In this article we present an analytical framework for approaching transfer episodes--episodes in which participants declare or can be declared to bring prior experience to bear on the current task organization. We build on Dewey's writings about the continuity of experience, Vygotsky's ideas of unit analysis, as well as more recent developments…

Education appears to be in a perpetual crisis. In this article, I suggest that one of the key contributing factors in educational crisis is the institution of schooling, which re/produces the failures to learn and, thereby, contributes to the re/production of inequities that it (schooling) is supposed to overcome. Ideologies and practices intended…

The purpose of this review paper is to contribute to the effort of rethinking scientific literacy in a form that is appropriate for describing and theorizing its occurrence "in the wild," that is, in the everyday world that we share with others (as opposed to testing situations in classrooms and laboratories). Consistent with our commitment to…

Compared the effects of participation in six extra credit activities for teaching the concept of matter on female preservice elementary school teachers (n=9) to a control group (n=8). Pre- and posttests to assess changes in the students' understanding of phenomena associated with matter indicated significant changes in experimental students'…

Shows how designing can be modeled as a distributed process. Uses empirical examples to show three aspects of situated design in the roles of material aspects of the setting, the creation of virtual design concepts through materials and artifacts, and the way that fact construction in school science is tied to artifacts of students' design…

Data from a study of learning conducted with 26 seventh and eighth graders are used to show the highly heterogeneous and contingent nature of students' responses to lever problems. A framework is proposed to explain variations in cognitive performance across situations and to critique some of the assumptions underlying assessments. (SLD)

The authors describe an evolving theoretical framework that has been called one of the best kept secrets of academia: cultural-historical activity theory, the result of proposals Lev Vygotsky first articulated but that his students and followers substantially developed to constitute much expanded forms in its second and third generations. Besides…

Over the past 7 years the authors have been involved in the development of a new model for the education of science teachers that has the potential to address teacher education in challenging urban settings characterized by problems such as teacher turnover and retention, low job satisfaction, and contradictions arising from cultural and ethnic…

Advocates artificial neural networks as models for cognition and development. Provides an example of how such models work in the context of a well-known Piagetian developmental task and school science activity: balance beam problems. (Contains 59 references.) (Author/WRM)