242,032 research outputs found
Cultural villages as contexts for mediating culture and mathematics education in the South African curriculum
Some mathematics educational reform policies indicate that mathematics education should be connected to learnersâ cultures. However, teaching in schools rarely brings the interconnection between mathematics and culture in pedagogically informed ways. Connections are often done superficially; the curriculum in schools lacks content and specific strategies that enable the making of the connections explicit in the context of teaching. The qualitative study from which this paper emerges worked with three mathematics teachers in an attempt to teach mathematics in ways that connect key concepts with culture. Through mathematizing culturally-based activities performed at a cultural village2, two Grade 9 mathematics topics in the South African curriculum were indigenised. A teaching unit on the indigenised topics was designed and implemented in five Grade 9 classes at the same school. The paper demonstrates that the experience of designing, implementing, and reflecting on the intervention study had some positive contribution to the participating teachersâ pedagogical repertoire. Teachers saw the possibility of using cultural villages as instructional resources for connecting mathematics education to learnersâ cultures in the South African curriculum. I argue that cultural villages can be used as contexts for mediating culture and mathematics education
Research at the Interface: Bicultural studio in New Zealand, a Case Study
It has been suggested that Aotearoa New Zealandâs designed and cultural landscapes do not reflect its status as a bi-cultural nation. To address this problem, the Landscape Architecture programme at Victoria University of Wellington set up a partnership with Manaaki Taha Moana: Enhancing Coastal Ecosystems for Iwi and HapĂŒ, funded until 2015 by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, Wellington. Mastersâ students were asked to explore landscape design that would help iwi and hapĂŒ envisage ecological restoration or design projects that might enhance connections to their ancestral lands. This research considers the focus groups with students and iwi held after the studio and proposes a strategy for more effective bi-cultural design partnerships, which includes establishment of a protocol with a âresearch at the interfaceâ approach. Finally, it recommends a number of strategies to better educate students in the responsibilities of designing in a bi-cultural environment and to promote more effective bi-cultural partnerships in the future
Evocative computing â creating meaningful lasting experiences in connecting with the past
We present an approach â evocative computing â that demonstrates how âat handâ technologies can be âpicked upâ and used by people to create meaningful and lasting experiences, through connecting and interacting with the past. The approach is instantiated here through a suite of interactive technologies configured for an indoor-outdoor setting that enables groups to explore, discover and research the history and background of a public cemetery. We report on a two-part study where different groups visited the cemetery and interacted with the digital tools and resources. During their activities serendipitous uses of the technology led to connections being made between personal memo-ries and ongoing activities. Furthermore, these experiences were found to be long-lasting; a follow-up study, one year later, showed them to be highly memorable, and in some cases leading participants to take up new directions in their work. We discuss the value of evocative computing for enriching user experiences and engagement with heritage practices
An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form
How well can designers communicate qualities of touch?
This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makersâ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designersâ capabilities
Designing Spaces for Learning and Living in Schools: perspectives of a 'flaneuse'
The design elements of school learning spaces - classrooms, laboratories, libraries, studios - have the potential to position learners and teachers and to prohibit, authorise, situate and regulate the ways in which learning takes place. Approaches to the designing of learning spaces can fail to take into account the changing social, cultural, pedagogical and technological factors impacting on learners and teachers. How can such taken-for-granted spaces accommodate the needs of learners and teachers and respond to the demands of 'rich task' curriculum and 'real world' learning experiences? Acknowledging Donald Schon's (1983) perspective that 'all occupations engaged in converting actual to preferred situations are concerned with design', this paper is linked to a site visit and workshop conducted in the Ken Thamm Information Resource Centre at Immanuel Lutheran College, Buderim as part of the 2005 Australian Curriculum Studies Conference Blurring the Boundaries â Sharpening the Focus
When Memories Make a Difference: Multimodal Literacy Narratives for Preservice ELA Methods Students
This article examines multimodal literacy narrative projects designed by students in a methods of teaching course for secondary preservice English Language Arts teachers. For the multimodal project, preservice teachers infused written, audio, and visual text using a variety of creative mediums. Through combined theoretical frames, the researcher explores semiotics and preservice teachersâ use of multiliteracies as they shift their conceptions of what it means to compose. Finally, this article explores how the act of reflection through the literacy narrative influences preservice teachersâ notions of teaching composition through a variety of mediums
Supporting Worth Mapping with Sentence Completion
Expectations for design and evaluation approaches are set by the development practices within which they are used. Worth Centred Development (WCD) seeks to both shape and fit such practices. We report a study that combined two WCD approaches. Sentence completion gathered credible quantitative data on user values, which were used to identify relevant values and aversions of two player groups for an online gambling site. These values provided human value elements for a complementary WCD approach of
worth mapping. Initial worth maps were extended in three workshops, which focused on outcomes and user experiences that could be better addressed in the current product and associated marketing materials. We describe how worth
maps were prepared for, and presented in, workshops, and how product owners and associated business roles evaluated the combination of WCD approaches. Based on our experiences, we offer practical advice on this combinination
Making Exhibitions, Brokering Meaning: Designing new connections across communities of practice
New media museum exhibits often see designers representing the research of expert content providers. Despite perceptions that such exhibits provide museum visitors with a greater depth and range of experience, differences in knowledge and practice between designers and content providers can see content development become an unruly, competitive process in which audience experience, digital mediation, visualisation techniques and meaning become contested territory.
Drawing on Etienne Wengerâs theory of âcommunities of practiceâ, this paper argues that designersâ advocacy for audiences and distance from exhibition content well positions them to broker interdisciplinary goal setting so that exhibitions observe the representational objectives of content providers and meet the needs and preferences of museum visitors. A wide range of design literature already discusses the pragmatic benefits and ethical importance of user-centered design, while the literature on co-design suggests that designed outcomes are more successful if the design process considers the interests of all stakeholders.
These discussions can be compelling, but the inherent challenges in engaging othersâ perspectives and knowledge in the design process are less acknowledged, Wengerâs ideas on the social dynamics of group enterprise offering designers valuable insights into the actuality of negotiating designed outcomes with non-designer stakeholders.
The paper has two main aspects. The first outlines the theory of communities of practice, focusing on the brokering of knowledge and practice between disciplines. This discussion frames an analysis of the design process for two museum exhibitions. Representing an original application of Wengerâs ideas, the discussion recognises the unique role of the designed artifact in brokering information visualization processes, transcending the actions and intentions of individual stakeholders. While accepting there are successful examples of interdisciplinary exchange in various areas of design, the interpretation of examples via Wenger contributes useful principles to the theorisation of co-design with non-designer stakeholders.
Keywords:
Information visualization; New media museum exhibits; Multidisciplinary projects; Communities of Practice; Brokering; User-centered design; Co-Design; Etienne Wenger</p
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Making sense of assets: Community asset mapping and related approaches for cultivating capacities
This working paper critically reviews some main aspects from asset based approaches highlights key strengths and weaknesses for future research/development. Drawing on a large body of reports and relevant literature we draw on different theoretical traditions and critiques, as well as practices and processes embedded within a broad range of approaches including, widely acknowledged frameworks such Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), Appreciative Inquiry (AI), Sustainable Livelihood Approaches (SLA) and Community Capitals Framework (CCF). Although these are presented as distinct approaches, there is a sense of evolution through them and many of them overlap (in terms of both theories and methodologies). We also include emerging frameworks, including geographical, socio-spatial, visual and creative approaches, stemming from a number of projects within AHRCâs Connected Communities programme and additional collaborations
Networks: open, closed or complex. Connecting philosophy, design and innovation, part 3
This is the third and final paper of a series bringing a philosophical investigation to matters of design and innovation. With the others examining: first, the urges to reconsider innovation from a creative, specifically design, direction (âBeyond Successâ); and second, the type of dynamic innovation that may be thus reconsidered (âEcstatic Innovationâ); this paper will investigate a way of constructing this type of design-driven innovation. It will begin by looking at the networks that can be created to deliver a dynamic, continually innovative innovation and will start by considering two concepts of network: the open and the closed. While there seems to be an easy distinction to be made between open and closed, and its mapping onto similarly convenient ideas of good and bad, I hope to show that this is not the case. The complexity of networked forms of organisation demand that we bring to them a complexity of thought that comes from philosophy. Nevertheless, such an account will also need to engage with discourses from other disciplinary areas: notably organisational theory, innovation management and design. The outcome is of importance to thinking the organisational structures in which innovation is managed
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