamics in Children's Development, 1993, New
York, Oxford University Press, pp. 120-152 (Chapter 5).
INTRODUCTION
In their chapter Griffin et al. present a detailed
description of Fish and Kosel's "The Pond" computer program
for use with middle elementary school children learning
mathematics in Russia and the United States. More
importantly, they provide an account of the process of their
collaborating with the software designers in modifying and
revising the program (e.g., adding an authoring component,
providing options, modifying the presentation language) to
make it more responsive to local needs as they are
discovered in their particular classroom situations. Their
chapter reports their work in the second phase of their long
term research project. In the first phase of the project,
they examined communication in the zpd that occurred under
different conditions of use of the program, e.g., various
groups of users (child alone, cooperative peer, competitive
peer, expert/novice) and other teaching/learning strategies
(passive teacher, fantasy figure teacher communicating via
computer, construction of three-and two-dimensional models,
order of presentation of examples) (p. 122).
In the following sections, I shall first discuss the
importance of what the authors have achieved so far. Then I
shall discuss the problem of institutionalizing computer
programs in the school context, and propose some re-
orientations in the conceptualization of, and research
approaches to, contexts for learning. These re-orientations
may hold better promise of helping us to understand what may
facilitate and motivate the local (re)constitution of
innovative contexts for learning in each unique socio-
cultural situation.
COMPUTER PROGRAM AS A CO-PARTICIPANT IN CLASSROOM
INTERACTIONS
The thrust of the authors' analysis is that a computer
program in all its interactional consequences functions as a
bona fide (albeit "hidden") co-participant in classroom
interactions. As such, it can be a domineering co-
participant who imposes pre-suppositions about "the
definition of the situation" (i.e., "the context") and
overly constrains other participants' actions, their
understanding of the task situation, and subsequent
interactions. Drawing on the theoretical and methodological
resources of ordinary language philosophy and conversation
analysis, the authors show how these consequences can
happen, and how the researchers' collaborating with the
software programmers to revise the program can change this
computer-participant into a less domineering and more
flexible interactant, e.g., by making available more menu
and procedural options to teachers and students who then can
choose from or re-sequence/design these options so as to
make the computer-participant more responsive to the local
needs of individuals and individual classroom situations
(see examples discussed in pp. 136-143). The whole chapter
is mainly about the discovery of those unfavorable
interactional consequences of the behavior (so to speak) of
the computer-participant and how the computer-participant
has been gradually changed (by reprogramming) into a more
liberal (so to speak), flexible co-participant who is more
open to negotiations with other interactants (e.g.,
teachers, students).
This is a very important insight as far too often it is
assumed that one single perfect version of a computer
program can be designed for use for most school populations
in most situations at most times. What the authors do in
this chapter is to heighten the awareness of educational
software programmers and researchers in the enterprise of
designing and implementing computer-mediated learning and
teaching in schools. Their message is forceful and multi-
faceted: take a local, situated, interactive, multi-media
perspective on computer-mediated learning and instruction.
In practical terms, it means: developing and designing
computer programs that are flexible and responsive to the
needs of local, particular classroom situations, and
programs whose interactional behavior does not constrain the
subsequent interpretations and interactions of students in
unfavorable directions (e.g., language that leads a student
to interpret the re-doing of a task boring [pp. 140-141], a
slow picture change that invites context boundary
interpretations right in the middle of a task [pp. 141-142],
a task sequencing that mispresupposes the wrong task [the
two-step ponds rather than three-step ponds] to be the
genetically primary example [p. 137]), and using the
computer program in combination with auxiliary means of
various modalities, e.g., drawing diagrams, representations,
role-playing (pp. 143-144).
While the authors focus on foregrounding the possible
constraints and resources that the hidden computer-
participant can impose on and afford to classroom
interactions1, and how the computer program can be revised
to make it a more flexible and helpful co-participant, the
authors have left out the larger socio-cultural,
institutional and motivational contexts in which the
classroom interactions are embedded. It seems that these
are the areas where the Russian and American situations may
be expected to differ considerably as the two countries may
very well have very different educational and assessment
systems, curricular organization and goals, computer
technology cultures, school cultures, teacher cultures,
student cultures, educational research cultures, etc.. A
study of these larger embedding contexts and their
relationships to the micro-level classroom interactions may
seem too complex and broad to be handled in one single
chapter. These larger embedding contexts, however, cannot
be taken for granted if we are to ultimately address the
practical question of how one goes about institutionalizing
an innovative computer program for math learning in a
particular school in a particular society and culture at a
particular time.
INSTITUTIONALIZING COMPUTER-MEDIATED LEARNING: SITUATED AND
ACTIVITY THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CONTEXTS FOR LEARNING
One type of questions that one may ask the authors is: What
is the local curricular context of the computer program, The
Pond? How is the math curriculum organized in the schools
studied, and how does The Pond fit in? What are the
curricular goals in each school setting and in what ways can
The Pond be seen (not only by the researchers or computer
program designers but also) by the respective Russian and
American school personnel (e.g., school principals,
teachers, math subject panel chairpersons, parent-group
representatives, etc.) to facilitate achieving their math
curricular goals? etc..
A second type of questions that one may ask is: How will the
students' math learning be assessed at school, what value
will the school assessment system assign to what the
students have learnt (implicitly and explicitly) with The
Pond? What value will parents, employers, or the larger
society assign to it? Do they assign differential values to
males' and females' math achievement, or computer literacy?
etc..
Seeking answers to these questions would lead one to pay
attention to the normative and motivational context for
incorporating a computer program into the math curriculum,
the classroom and the school. The research question then
becomes: Is there a normative and motivational context for
the institutionalization of math learning mediated by The
Pond in this particular school in this particular society
and culture at this time?
However, it seems that to ask the above research question is
still to put the cart before the horse, for why on earth
would any class, any teacher, any school in any society and
culture be interested in incorporating The Pond, or The
Lake2, or any other computer program in the first place?
Why should they be convinced of its value and usefulness in
their own local situations in the first place? One cannot
always expect any particular school to be motivated to
experiment with whatever latest educational computer
software available because some expert educational
researchers or software developers think that this computer
program may be a great way of mediating math learning and
teaching or because it has proved to work in some other
schools. The researchers' focus then should not be on The
Pond, or any given computer program, but instead on the
particular school context that the researchers are
interested in working in. Their research questions should
then become: What are these people doing and how are they
doing it? What difficulties or limitations are they
experiencing? What kind of new artifacts (including
computer programs) or practices will best improve their
current learning and teaching situation with reference to
THEIR OWN curricular goals and socio-cultural values? What
alternative goals or values can we as researchers
communicate to them so as to provide them with alternative
options to consider?
The above issues, however, cannot be addressed without FIRST
studying and understanding the existing math-
learning/teaching/assessment practices, and curricular and
administrative organization patterns in any particular
school, as well as the socio-historical and cultural values
of the society in which the school is situated. Daunting
though such a research task seems to be, Engestrom's
development of activity theory (1987, 1990a, 1990b, 1993)
provides a theoretical framework and a research methodology
that may be useful in our situation. From this activity
theoretical perspective, new artifacts, tools, and
innovative ways of working cannot be introduced without a
recognition and understanding by the participants themselves
(in JOINT exploration with the researchers) of how the new
artifacts or innovative ways of working can resolve EXISTING
inner contradictions in their present activity system.
Their recognition of, and desire to find solutions to,
existing problems or limitations serve as their motivation
for developing, accepting, adapting and experimenting with
new artifacts and innovative approaches in collaboration
with the researchers. The distance between their present
activity system and the new expanded activity system where
new artifacts, tools and practices are experimented with is
the zone of proximal development for their educational
context. This zone of proximal development, however, cannot
be defined or imposed from without. Nor can the new
artifacts be introduced solely from without. They have to
be discovered, developed, accepted or adapted by those
participants in the particular contexts in JOINT research
and exploration with the researchers. In other words,
researchers and computer programmers cannot simply transmit
what they consider useful to local school practitioners,
just as teachers cannot simply transmit what they consider
to be useful knowledge to their students. Researchers
should be engaged in a JOINT discovery and learning process
with school practitioners.
NO "FORMATIVE EXPERIMENTS" VERSUS "NATURALISTIC
OBSERVATIONS"
The implication of the above perspectives is that "formative
experiments" and "naturalistic observations" (as defined by
the authors in pp. 123-125) are not two largely unrelated
research approaches to educational reform, as the authors
seem to have implied (p. 124). The authors rightly point
out the limitations of naturalistic observations alone (p.
124). However, one also has to recognize that the design of
any formative experiment must be informed by the findings of
naturalistic observations of the existing local particular
situation in which the formative experiment is to be
launched.
For instance, the authors mention Mehan et al. (1983, p.
226)'s comment, "Why should we expect that the same
practices that have produced wide-spread academic failure
will create propitious environments for computer use?", as
the reason for the need to "go beyond observation and create
contexts to study computers in education" (p. 124). The
comment I believe can be re-phrased the other way round:
"Why should we expect The Pond, or any particular computer
program, to be able to help change those existing practices
that have produced wide-spread academic failure?". In other
words: What are the existing practices in this particular
context? How does the introduction of a particular
computer-participant change those unfavorable practices?
How can we design this computer-participant to specifically
help change those practices?
To illustrate, let us consider this hypothetical example.
If it has been discovered in a particular classroom (by some
naturalistic observations) that girls and boys engage in a
particular type of division of labor when they collaborate
on solving math problems, e.g., typically boys do the
reasoning and problem-solving part while girls do the work
of copying and tidying up the solutions and the oral
presentation of the solutions, then this finding should
inform the design of the subsequent formative experiment to
be launched in this particular situation, e.g., designing a
computer program to be introduced into this classroom such
that this computer-participant will constrain the division
of labor by boys and girls in a manner different from the
existing pattern uncovered by naturalistic observations.
CONCLUSION: THE MUTUAL RECONSTITUTION OF RESEARCHERS AND
SCHOOL PRACTITIONERS
However, even when researchers have designed formative
experiments based on findings from naturalistic
observations, there can be little success of
institutionalizing the innovative artifacts and practices if
all these are conducted and introduced from without by the
researchers alone. As mentioned earlier, researchers cannot
simply "transmit" what they consider useful to local
practitioners. Partnership, joint exploration and mutual
communication seem to be the key elements in their working
together in the zone of proximal development of educational
contexts. Since contexts are always constituted locally by
the local participants, there can be little reconstituting
of educational contexts without the active reconstituting of
the local participants themselves. Such reconstitution
(e.g., of one's values and practices), however, can take
place only as researchers and school practitioners are
engaged in mutual reconstitution in a process of mutual
communication and joint exploration. While Griffin et al.
may not have addressed all these issues in their chapter,
their detailed examples of how teachers, researchers and
computer programmers collaborate to revise The Pond based on
their local observations of its interactional consequences
for the classroom participants help provide a micro-example
of what also can and needs to be done in the larger
embedding contexts for the successful institutionalization
of any innovative artifacts or practices, including a
computer program.
NOTES
1. I have deliberately changed the authors' phrase "creating
and reconstituting contexts for educational
interactions" to "creating and reconstituting
constraints on and resources for classroom
interactions" in this sentence. The reason is that
context is a local accomplishment achieved in each
unique situation through the dynamic negotiation work
of the interactants in that situation. What the
authors describe in their chapter are the many
different constraints and resources that the computer-
as-participant can impose on and afford to the other
human interactants in their local co-construction of
the context, and how these constraints and resources
can be changed beforehand (by reprogramming) to
facilitate the participants' co-construction of the
context in educationally desirable directions.
Likewise, my substitution of "classroom interactions"
for "educational interactions" is motivated by the
observation that not all interactions that can take
place among the children, teacher and computer are
necessarily "educational". "Educational interactions"
are again a local accomplishment by the co-participants
in each unique situation and cannot be guaranteed in
advance (though may be facilitated) by the availability
of the best kinds of artifacts and resources (e.g.,
well-designed computer program and other auxiliary
means).
2. There is no such a computer program called The Lake. I
made this up just to emphasize my point.
REFERENCES
Engestrom, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-
theoretical approach to developmental research.
Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit.
Engestrom, Y. (1990a). Activity theory and individual and
social transformation. Opening address at the Second
International Congress for Research on Activity Theory,
Lahti, Finland, May 21-25, 1990.
Engestrom, Y. (1990b). Learning, working and imagining:
Twelve studies in activity theory. Helsinki: Orienta-
Konsultit.
Engestrom, Y. (1993). Developmental studies of work as a
testbench of activity theory: The case of primary care
medical practice. In Chaiklin, S. & Lave, J. (Eds.)
Understanding practice: Perspectives on activity and
context, pp. 64-103. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.