Exposing piaget's scheme: Empirical evidence for the ontogenesis of coordination in learning a mathematical concept

The combination of two methodological resources-natural-user interfaces (NUI) and multimodal learning analytics (MMLA)-is creating opportunities for educational researchers to empirically evaluate seminal models for the hypothetical emergence of concepts from situated sensorimotor activity. 76 participants (9-14 yo) solved tablet-based non-symbolic manipulation tasks designed to foster grounded meanings for the mathematical concept of proportional equivalence. Data gathered in task-based semi-structured clinical interviews included action logging, eye-gaze tracking, and videography. Successful task performance coincided with spontaneous appearance of stable dynamical gaze-path patterns soon followed by multimodal articulation of strategy. Significantly, gaze patterns included uncued non-salient screen locations. We present cumulative results to argue that these 'attentional anchors' mediated participants' problem solving. We interpret the findings as enabling us to revisit, support, refine, and elaborate on central claims of Piaget's theory of genetic epistemology and in particular his insistence on the role of situated motor-action coordination in the process of reflective abstraction

Reinventing discovery learning: a field-wide research program

© 2017, Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature. Whereas some educational designers believe that students should learn new concepts through explorative problem solving within dedicated environments that constrain key parameters of their search and then support their progressive appropriation of empowering disciplinary forms, others are critical of the ultimate efficacy of this discovery-based pedagogical philosophy, citing an inherent structural challenge of students constructing historically achieved conceptual structures from their ingenuous notions. This special issue presents six educational research projects that, while adhering to principles of discovery-based learning, are motivated by complementary philosophical stances and theoretical constructs. The editorial introduction frames the set of projects as collectively exemplifying the viability and breadth of discovery-based learning, even as these projects: (a) put to work a span of design heuristics, such as productive failure, surfacing implicit know-how, playing epistemic games, problem posing, or participatory simulation activities; (b) vary in their target content and skills, including building electric circuits, solving algebra problems, driving safely in traffic jams, and performing martial-arts maneuvers; and (c) employ different media, such as interactive computer-based modules for constructing models of scientific phenomena or mathematical problem situations, networked classroom collective “video games,” and intercorporeal master–student training practices. The authors of these papers consider the potential generativity of their design heuristics across domains and contexts

The computer revolution in science: steps towards the realization of computer-supported discovery environments

The tools that scientists use in their search processes together form so-called discovery environments. The promise of artificial intelligence and other branches of computer science is to radically transform conventional discovery environments by equipping scientists with a range of powerful computer tools including large-scale, shared knowledge bases and discovery programs. We will describe the future computer-supported discovery environments that may result, and illustrate by means of a realistic scenario how scientists come to new discoveries in these environments. In order to make the step from the current generation of discovery tools to computer-supported discovery environments like the one presented in the scenario, developers should realize that such environments are large-scale sociotechnical systems. They should not just focus on isolated computer programs, but also pay attention to the question how these programs will be used and maintained by scientists in research practices. In order to help developers of discovery programs in achieving the integration of their tools in discovery environments, we will formulate a set of guidelines that developers could follow

Accented Body and Beyond: a Model for Practice-Led Research with Multiple Theory/Practice Outcomes

Dance has always been a collaborative or interdisciplinary practice normally associated with music or sound and visual arts/design. Recent developments with technology have introduced additional layers of interdisciplinary work to include live and virtual forms in the expansion of what Fraleigh (1999:11) terms ‘the dancer oriented in time/space, somatically alive to the experience of moving’. This already multi-sensory experience and knowledge of the dancer is now layered with other kinds of space/time and kinetic awarenesses, both present and distant, through telematic presence, generative systems and/or sensors. In this world of altered perceptions and ways of being, the field of dance research is further opened up to alternative processes of inquiry, both theoretically and in practice, and importantly in the spaces between the two

Embodied conversations: Performance and the design of a robotic dancing partner

This paper reports insights gained from an exploration of performance-based techniques to improve the design of relationships between people and responsive machines. It draws on the Emergent Objects project and specifically addresses notions of embodiment as employed in the field of performance as a means to prototype and develop a robotic agent, SpiderCrab, designed to promote expressive interaction of device and human dancer, in order to achieve ‘performative merging’. The significance of the work is to bring further knowledge of embodiment to bear on the development of human-technological interaction in general. In doing so, it draws on discursive and interpretive methods of research widely used in the field of performance but not yet obviously aligned with some orthodox paradigms and practices within design research. It also posits the design outcome as an ‘objectile’ in the sense that a continuous and potentially divergent iteration of prototypes is envisaged, rather than a singular final product. The focus on performative merging draws in notions of complexity and user experience. Keywords: Embodiment; Performance; Tacit Knowledge; Practice-As-Research; Habitus.</p

Creating new stories for praxis: navigations, narrations, neonarratives

This paper considers differing understandings about the role and praxis of studio-based research in the visual arts. This is my attempt to unpack this nexus and place it in a context of credibility for our field. Jill Kinnear (2000) makes the point that visual research deals with and intensifies elements of research and language that have always been part of the practice of an artist. Presented is a way to conceptualise and explain what we can do as researchers in the visual arts. I am recontextualizing notions of research, looking at the resemblances, the self-resemblances and the differences between traditional and visual research methods as a logic of necessity. I am investigating how we can decode and recode what we do in the language of appropriation and bricolage. In mapping the processes and territories, I am interested in the use of autobiography as a way to incorporate a deep sense of the intricate relationships of the meaning and actions of artistic practice and its embeddedness in cultural influences, personal experience and aspirations (Hawke 1996:35). This is a study that explores possible parameters for visual research, questioning in what sense is it the best way to understand our relationship with traditional research fields