Abstract
This study focuses on the evolutionary changes in students' language concerning animated objects and associated vector diagrams in a computer-based Newtonian microworld. Emergence, convergence, and interpretive flexibility are introduced as analytical notions to describe and explain changes in student discourse. The present analysis documents how new ways of taling emerge and how the convergence of meaning within student groups and towards scientific meanings arises from the affordances provided by the interpretive flexibility of objects and events in the microworld, the conversations with the teacher, and the microworld as backdrop which assures the topical cohesion of student talk. In the students' learning process, computer microworlds were not cultural tools which embed unique meanings that students can recover on their own. Rather, these microworlds achieved their meaning in part through the teacher's situated practices.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Amann, K., and Knorr-Cetina, K. (1988). The fixation of (visual) evidence.Human Studies, 11:133–169.
Ashmore, M. (1989).The Reflexive Thesis: Wrighting Sociology of Scientific Knowledge. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London.
Bilmes, J. (1992). Mishearings In Watson, G., and Seiler, R. M., (Eds.),Text in Context: Contributions to Ethnomethodology. Sage Publications, Newbury Park, California, pp. 79–98.
Bourdieu, P. (1992). The practice of reflexive sociology (The Paris workshop). In Bourdieu, P., and Wacquant, L. J. D. (Eds.),An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, pp. 217–260.
Brown, J. S., Collins, A., and Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning.Educational Researcher, 18(1):32–42.
Brown, J. S., and Duguid, P. (1992). Enacting design for the work-place. In Adler, P. S., and Winograd, T. A. (Eds.),Usability: Turning Technologies into Tools. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 164–197.
Chi, M. T. H. (1992). Conceptual change within and across ontological categories: Examples from learning and discovery in science. In Giere, R., (Ed.),Cognitive Models of Science: Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, pp 129–186.
Clement, J. (1982). Students' preconceptions in introductory mechanics.American Journal of Physics, 50:66–71.
Cobb, P. (1993, April).Cultural Tools and Mathematical Learning: A Case Study. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Atlanta, Georgia.
Dykstra, D. I., Boyle, C. F., and Monarch, I. A. (1992). Studying conceptual change in learning physics.Science Education, 76:615–652.
Ehn, P. (1992). Scandinavian design: On participation and skill. In Adler, P. S., and Winograd, T. A. (Eds.),Usability: Turning Technologies into Tools. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 96–132.
Ehn, P., and Kyng, M. (1991). Cardboard computers: Mocking-it-up or hands-on the future. In Greenbaum, J., and Kyng, M. (Eds.),Design at Work: Cooperative Design of Computer Systems. LEA, Hillsdale, New Jersey, pp. 169–195.
Erickson, F. (1982). Money tree, lasagna bush, salt and pepper: Social construction of topical cohesion in a conversation among Italian Americans. In Tannen, D. (Ed.),Analyzing Discourse: Text and Talk. Georgetown University Press, Washington, D.C., pp. 43–70.
Felt, U., and Nowotny, H. (1992). Striking gold in the 1990s: The discovery of high-temperature superconductivity and its impact on the science system.Science, Technology, and Human Values, 17:506–531.
Forsythe, D. E. (1993). The construction of work in artificial intelligence.Science, Technology, and Human Values, 18:460–479.
Garfinkel, H., Lynch, M., and Livingston, E. (1981). The work of a discovering science construed with materials from the optically discovered pulsar.Philosophy of Social Sciences, 11:131–158.
Gooding, D. (1992). Putting agency back into experiment. In Pickering, A. (Ed.),Science as Practice and Culture. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, pp. 65–112.
Grimellini-Tomasini, N., Pecori-Balandi, B., Pacca, J. L. A., and Villani, A. (1993). Understanding conservation laws in mechanics: Students' conceptual change in learning about collisions.Science Education, 77, 169–189.
Henderson, K. (1991). Flexible sketches and inflexible data bases: Visual communication, conscription devices, and boundary objects in design engineering.Science, Technology, and Human Values, 16:448–473.
Jordan, B., and Henderson, A. (1995). Interaction analysis: Foundations and practice.The Journal of the Learning Sciences 4:39–103.
Knorr-Cetina, K. D. (1981).The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science. Pergamon Press, Oxford.
Latour, B. (1987).Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Milton Keynes, Open University Press.
Latour, B. (1992).Aramis ou L'amour des Techniques [Aramis or the love of techniques]. Éditions la Découverte, Paris, France.
Latour, B. (1993).La Clef de Berlin et Autres Leçons d'un Amateur de Sciences. [The key to Berlin and other lessons of a science lover]. Éditions la Découverte, Paris, France.
Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in practice: Mind, Mathematics, and Culture in Everyday Life. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Lave, J. (1993). The practice of learning. In Chaiklin, S., and Lave, J. (Eds.),Understanding Practice: Perspectives on Activity and Context. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 3–32.
Lee, J. (1991). Language and culture: the linguistic analysis of culture. In Button, G. (Ed.),Ethnomethodology and the Human Sciences. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 196–226.
Lemke, J. L. (1990).Talking Science: Language, Learning and Values. Ablex Publishing, Norwood, New Jersey.
Lynch, M., and Woolgar, S. (1990). (Eds.), Representation in Scientific Practice. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
McCloskey, M. (1983). Naive theories of motion. In Gentner, D., and Stevens, A. L. (Eds.),Mental Models. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, New Jersey, pp. 299–324.
McDermott, L. C. (1984). Research in conceptual understanding in mechanics.Physics Today, 37:24–32.
McGinn, M. K., Roth, W.-M., Boutonné, S., and Woszczyna, C. (1995). The transformation of individual and collective knowledge in elementary science classrooms that are organized as knowledge-building communities.Research in Science Education, 25:163–189.
Pea, R. D., Sipusic, M., and Allen, S. (in press). Seeing the light on optics: Classroom-based research and development of a learning environment for conceptual change. In Strauss, S. (Ed.),Development and Learning Environments. Ablex, Norwood, New Jersey.
Pea, R., and Brown, J. S. (1991). Series foreword. In Leave, J., and Wenger, E. (Eds.),Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Posner, G. J., Strike, K. A., Hewson, P. W., and Gertzog, W. A. (1982). Accommodation of a scientific conception: Toward a theory of conceptual change.Science Education, 66:211–227.
Quine, W. V. (1987).Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Rorty, R. (1989).Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Roschelle, J. (1992). Learning by collaborating: Convergent conceptual change.The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2:235–276.
Roth, W.-M. (1995a). Affordances of computers in teacher-student interactions: The case of Interactive PhysicsTM.Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 32:329–347.
Roth, W.-M. (1995b). Inventors, copycats, and everyone else: The emergence of shared (arti)facts and concepts as defining aspects of classroom communities.Science Education, 79:475–502.
Roth, W.-M. (1996). Knowledge diffusion in a Grade 4/5 classroom during a unit on civil engineering: An analysis of a classroom community in terms of its changing resources and practices.Cognition and Instruction, 14:179–220.
Roth, W.-M. (in press). Where is the context in contextual word problems?: Mathematical practices and products in Grade 8 students' answers to story problems.Cognition and Instruction.
Roth, W.-M., and Bowen, G. M. (1995). Knowing and interacting: A study of culture, practices, and resources in a Grade 8 open-inquiry science classroom guided by a cognitive apprenticeship metaphor.Cognition and Instruction, 13:73–128.
Roth, W.-M., McGinn, M. K., Woszczyna, C., and Boutonné, S. (1995). Affordances and constraints of physical arrangement, social configuration, and display artifacts to participation in classroom discourse in a grade 6/7 unit on simple machines. Submitted.
Roth, W.-M., and Roychoudhury, A. (1992). The social construction of scientific concepts or the concept map as conscription device and tool for social thinking in high school science.Science Education, 76:531–557.
Schegloff, E. (1982). Discourse as an interactional achievement: Some uses of ‘uh huh’ and other things that come between sentences. In Tannen, D. (Ed.),Analyzing discourse: Text and Talk. Georgetown University Press, Washington, D.C., pp. 71–93.
Schön, D. A. (1987).Educating the Reflective Practitioner. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Star, S. L. (1991). Power, technology and the phenomenology of conventions: on being allergic to onions. In Law, J. (Ed.),A Sociology of monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination. Routledge, London and New York, 26–56.
Suchman, L. A. (1987).Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Suchman, L. A., and Trigg, R. H. (1993). Artificial intelligence as craftwork. In Chaiklin, S., and Lave, J. (Eds.),Understanding Practice: Perspectives on Activity and Context. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 144–178.
Suzuki, D. (1989).Inventing the Future: Reflections on Science, Technology, and Nature. Stoddart, Toronto.
Turnbull, D. (1995). Rendering turbulence orderly.Social Studies of Science, 25:9–33.
Wittgenstein, L. (1968).Philosophical Investigations. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Woolgar, S. (Ed.) (1988).Knowledge and reflexivity: New frontiers in the sociology of knowledge. Sage Publications, London.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Roth, WM. The co-evolution of situated language and physics knowing. J Sci Educ Technol 5, 171–191 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01575302
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01575302