Argumentation in school science : Breaking the tradition of authoritative exposition through a pedagogy that promotes discussion and reasoning

The value of argumentation in science education has become internationally recognised and has been the subject of many research studies in recent years. Successful introduction of argumentation activities in learning contexts involves extending teaching goals beyond the understanding of facts and concepts, to include an emphasis on cognitive and metacognitive processes, epistemic criteria and reasoning. The authors focus on the difficulties inherent in shifting a tradition of teaching from one dominated by authoritative exposition to one that is more dialogic, involving small-group discussion based on tasks that stimulate argumentation. The paper builds on previous research on enhancing the quality of argument in school science, to focus on how argumentation activities have been designed, with appropriate strategies, resources and modelling, for pedagogical purposes. The paper analyses design frameworks, their contexts and lesson plans, to evaluate their potential for enhancing reasoning through foregrounding the processes of argumentation. Examples of classroom dialogue where teachers adopt the frameworks/plans are analysed to show how argumentation processes are scaffolded. The analysis shows that several layers of interpretation are needed and these layers need to be aligned for successful implementation. The analysis serves to highlight the potential and limitations of the design frameworks

Ritual performances and collective intelligence: theoretical frameworks for analyising activity patterns in Cloudworks

This paper provides an overview of emerging activity patterns on Cloudworks, a specialised site for sharing and debating ideas as well as resources on teaching, learning and scholarship in education. It provides an overview of activities such as 'flash debates', 'blended workshops' and 'open reviews' and seeks to situate dialogic interchanges and structures of involvement within the following theoretical frameworks: a) Goffman's notions of 'face-work' and 'ritual performance�; and b) and secondly, notions of collective intelligence. The paper argues that these perspectives can offer a unique contribution to the study and analysis of sociality (Bouman et al, 2007) bounded in the context of technologically mediated networked learning, with wider implications for understanding matters of participation, self-representation, reflection and expansion in education

Design as conversation with digital materials

This paper explores Donald Schön's concept of design as a conversation with materials, in the context of designing digital systems. It proposes material utterance as a central event in designing. A material utterance is a situated communication act that depends on the particularities of speaker, audience, material and genre. The paper argues that, if digital designing differs from other forms of designing, then accounts for such differences must be sought by understanding the material properties of digital systems and the genres of practice that surround their use. Perspectives from human-computer interaction (HCI) and the psychology of programming are used to examine how such an understanding might be constructed.</p

Designing Solidarity Cryptocurrencies: Dialogic Tension Between Community-Centered and Techno-Centered Design Frames

While cryptocurrencies are related to profit-driven actors, communitarian movements have decades of experience with social-driven currencies, such as community currencies. This research investigates the meshing of these two disparate worlds that results in the design of a solidarity cryptocurrency, a phenomenon that connects the blockchain infrastructure of cryptocurrency to scaling the social perspective of community currencies. However, making the connection between these two technologies brings a new question to IS design: how can different frames from multiple social actors be integrated into designing a solidarity cryptocurrency infrastructure? We drew upon the design ethnography methodology and actively participated in designing a solidarity cryptocurrency to answer that question. Based on concepts from infrastructuring, a multi-relational and socio-technical approach to infrastructure designing, we propose that designing a solidarity cryptocurrency lies on a dialogic tension between techno-centered and community-centered frames, representing the relational process that emerges when connecting two disparate technologie

Translations: experiments in dialogic representation of cultural diversity in three museum sound installations

Using the example of three experimental museum sound installations, this paper discusses the translation into practice of the intention to make meaningful connections between diverse social positions and experiences. We use the term ‘dialogic’ to theorise these interactive intentions and show them at work in the content, development processes and form of the sound installations. Our discussion is framed by the collaboration between the authors across the disciplines of museum studies and creative practice

Operationalizing Culture With Design Cards in Cross-Cultural Design: Translating Critical Knowledge Into Provocative Insights

Operationalizing culture is “one of the most fundamental issues cross-cultural researchers face” (Matsumoto & Jones, 2009, p. 324), as stated in The Handbook of Social Research Ethics. Inconsiderate research design could “ignore the large degree of individual differences that exist in human behavior” (p. 325) and eventually “vindicate” cultural stereotypes the researchers mean to avoid. In the field of cross-cultural design, a big challenge is how to inform and guide the design process with a sophisticated understanding of culture. This design challenge is a contextualized problem of operationalizing culture in practice. Insensitive design recommendations could end up strengthening the cultural essentialism designers want to leave behind in this increasingly globalized world. For example, designers should be more careful when recommending an online event scheduling system for American users that includes more granular and precise time units (e.g., options at 15 minute precision level) than what is recommended for Mexican users. The recommendation makes sense as American culture is considered monochronic, which prefers punctuality for meetings, while Mexican culture is not. However, what if some individual Mexican users might want to take more proactive actions to counteract their polychromic cultural influence for intercultural collaboration