Complementary Lenses: Using Theories of Situativity and Complexity to Understand Collaborative Learning as Systems-Level Social Activity

This article highlights possibilities for understanding challenges related to collaborative learning by bringing two complementary lenses into theoretical and empirical conversation—complexity and situativity. After presenting a theoretical comparison that characterizes complementarity between complexity and situativity in order to frame their relative contributions to a systems-level understanding of learning processes, we examine persistently unproductive social activity during a 14-session, collaborative engineering design project in a fifth-grade peer group from both perspectives. We do so in order to demonstrate the value of these complementary perspectives for understanding collaborative learning processes and to suggest different explanations of why unproductive social activity sometimes persists and possibilities for interrupting such dynamics. We thus suggest a shift from explanatory accounts of system processes to prospective processes for systems of action within social ecologies of change. Such a framework can resolve the social activity of collaborative learning around a systems-level orientation

If Mobilizing Educational Research Is the Answer, Who Can Afford to Ask the Question? An Analysis of Faculty Perspectives on Knowledge Mobilization for Scholarship in Education

This article explores faculty perspectives at three colleges of education regarding strategies of knowledge mobilization for scholarship in education (KMSE), with consideration for the opportunities and challenges that accompany individual and organizational capacities for change. Faculty surveys ( n = 66) and follow-up interviews ( n = 22) suggest two important trends: First, KMSE presents both a complementary agenda and a competing demand; second, barriers and uncertainties characterize the relevance of knowledge mobilization for faculty careers in colleges of education. This study empirically illuminates the persistence of long-standing challenges regarding the relevance, accessibility, and usability of research in colleges of education housed in research-intensive universities. While KMSE holds promise for expanding the reach and impact of educational research, scholarly tensions underlying these trends suggest that individual and organizational efforts will suffice only with modifications to university procedures for identifying what counts as recognizable, assessable, and rewardable scholarly products and activities for faculty careers

Enhancing Inquiry, Understanding, and Achievement in an Astronomy Multimedia Learning Environment

As an example of design-based research, this study refined an assessment strategy for simultaneously enhancing inquiry-based learning and supporting achievement on conventional assessment measures. Astronomy Village: Investigating the Universe is a software program designed to engage secondary science students in authentic and inquiry-based learning over core topics in astronomy. The software was enhanced with a 20-hour curriculum and three levels of assessment to ensure successful inquiry experiences and high-stakes achievement. The first year implementation of Astronomy Village yielded significant gains on a curriculum-oriented exam but not a standards-oriented test, and provided useful design insights that were integrated into the second year implementations. Significant gains were obtained on the test during the second year as well. It is expected that many existing inquiry-oriented science curricula might be similarly enhanced, and is suggested that a large-scale effort to do so might have a lasting impact on science education