Lehrer (2009)

Designing to Develop Disciplinary Dispositions: Modeling Natural Systems

The article Designing to Develop Disciplinary Dispositions: Modeling Natural Systems was written by Richard Lehrer and published in American Psychologist in 2009. The article is available from PubMed at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19899886.

Abstract

This article addresses the problem of designing classroom settings where students have the opportunity to generate knowledge in a manner consistent with the epistemic foundations of a discipline. Because classroom settings are complex ecologies, successful design requires a working model of how components of the design—including tasks, inscriptions, material means, and forms of argument—function to promote epistemic development. These ideas are illustrated in an extended program of design research oriented toward introducing children to modeling, a form of knowing characteristic of the natural sciences. The example highlights the considerations that informed the guiding epistemology, the elements of design and their orchestration, and the forms of student learning that resulted.

Outline of Headings

Designing for Disciplinary Learning
- Tasks
- Inscriptions
- Material Means
- Modes and Means of Argument
- Identity
- Orchestrating Elements of Pedagogical Design
- Design Experiments
Designing a Science Education
- Images of Science
  - Science as logic
  - Science as modeling
  - Representational models
- Designing to Support Children's Modeling
  - Analogical reasoning
  - Teacher professional development
- Forms of Modeling and Representation That Bootstrap Conceptual Change
  - Entrée to modeling through physical microcosms
Discussion

Summary

Lehrer begins this article by arguing that supporting valued forms of learning is a design problem (Simon, 1969) and in education the goal is to create an epistemic culture (Knorr Cetina, 1999), or "an arrangement of social, cognitive, and material mechanisms that support disciplinary-distinct ways of knowing" (p. 760). Lehrer proposes a "designer's toolkit" containing basic elements of design and a form of investigation, the design experiment, as means to express and produce "epistemologically oriented learning ecologies" (p. 760).

Disciplinary knowing can be separated into content knowledge and an understanding of how that knowledge is produced, although ways of knowing are associated with forms of practice. Lehrer also acknowledges constructivism (Piaget, 1970) and a "commitment that the structures, forms, and possibly the content of knowledge are determined in major respects by its developmental history" (diSessa, 1995, p. 23). Lehrer suggests that a design approach should be used to support students' encounters with disciplinary knowledge, rather than assume a relationship between a child's capabilities and "affordances or constraints of any pedagogical context" (p. 760). These supports include design elements such as tasks, inscriptions, material means, modes of argument, and student identity in relation to the discipline.

Tasks: Tasks embody a discipline's goals and frame how students encounter them. Tasks can be long or short, routine practice or inquiry-based, and are shaped by the setting of enactment, including a teacher's transformation of a demanding task to a less demanding one (Stein, Grover, & Henningsen, 1996). Tasks can be judged for the student strategies they are likely to elicit and sequenced to develop particular skills (Rittle-Johnson & Koedinger, 2005). Because disciplinary thinking is distributed over space and material (Goodwin, 1994), we must also consider thinking as mediated by representations (Wertsch, 1998) and situated (Greeno, 1998).
Inscriptions: Inscriptions refer to writing and the marks we make (Latour, 1990) to mobilize cognitive and social resources. Inscriptions are scalable and reproducible that preserve as well as edit change by reducing and enhancing information (Lehrer & Schauble, 2002b; Lynch, 1990). The knowledge of a discipline gets expressed through inscriptions and involves disciplined perception (Stevens & Hall, 1998), and some inscriptions, like mathematical notation, allow for new conceptual objects (Goodman, 1976; Thompson, 1992). Learning involves choices between inscriptions and the appropriate contexts for using them (diSessa, 2004).
Material Means: Material means play a larger role in some disciplines, particularly in science where there is a history of debate between knowledge via reasoning versus through experiments and instruments. Lehrer's concern for school science is that "materiality is obscured by providing students with questions to answer, apparatus, and prescribed routines, exemplified by labs. Students are seldom asked to struggle with the material problem of developing conditions or instruments for investigation. Yet, these struggles with the natural world define, constrain, and enhance scientific ways of knowing" (p. 762).
Modes and Means of Argument: Disciplines rely on unique rhetoric (Bazerman, 1988). Mathematical proof, for example, is a form of argument essential to the disciplined but used with difficulty students and, frequently, their teachers (e.g., Hanna, 1995). Sometimes "what counts" as an explanation is a negotiated norm (e.g., Yackel & Cobb, 1996), a condition that supports greater conceptual understanding (Boaler, 2002).
Identity: Gee (1999) argued that learning goes beyond content and performance to include "a particular type of who (identity) engaged in a particular type of what (activity)" (Gee, 1999, p. 18). The design of learning environments should consider what it means to participate in the discipline (Gresalfi, 2009) and how to author disciplinary knowledge (Lehrer, 1993).

Also

Mendeley: http://www.mendeley.com/research/designing-develop-disciplinary-dispositions-modeling-natural-systems/

APA

Lehrer, R. (2009). Designing to develop disciplinary dispositions: Modeling natural systems. American Psychologist, 64(8), 759–71. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.64.8.759

BibTeX

@article{Lehrer2009,
author = {Lehrer, Richard},
doi = {10.1037/0003-066X.64.8.759},
journal = {American Psychologist},
keywords = {epistemology,inscription,instructional design,learning ecology,modeling},
month = nov,
number = {8},
pages = {759--71},
pmid = {19899886},
title = {{Designing to develop disciplinary dispositions: Modeling natural systems}},
url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19899886},
volume = {64},
year = {2009}
}