Educational Psychologist ISSN: 0046-1520 (Print) 1532-6985 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hedp20 Changing Concepts in Activity: Descriptive and Design Studies of Consequential Learning in Conceptual Practices Rogers Hall & A. Susan Jurow To cite this article: Rogers Hall & A. Susan Jurow (2015) Changing Concepts in Activity: Descriptive and Design Studies of Consequential Learning in Conceptual Practices, Educational Psychologist, 50:3, 173-189, DOI: 10.1080/00461520.2015.1075403 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2015.1075403 Published online: 29 Sep 2015. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 2 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=hedp20 Download by: [VUL Vanderbilt University] Date: 30 September 2015, At: 13:03 EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST, 50(3), 173–189, 2015 Copyright Ó Division 15, American Psychological Association ISSN: 0046-1520 print / 1532-6985 online DOI: 10.1080/00461520.2015.1075403 Changing Concepts in Activity: Descriptive and Design Studies of Consequential Learning in Conceptual Practices Rogers Hall Department of Teaching and Learning Vanderbilt University A. Susan Jurow School of Education University of Colorado, Boulder Concepts and conceptual change have been studied extensively as phenomena of individual thinking and action, but changing circumstances of social or cultural groups using concepts are treated as external conditions. We describe research on consequential learning in conceptual practices, where concepts include representational infrastructure that coordinates meaning and activity across time, setting, and social participation. Consequential learning changes one’s relation to conceptual practice, creating access to and valued possibilities for participation in practices at a broader scale. We illustrate our approach to conceptual change with case studies and design research in workplaces, schools, and urban communities. We compare our approach to previous efforts to bridge theoretical perspectives published in this journal, focusing in particular on Greeno and van de Sande (2007). Our efforts provide new constructs and studies that may yet create a span between cognitive and sociocultural theories of learning and conceptual change. We describe an approach to research on concepts and of distributing cognition over people and things. Analyzing conceptual change that we have developed in response to the work of concept formation thus requires tracing how theories of situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and, these distributions are accomplished. ... Because concepts more broadly, sociocultural theories of learning and in our framework are distributed over patterns of activity development (Cole, 1996). Our approach further devel- and technologies, they are integral to the representational Downloaded by [VUL Vanderbilt University] at 13:03 30 September 2015 infrastructure of work. (p. 241) ops theories of learning that focus on the meaning of concepts as they are used in social and technical practi- With variations in topic and focus, the idea that concepts ces that change over time. Concepts are not exclusively exist in distributed cultural practices and change through pro- mental structures held by an individual; they also exist cesses that extend beyond individual thinking is now widely anddependfortheirmeaningonsocialandpractical accepted among researchers working on learning and con- activities that we call conceptual practices. As described ceptual change in a sociocultural tradition. Notable examples by Hall and Horn (2012) in an analysis of conceptual include studies of “learning through intent participation” as change at work, children engage in everyday joint activity with adult care- givers (Rogoff, Paradise, Arauz, Correa-Chavez, & We understand concepts as recurring patterns of purposeful Angelillo, 2003), studies of historical change in the form and activity that are distributed over people and technologies in function of concepts of arithmetic and quantity as they are work practice. Related to this, learning is an active process influenced by participation in practices of currency-based mercantile exchange and Western schooling (Saxe, 1991, Correspondence should be addressed to A. Susan Jurow, School of Education, University of Colorado, Boulder, 0249 UCB, Boulder, CO 2012), and research on language diversity and heterogeneous 80304. E-mail: [email protected] cultural resources in classroom learning of science concepts 174 HALL AND JUROW (Rosebery, Ogonowski, DiSchino, & Warren, 2010). All of conceptual change and levels of analysis that are helpful in these studies approach concepts and conceptual change in understanding them. terms of learners’ shifting participation in and contributions Studying conceptual practices in and across different to the valued conceptual practices of communities. scales of activity is a complex undertaking. Various approaches have been advanced including the study of CONCEPTUAL PRACTICES AS CONSTITUTED BY moment-to-moment discourse as it relates to what Gee REPRESENTATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE (1990) called “Big D” discourse—“ways of being in the world, or forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, Seen from a sociocultural perspective, conceptual change beliefs, attitudes, social identities, as well as gestures, involves transformations both in individuals’ understand- glances, body positions and clothes” (p. 142). Holland, ings and in aspects of shared conceptual practices that Lachiotte, Skinner, and Caine (1998) introduced the con- make these understandings possible. This approach requires cept of “figured worlds” to describe cultural resources that multiple levels of analysis for understanding what concepts connect meaning and learning across multiple scales. are in practical activity, as well as how conceptual practices Their approach also highlighted how discourse positions change over time. These levels of analysis typically focus people in communities of practice and the ways in which on the following: individual agency can affect broader social and cultural change. Our efforts to understand conceptual practices 1. Momentary processes of interaction as people jointly and how they change also consider cultural resources and negotiate the meaning of problems and possible solu- agency, though we focus more closely on the materiality tions (e.g., what Hutchins, 1995, called the “conduct of shared practices (e.g., how technologies coordinate of activity” [p. 372] and Saxe, 2012, called activity across people and settings); the history of how “microgenetic constructions” [p. 192]). participation in practices is structured over time; and how 2. Interactive assessments of the utility or accuracy of people use, push back on, and modify conceptual practices contributions by individuals with different histories as they engage in work together. This approach can also of participation in a conceptual practice (e.g., the provide practical guidance for conducting design research “development of practitioners” during team work that could bring about valued changes in conceptual [Hutchins, 1995, p. 372] or processes that create practices. “disciplined perception” among newcomers as they In this article, we argue for a careful study of the organi- participate in some conceptual practice [Stevens & zation and development of representational infrastruc- Hall, 1998]). tures—technologies, ways of talking, and materials that 3. Longer term processes through which new resources support how people engage with conceptual practices in are discovered, adopted, and fitted to conventional their activity. For example, in a case study of research ento- use in communities or work groups (e.g., how mologists (Hall, Stevens, & Torralba, 2002; Torralba, “representational forms and functions are reproduced 2006), representational infrastructure included agreements and altered in a community over time” [Saxe, 2012, about how coding forms were used to coordinate the collec- p. 29] or “deliberate inversion [by] placing collective tion of material in one setting—bugs and wood in the work practice at the center of concerted efforts to field—with measurements and symbolic descriptions of change” [Hall & Horn, 2012, p. 246]). those materials carried out in other settings—laboratory and office spaces within a research organization. Under- Downloaded by [VUL Vanderbilt University] at 13:03 30 September 2015 Taking different levels of analysis into consideration standing how representational infrastructures support con- involves recognizing that concepts and conceptual change ceptual practices and how they change, either implicitly or involve multiple scales of time, space (e.g., activity that is by deliberate effort over the “social history” (Scribner, organized across multiple settings), and social participation 1985) of shared practice, is important both from the per- (Jurow & Shea, 2015; Lemke, 2000). For example, micro- spective of analysts (ourselves as authors or designers) and genesis of solution strategies in joint problem solving for participants in these practices: (Greeno & van de Sande, 2007) can lead to an acceptable solution for a student group over the course of several minutes, but durably inscribed aspects of that solution, if If representational infrastructure is integral to the manifes- picked up by others in the classroom or beyond, could lead tation