comparative understanding of school subjects past, present, and future

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Comparative Understanding of School Subjects: Past, Present, and FutureAuthor(s): Reed Stevens, Sam Wineburg, Leslie Rupert Herrenkohl and Philip BellReviewed work(s):Source: Review of Educational Research, Vol. 75, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), pp. 125-157Published by: American Educational Research Association

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Reviewof EducationalResearch

Summer 005, Vol.75,No. 2, pp. 125-157

ComparativeUnderstandingof SchoolSubjects:Past, Present,and Future

Reed Stevens

University of WashingtonSam Wineburg

Stanford UniversityLeslie

RupertHerrenkohl and

PhilipBell

University of Washington

Research has elevated theproposition of knowledge's domainspecificityfroma working hypothesis to a defacto truth. Theassumption of domainspecificitystructureshandbooks, organizes branches offunding agencies, andprovidesheadings for conference proceedings. Leading researchers oftenfocus on a

single slice of the school day despite thepossibility that such segments swirlinto a blurfor children. The authors examine the domain-specific landscape,beginning with the recent past, when domain generality, not domain speci-

ficity, reigned supreme. Theythen examine the transition to domain-specificapproaches. Next, they offer an alternative to both positions, a stance theycall thecomparativenderstandingf schoolsubjects.Acomparativender-

standing trains attention on how the same children understandmultiplesub-

jects in the curriculum. The authors argue that this approach represents a

promising path for conceptualizing research on children, schooling, and

thinking by raising new questions about children's understandings.

KEYWORDS:ognition,curriculum, chooling.

It is mid-morningas Melissa,a fifthgrader,sits at her deskwaitingfor science

to begin. Today, Melissa's class will examine fast-sproutingplantsand discusswhat causestheirgrowth.Later,studentswill conductexperimentsandpresentevi-dence for why some plantsflourishedand othersdied. Afterlunch,the focus willturn romscience to social studies. Studentswill readthechapter n theirtextbookabout hecauses of the Civil War.To scaffold theirreading,Melissa'steacherwilldistribute worksheet hat ists the causes of the CivilWarand nstructions nhowto supporteach causewithevidence.

At the end of theday,afairlytypicalone forMelissa,sheapproaches er teacherandasksa deceptivelysimple question:"Whenwe workedwithplants,you askedus to think aboutcauses and evidence.You askedthe same thing when we read

about the Civil War. Do these words meanthe same thing in science and socialstudies?"

How should ateacherrespond o thisprecocious(and maginary!) ifthgrader'squestion?Furthermore,f teachers look for guidancein the educationalresearch

125







Stevens et al.

literature,whatmightthey find? In whatways, precisely,are science andhistorysimilar? In what ways are they different?Perhapsthe question is framedincor-

rectly,for there s no suchthingas historywith a capitalH or science witha capi-talS. Whichformsof science andhistorymightbe closerto one another,andwhich

might be fartherapart?How would we even begin to make judgments aboutdisciplinarycompatibilityandcoordination?

Ourprincipalclaim is thatthe field of educationalresearchhas little to say in

response.At present,neitherMelissa's teachernor the greatmajorityof scholarsinvolved in educationalresearchareable to offer much in terms of counsel, and

they can offereven less in termsof materials orengaging questionsof compara-tive disciplinarity.

To be sure,attempts o integratedisciplineshave been a mainstayof the edu-cational landscapeand have a long and hoary history (Adler & Flihan, 1997;Becher, 1989;Capehart,1958;Henry,1958; Klein, 1990). Indeed,the attempt o

integrate ubjects especiallyEnglishandhistory)wasa core featureof thefamousEight-YearStudy(Aiken, 1942).As recentlyas 1994,a surveyof morethan10,000schools revealedthatnearlytwo thirdshadalready mplementedor wereplanningto implementinterdisciplinary urricula(Cawelti, 1994). The interdisciplinaryphenomenonextends far beyond American borders.To cite one example, theCanadianprovince of BritishColumbia's blueprintfor school renewal,BritishColumbia Year 2000, placed "curriculum ntegration"at the top of its reform

agenda(Case, 1994).One of thebest-knowncalls tocreate nterdisciplinaryurriculas the"how-to"

approachadvocated in StephenTchudi and StephenLafer's (1996) widely used

textbook, The InterdisciplinaryTeacher's Handbook: IntegratingAcross theCurriculum.The authorsbase theiradvice to teacherson a series of distinctionsbetween"traditionalnstruction" ndtheapproachheysupport:"interdisciplinar-ity."Interdisciplinarity,hey argue,offers a fresh alternative o the "strangleholdof disciplinaryknowledge"thatservesup to students"canonical" nd"standard"

knowledge. By contrast,interdisciplinarityoffers a curriculumof "constructed

knowledge"pursuedby engaged studentsworking "in the service of inquiry"(Tchudi,1994;Tchudi& Lafer,1996;cf. Beane, 1995).

The problem with such characterizations in additionto their romanticized

images and either/or hinking) s thatadvocacytendsto supersededescriptionsof

whatactuallyhappenswhensuchcurriculaareimplemented.Despitethepopular-ity of interdisciplinaryapproaches,there is no body of evidence that attests to

greater earning n high-quality nterdisciplinary lassroomsthan in high-qualitydisciplinaryclassrooms. A likely place to look for work that speaks to these

questions is the literaturesurroundingSizer's Coalition of Essential Schools, amovementthatgrewout of theStudyof HighSchoolsand Sizer's (1992) calls forreform in Horace's Compromise.The principlesof the coalition eschew narrow

disciplinarityand call for teachers o see themselvesas generalistsfirst and disci-

plinary specialistssecond, with the overarchinggoal of teachingstudents o "usetheirmindswell." However, to dateresearchon coalition outcomeshas focusedalmostexclusively on issues of implementationand teachers'responseto school

change,with littleattentionpaidto changesin student earning,changesin student

understandingof "essential knowledge," or gains in student achievement

(cf. Husbands& Beese, 2001;Muncey& McQuillan,1996). Norhas the studyof

126







ComparativeUnderstanding f School Subjects

students'comparativeunderstanding f differentsubjectmatterbeen broached nthe evaluation iterature n coalition schools.

The problemgoes beyondthe absence of studentachievementdata. The exist-

ing literature n interdisciplinaritys almostentirelyprescriptive of programs,of

theoreticalapproaches,of teacher lesson plans) and almost entirely devoid ofdescriptions f learning hatoccurs(ordoesnot)whentheorymeetspractice Adler& Flihan, 1997; Wineburg& Grossman,2000). Littleis known about whathap-penswhenintegrated urricula,hatched n well-fundededucationalhothouses,arelet loose acrosssprawlingurbandistrictswithcompeting nterestsand educationaltraditions forexceptions,see Hammeress & Moffett, 2000; Muncey& McQuil-lan, 1996).Even less is known abouthow childrenacrossdifferentgrade evels and

subjectareasmakesense of their eachers'attempts omergedifferentsubjectsandcurricula cf. Renyi, 2000; Roth, 2000). Indeed,as noted by Boix-MansillaandGardner1994), most of the school curriculaproducedunder he interdisciplinarybannerarebettercharacterized spredisciplinaryhanas interdisciplinary,ecause

they rarelydrawon features of disciplines that lead to conceptualandpracticaladvances in knowledge.Typicallysuch curricula ink at the topical,not discipli-nary, level, ignoring altogether how disciplinary traditionsverify and judgecompetingknowledgeclaims (Roth, 2000).

Despite the presenceof multiplesubjects n the school day, questionsof com-

parativedisciplinarityare rarelydiscussed with schoolchildren.What tends to

happen nstead s thatstudentsare left to forgeconnectionsfrom one subject o thenext: TheMelissas of theworld are left to theirown devices. Inotherwords,thoseleastequipped obringconceptualorder o the schoolday-students themselves-

end up shouldering he burdenof havingto do so. If scholars are dauntedby thetask of articulating he similarities and differencesbetween disciplinaryworlds

(cf. Messer-Davidow,Shumway,& Sylvan, 1993), how bewilderingthis mazemust be for children,whose day skips seemingly withoutrhymeor reasonfromone subject o thenext. To anelementaryschoolchild,as JudithRenyi(2000) has

wryly observed,a typicalschool day makes as muchsense as "Firstwe do read-

ing, then we do math,and then we do lunch"(p. 41).The problemaddressed n this article is one we call the comparativeunder-

standingofschool subjects,orhow thesame students n the same class makesenseof the

temporalsegmentsthatmake

upthe school

day.Few active research

pro-gramsexplicitlyfocus on how childrenconstruea day shapedby the school-basedvariantsof theacademicdisciplines.'Researchprogramsocusingonteachingand

learningtypically carve up the day into fixed portions-mathematics, science,social studies, or literacy-and study them in isolation. Indeed, the workingassumption of domain specificity orders the field of teaching and learning,providing t withchapterheadingsforhandbooks,subjectsections forconference

proceedings,andeven organizingbranchesatfunding agencies.The widely disseminatedHow People Learn:Brain, Mind, Experience,and

School (Bransford,Brown, & Cocking, 1999), a reportcommissioned by theNationalResearch

Council,provideda scientific seal of

approvalorthis domain-

specific map.Writtenby leading scholars of teachingandlearning,How PeopleLearncalledforincreasingresearchdollars or"discipline-specific esearchon thelevel andtypeof education equiredorteaching hatdiscipline nelementary,mid-

dle, andhighschool"(p. 267). Nowhere did thereportofferanyhint that teachers

127







Stevens et al.

who teachmultiplesubjectsmightneed to know somethingabouthow disciplinesinterrelate rthatdifferentdisciplines providealternativeversionsof establishingtruth. More by omission thananythingelse, this reportseemed to suggest thateffective teachersneed only the additiveknowledgeof how to teach each disci-

pline in the curriculum eparately.Inthisarticle,we provideacontext forunderstandinghepresent andscapeand

offer analternativewayof conductingresearchonteachingand earning.Webeginby steppingbackandofferingan encapsulatedaccountof how the field of learn-

ing andteachingmovedfrombeing dominatedby general processesof memory,attention,andrecallto thepresentascendanceof domain-specificapproaches.2Our

goal hereis to capture he proverbial orest,preferringo charta few of the shiftsin the field thathave reverberated or decadesrather hanrecordevery develop-mentin everyresearcharea. Inportraying uchshifts, we focus by necessityon ashort list of key figures:names such as Jerome Bruner,RobertGlaser, Robert

Gagne,Lee Shulman,and otherswho, in theirpositionsas trendsetters ndspokes-people (threeserved as presidentof the AmericanEducationalResearchAssocia-

tion), used theirprestigeto influencemanyothers.To the extentthatwe touchonotherliteratures,t is in the service of illuminatingour narrative ather hanaim-

ing for synopticor inclusivereach.We adoptanapproachhatappeals o whatBruner 1986) called"narrative on-

sciousness,"wherein ssuesof verisimilitudeandreasonablenessorm theprimarydesideratafor constructinga coherent narrative.In brief, our selection criteriawere hermeneuticas opposed to algorithmic, appealingto narrativeaesthetics

(i.e., coherence, elicity,andtemporalorder; f. Mink,1966)ratherhanpresetcri-

teria of effect sizes, sanctionedresearchdesigns,or approvedpublicationoutlets.In the second partof the article,we unfurl our vision of what a comparative

approacho subject-matterognitionmightlook like in practice,offeringourownresearchprogramas a concrete instantiationof it. We thenexplainwhy we thinkthis approachrepresentsa promising ine of researchon children,schooling,and

thinkingacrosstheelementary chool curriculum.Weendby describinga research

agendathat would embody and advance a comparativeunderstanding f school

subjects.

The Recent Past

Onlya few decadesago, domaingenerality,especially in its behavioristguise,was the orderof the day. How, then,did thingschangeso quickly?Accordingtoone popularaccount,everything n the field of teachingandlearningchangedas aresultof the cognitive revolution and its attendant potlighton the processes of

thinking and reasoning. But history is always more complicated than anyunadorned toryline,becausechangeand continuitycharacterizehe relationshipbetweenpastandpresent.As we shall see in the careersof two prominent duca-tionalresearchers,RobertGagneand RobertGlaser,the movementfrom behav-iorismto cognitivismwas often smoother han one might imagine.3However,wearegettingaheadof ourselves,so first a word aboutbehaviorism.

Behaviorists ared ittle fordomainspecificity.Sweepingin its reach,behavior-

ism,deployingavocabulary f shaping, einforcement,ndcontingency, ouldnim-

bly explainhowto learneverything romridinga bicycleto writinga sonnet.WhenB. F. Skinner(1954) took up the question of school learningin his Harvard

128








EducationalReviewarticle"TheScience of Learning nd heArtof Teaching,"hereseemedno limit to the behaviorist' horizon.Statinghis creed neminentlyquotablesentences,Skinnerdeclaredhatanydomaincould be thoughtof inexactlythesame

way:"Thewholeprocessof becomingcompetent n anyfield must be dividedinto

a verylargenumberof verysmallsteps,andreinforcementmustbe contingentuponthe accomplishment f each step" (p. 94). Not only did this principleapplyto the

dizzyingvarietyof humanendeavors Skinner ocusedon mathematicsn his arti-

cle), but it extendedbeyondthe humanspecies.ForSkinner,differencesbetween

peopleandanimalsweredifferences n scale,notkind: "Inspiteof greatphyloge-neticdifferences .. organismsshow amazinglysimilarpropertiesof the learningprocess" p. 94). Withoutskippinga beat,Skinneruxtaposedresults romresearchwith pigeons,rats,dogs, monkeys,"human hildren,"and"humanpsychoticsub-

jects" (p. 89). Thepointwas unmistakable:Variationsn the form of learningorits

agentspaled n comparisonwiththe fundamental nityof learningtself.

Did the cognitiverevolution alter this monolithicorientation oward earning,shakinga mightyfoundationandsunderingt into so manydomain-specificparts?Not initially-or so arguedJeromeBruner 1990) in ActsofMeaning.Rather hana "revolution"a movement characterizedby a breakdownof structuresandsys-tems),Bruner aw a neatsymmetry n thegeneralarchitecture f behaviorismandthe brandof cognitivismthatcame to dominate; witchingfrom one systemto the

other,he argued,requireda tripto the haberdasher ather han the reconstructive

surgeon.Bruner,however, offered little evidence for this assertion otherthana

generalformulationof theclaim.If Brunerwas right,we should be able to see this shift (andits attendantntel-

lectual effects) played out in the life histories of individual scholars. Didresearchershangetheirwayof viewing learningastheyshedbehaviorismn orderto adopt cognitivism, or did they adopta new vocabularyonly to leave manyoftheirfundamentalassumptions ntact?In the following section, we examine this

questionby charting hedifferent ourneystakenfrom behaviorism o cognitivismby two of the most influentialscholarsin the historyof modernlearningtheory,RobertGagneandRobertGlaser.

Behaviorism to Cognitivism: Two Masters

RobertGagne's

classic TheConditionsof Learning(1965)

was acompact

trea-tise thatweddedgeneral earning heoryto instructionaldesign.The openingsec-

tion, a review of Thorndike,Skinner,andHull,provided he readerwitha primeron stimulusresponse terminology,a useful, albeitfamiliar,synthesisacrosscom-

peting behavioristsystems and vocabularies.WhereGagneinnovated,however,was in melding these systems into one all-embracingtaxonomythat classified

everyformof learning, rom the most basic to the most sublime.What made the systemparticularlyuseful for educatorswas thatit appliednot

to ratsorpairedassociatesbut to actualpieces of content n theschool curriculum.Withthe tool of taskanalysis,whatappearedat firstblushto be a complexunder-

standingof

conceptualnformationn science turnedout to be a linear

progressionof prerequisite kills. So, forexample,a pupil'sunderstandinghat"gasesexpandwhen heated"did notconstitutea conceptualbreakthrough, utrather"achain oftwo or moreconcepts" strungtogether n a way that hid its origin in "previouslylearned acts"(Gagne,1965, p. 51).

129







Stevenset al.

This was well andgood for science, at least in how thatsubjectwas concep-tualizedby many ntheearly1960s.Butwhat about iteracy?ForGagne, anguagelearning, ikescience,dependedoncarefullysequencedactivitiesthatbuiltoneachotheruntil they reachedheights of competence. This learning process (when it

wentwell) followedpredictable ertical rajectories: It s nowgenerallyconcededthatonly when early skills are mastered s the studentreadyto progressto later

stagesof language earning" Gagne, 1965,p. 190).What were teachers to learn from the disaggregationof school tasks into

constituentparts?Onemessagewasthatwhileseparate ubject-specificextbooks,curricula,oreven methodscourses in teacher rainingmightguidethesocialorga-nizationof education,such labels clouded the underlyingstructureof learning.Moredangerously, hese labelscouldlead teachersastrayby obscuring he funda-mentalunityof learning tself.

Nine yearsafterGagnepublishedConditionsof Learning,muchhadchanged n

the field of learningandteaching.By the time he wrote Essentialsof Learning orInstruction 1974), a shortpaperback xpressly intended or teachersandwidelyadoptednteacher ducationprograms, onewerethediagrams f stimulus-responsebondsand hescarequotes hatquarantinedheword"idea." nstead amea newcog-nitivearmamentariumf"effectorsandreceptors," executive ontrol ystems,"and

diagramsof thememorysystemlinkingshort-andlong-termmemory.Unchanged,however, was Gagne's boundless taxonomic impulse. He now

offered a modelof "eightstagesof instruction" hatcouldguideteachers,whether

they taughtstudents o computethe areaof a rectangleor master heprovisionsofthe First Amendment(1974, p. 118). As in previous formulations,the skilled

teacherwas onewhocouldsee beyondtheillusory abels of science,math,and his-

toryinorder o discern hedeepstructures f learningandply the skillsof the(now

cognitive) instructionaldesigner.As Gagnewouldwrite2 yearslaterin the year-bookof theNationalSociety for the Studyof Education,"There s no soundratio-nalbasis for suchentitiesas 'mathematicsearning,''sciencelearning,''languagelearning,' or 'history learning,' except as divisions of time devoted to these

subjectsduringa schooldayor term" 1976, p. 30). In thepersonof RobertGagne,one of theleading figures n learningresearchduring heprevioushalfcentury, he

cognitive revolution did little to alter a deep and abiding commitmentto thedomaingeneralityof teachingandlearning.

RobertGlaser' careeroffers adifferentperspectiveonthe transitionrombehav-iorismto cognitivism.ForyearsGlaserwas the directorof the LearningResearchandDevelopmentCenter(LRDC)at the Universityof Pittsburghand one of the

preeminentesearchers nlearning.nthe mid-1960s,LRDCbecameone of theorig-inalfederal aboratoriesn learningandachievednationalprominence s aresearchanddevelopment enter,conductingbasic researchon learningas well as producinginnovative school curricula.Duringthe early 1960s, therewere few fundamentaldifferencesbetweenGlaser'sapproacho school learningandGagne's.Forexam-

ple, Glaser worked on translatingbehaviorist heoryintoprogrammednstructionmaterials or theteachingof mathematicsTaber,Glaser,& Schaefer,1965),draw-

ing ontask-analytic pproacheseminiscentof Gagne'shierarchies f skill.

However, as the cognitive starrose, Glaserfollowed its trajectory,adoptingin his writings the general cognitive frameworksof his cross-town colleaguesHerbertSimon andAllenNewell (Newell & Simon, 1972).Butotherchangeswere

130








afoot. By 1981, it was possible to discernin Glaser'swritingsthe footprints hatwould leadawayfrom adomain-general ositiontowardadomain-specific tance.In his presidentialaddress to Division 5 (Evaluationand Measurement)of theAmericanPsychologicalAssociation,Glaser(1982) outlined hepromisingdevel-

opmentsin the field, practicallyall of which tookthe form of differentdomains:J. S. Brownand Burton's 1978) work on arithmetic"bugs,"Shaughnessy's 1977)

studyof writingerrors,andChase andSimon's (1973) work on expertise n chess.Glaser'sown empiricalprogramgave further mpetusto the domain-specific

push.WithcolleaguesPaulFeltovich andMicheleneChi,Glaserturnedhis atten-tion toproblemsolvinginphysics.Intheirseminalresearch eport,Chi, Feltovich,andGlaser(1981) employedthe languageof knowledge representations, iscipli-narystructure, ndproblem-solving emplates n theiranalysisof howpeoplewith

varying degreesof knowledgediscern,classify, and solve problemstaken from a

college physics textbook.

Threeyears later,Glaser's status as a major flag-bearer or the centralityof

domain-specific earningwas virtuallycomplete.In his E. L. ThorndikeAddressto Division 15 (EducationalPsychology)of the AmericanPsychologicalAssocia-

tion,Glaser(1984) reviewed theleadingthinkingprogramsof theday: Covington,Crutchfield,Davies, andOlton's (1974) ProductiveThinkingProgram; he CoRT

programof British psychologist Edwardde Bono (1985); Matthew Lipman's(1977)Philosophy orChildren; ndWhimbeyandLockhead's 1980) Solvingand

Comprehension.By focusing on general reasoningskills, abstractdecontextual-ized problems, and knowledge-lean problems, these programs,according to

Glaser,dodgedthe "complexityof subjectmatter nformation"1984, p. 96). The

result,he argued,wasamismatchbetweengeneral hinkingprograms ndthe kindsof learningstudentsdid in school.Despitehis early advocacyof flexible,domain-

generalmodes of thought,Glaserhad now emergedas one of the chief critics of

"knowledge-lean" pproaches o cognition:

Theprogramshat havedescribed rebasedonearly heoriesof human og-nition. . . . Othersderive from early information-processingheorythat

exploredknowledge-lean roblems.... Whenfaced with suchnovelsitua-tions [people]resort to generalmethods.But in the contextof acquiredknowledgeandspecifictaskstructures,hese methodsmaybe less power-ful.... [General

ognitiveesearch] s suchofferedimited

nsightnto earn-

ingand hinkinghatrequiredomain-specificnowledge 1984,pp.96-97).

This was a biting indictment to issue before an audience of educational

psychologists, many of whom had made careers out of articulating generalproblem-solvingstrategies.Thus,in thecareerof RobertGlaserwe see a differentembodimentof intellectualhistory.Unlike Gagne's, Glaser'sconversionto cog-nitivismultimately ed him to the conclusionthatthinking n school subjectswas

inextricablyied to thespecificandthatdifferences ndisciplinaryknowledgewerecentral o intellectual ife.

Domain Specificity Ascendant

What did these seemingly major changes in researchepistemology mean forhow the learningpsychologistdid his or her work?In an earlierage, the learningspecialistcould erasesubject-matter ifferencesbecauseof awidelyheld belief in

131







Stevens t al.

theapplicabilityof generalthinkingandlearningprocesses.But now thatthinkingcamepackaged n so manyvariations,whichwere characterized y deepandcom-

plex differences,whatwas a harried esearchero do? Forthe firsttimein the his-

toryof learningresearch,questionscouldbe raisedaboutwhichtrainingwas most

neededby someone who wanted to study learning:Was it generaltheories(andcorrespondingresearch methods), or detailed and specific knowledge in thedomain(e.g., math,biology, physics)of interest?Orsome combinationof both?

Irrespectiveof the answer, by the late 1970s a differentkind of personhadenteredthe portalsof learningresearch.Two of these newcomerswere Andrea

diSessa,aphysicist,and AlanSchoenfeld,a mathematician,odaytwo of thelead-

ing theorists on learningandteachingin theirrespectivesubjectareas.diSessa,whocollaboratedwithSeymourPaperton early Logo work,made his markwitha

widely cited article,"UnlearningAristotelianPhysics: A Study of Knowledge-Based Learning" 1982), that showed the persistenceof undergraduates' eliefs

beforeandafter an introductoryphysics course at the Massachusetts nstituteofTechnology.Schoenfeld,who conductedresearchon mathematicalproblemsolv-

ingwhileteachingcalculustoundergraduatest HamiltonCollege inClinton,New

York,brought ogethera volume of his papers n MathematicalProblemSolving(1985) that,formany,servedas a researchagendafor mathematics ducationdur-

ing the followingdecade.It would be misleading,however, to portray he emergenceof domainspeci-

ficity(andthenewkindsof researcherstattracted) s adevelopmentof the 1980s,

somethingthatfollowed in the wake of the turn o cognitivism.Inactuality, deasaboutthe specific features andentailmentsof knowledge had circulatedamongeducationalresearchers t leastsince the late 1950sandearly 1960s.Arguably hemostinfluentialworkon educationduring he 1960swasunabashedlydomainspe-cific in orientation.JeromeBruner'sThe Process of Educationappearedn 1960,andits ideasaboutdisciplinarystructure eft theirmarkon majorcurriculumpro-jects suchas Man:A Course of Study(Bruner,1966;cf. Dow, 1991)and Harvard

ProjectPhysics (Bruner, 1983). Bruner 1960) drewexplicit attention o the fun-damentalways of knowingin the academicdisciplines (e.g., notionsof tropism n

biology, plot in literature,proofin mathematics,he counterfactualn history)thatoftengottossedby thewaysidewhendisciplinesmigrated rom theacademy o theschool. Similar(butnot identical)in formulationwere the ideas of Universityof

Chicago geneticistandcurriculumheoristJosephSchwab.Schwab,whose influ-ence was also directlyfelt by curriculum eformers e.g., Biological SciencesCur-riculumStudy),claimed thateach of the majordisciplines possesseda "syntax,"adistinctivemeansof verifyingandjustifying knowledgeclaims, in additionto itsown body of "substantive"ontent(Schwab, 1978).

Across the Atlantic,attention o disciplinaryknowledgehad its counterpartnthewritingsof PaulHirst,whoargued hatdisciplineswere morethangroupingsofrelated opicsandconstituted undamentally ifferentways of knowing.InHirst's

(1973) formulation, cademicdisciplinesexhibitedfour characteristics:a) a bodyof conceptsandkey ideas, thatis, a common vocabulary; b) distinctiveways of

relating heseconceptsandideas;(c) characteristicways of establishinga warrantfortruth laims,suchasthepsychologist'sappeal o thelaboratoryr the historian'sto the documentaryrecord;and (d) distinctive forms of inquiry, such as thechemist's use of X-rayspectroscopyor the physicist'suse of a linear accelerator.

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ComparativeUnderstanding f SchoolSubjects

Together,Hirst's andBruner's ideas providedthe intellectualfirmament or the

largestand most successful reformof historyeducation n any English-speakingcountry:heSchool'sCouncilHistoryProject Shemilt,1980;cf. Wineburg,2001).At its zenith, the project,a nonchronologicalapproach o historyteaching that

emphasized heuse of primary ourcesandhistorical hinking, ound ts way into aquarter f schoolsintheUnitedKingdom Rosenzweig&Weinland,1986)and eftanindelible markon thatcountry'snationalcurriculumBooth, 1994).

Among researcherswho focused on teaching, Lee Shulmantrumpetedthe

domain-specific allmostloudly.Shulman'scall to armswas achapternthe 1986Handbookof Researchon Teaching,with its provocativesubhead"TheMissingParadigmnResearchonTeaching."Shulmanargued hatresearchonteachinghadfocused on the wrong targets-teachers' personalitycharacteristics, enericped-agogical behaviors, favored managementprocedures-everything, it seemed,

excepthow teachers houghtabout he contentof instruction.nhis words,research

on teachinghad "fallenshort... in the elucidationof teachers'cognitiveunder-

standingof subjectmattercontent and the relationshipbetween suchunderstand-

ing andthe instruction eachersprovidefor students" p. 25). Shulmanallied his

budding programof research on teaching with the ascendantstar of domain-

specificwork on learning:

Thethrust f thecognitiveresearch rogramnlearnings subjectmatterpe-cific rather hangeneric.That s, theschemata sedto makesenseof instruc-tion onphotosynthesisn abiologyclass arecompletelydifferentrom hoseusedtounderstandheconceptof inertia nphysics.... Mostof thecognitive

researchon teachinghas ignored he teacher'scognitive processes n thissense.Therehavebeenno studiesof teachers'knowledge, f theschemata rframes heyemploy o appreciatetudentunderstandingsrmisconceptions.(1986,p. 25)

Like his Universityof Chicagomentor,JosephSchwab, Shulmancontendedthatat the heartof instructionwere the core ideas of the disciplinesembedded nschoolsubjects.Teachers'genericknowledgecouldtake themonlyso farinteach-

ing the school curriculum.Whatteachersmostneededto promotestudents' ntel-lectual developmentwas pedagogical contentknowledge,a form of knowledgethat was "the

uniqueprovinceof teachers"

Shulman,1987,

p.8).

From ts inception,pedagogicalcontentknowledgewas tied to deepunderstand-

ing of the subjectmatterof instructionGrossman,1990; Wilson,2001; Wineburg& Wilson, 1988). It was a form of knowledgethatenabled teachersto take their

understandingf contentand transform t intorepresentationshatwould usherinnew learning:how to helpstudentsunderstand participatoryemocracy n whichthe vote for the executiveis indirect,how to anticipate tudents'beliefs aboutthemovementof physicalobjectswhenteaching he counterintuitiverinciples f force,how toexplain heprocedure f "invert ndmultiply"o thatstudents ame to under-standthe reciprocalrelationshipbetweenmultiplicationand division rather han

committingo

memoryabrittle

ecipe.Pedagogicalontent

knowledgedirectlychal-

lengedthe notionthatagoodteachercould teachanything.According o Shulman's

formulation, socialstudies eacherwhobelievesthat hehistory extbook s historycannotengagestudents n legitimatehistorical nquiry,no matterhow qualifiedheor shemightbe in classroommanagement rgenericquestioning kills.

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Stevens et al.

If disciplinesweretrulydistinctive,whatdidthis mean for a curriculum harac-terizedby a farragoof subjectsandtopics?How shouldresearchers, otto mentionteachersandadministrators,hinkabout he saladbowl of subjects hatmadeuptheschool day? In the 1996 edition of the Handbookof EducationalPsychology,

Shulmanandhis colleague,KathleenQuinlan,authoredan essay thatpromisedacomparative ook at the variegatedschool curriculum.After a magisterialtour

through he writingsof EdwardL. Thomdike,JohnDewey, andCharlesHubbard

Judd, heauthorsrained heirgaze onthecontemporaryesearch cene.Theydrewlines of comparisonacross fourresearchprogramsn teachingandlearning:Gaea

Leinhardt's,SamWineburg's,MagdaleneLampert's,and DeborahBall's.

Thus,while Leinhardt 1993) lookedto exemplaryforms of expertpracticeas

judgedby prevailingnotionsof mathematical chievement,Lampert1990) beganwith a normativestance of what the disciplineof mathematicsoughtto look like,

anchoringherclaims in the philosophicaland mathematicalwritingsof Lakatos

(1978), Polya (1981), and others.Likewise, Wineburg(1991a; cf. 1998) beganwithnormative ommitmentsabouthistoricalepistemologybutputthem to the test

by examiningtheprotocolsof professionalhistoriansreadingprimary ourcedoc-uments.Ball's (1988, 1993) pointof departurewas herown teaching practice-informed by normative commitments but shaped as well by her elementarystudents'questions,confusions,andinsights.

In practice,ShulmanandQuinlan's (1996) comparativeunderstandingwas a

thoughtexperimentthatjuxtaposeddescriptionsof differentresearchprogramsrather hancomparing heenactmentof subjectsin vivo. Therewas no attempt o

speculate on how studentswho were enrolled in a math class a la Ball mightrespond o historyinstruction onducted n the spiritof Wineburg'scriticalhisto-rians.Inotherwords,how might youngsterswho hadcome to understandmathe-matics as a logical system with an agreed-uponset of groundrules understand

proofandrefutation nhistory,whichabjuresaxiomsto explainareal,not animag-ined, world? If psychology is the studyof individualminds, then a comparativeunderstandingof school subjectswould seek to resolve how these minds makesense of at least two subjects.Inactualpractice,however,ShulmanandQuinlan'sessay was less acomparativeook thanan exercisein "parallelplay"(L. Shulman,

personalcommunication,May 19, 1999).The only studycited by ShulmanandQuinlanthatcomparedschool subjects

directlywas SusanStodolsky'sresearchonelementary eachers'variationsacrossthe school day. In a series of researchreportsthat culminatedin The SubjectMatters(1988), Stodolskyshowed a dramaticdifference n how the same teachersmodified theirpracticesdependingon the subject-matter ortionsof the day. For

example, the time devoted to math meant frontal instruction,linear progressthrough he curriculum,andregimented ndividualhomework. Social studies,ontheotherhand,wore a looser belt.There,groupprojects, ndividual nitiative,andcreativedeparturesrom the textbookcharacterizednstruction.Drawingon Paul

Gump's (1967) notion of "activitystructures,"Stodolsky showed how different

sociological arrangementsn the classroom variedsystematically

accordingto

subjectmatter.However,questionsthatmightconcerna comparativeunderstand-

ing (how, forexample,didchildrenunderstand n a conceptual evel the relation-

shipbetween mathandsocial studies orcomparean"argument"crosssubjects?)were notaddressed.

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One of the strongeststatementsfor domain specificity came in a review byLRDC researcherGaeaLeinhardtand hercolleaguesthatappearedn thisjournal(Leinhardt,Zaslavsky,&Stein,1990).These scholarsexplicitlyaddressedhe rela-

tionshipbetweendomain-specificapproachesand thegreater ieldof teachingand

learning.Their ntroduction ead:

Thispapers areviewof research nd heory elatedoteachingand earninginaparticularubject,mathematics;naparticularomain, unctions, raphs,andgraphing; t a particularge, 9-14. Majorreviews in educationareso

rarely mbedded.ndeed, ince1970,therehasbeennosubject opic-specificreview in the Review of Educational Research. Recent theoretical thinkingandresearchn cognitivepsychology,cognitive anthropology,ducational

psychology,andphilosophy, owever, uggest hat hereareaspectsof learn-

ingand eaching pecificcontent hatareunique o or moresalient o thepar-ticularopicthan o thefield of teachingand earning s a whole.(pp.1-2)

More than 13 yearshave passed since these words were written,andthe fieldhas changed dramaticallyin the interim.4 Similar domain- and topic-specificreviews are now common and need no special introduction.Indeed, today'sreviews are oftenmorenarrowly ocused,suchashow social studiesstudentsreadtextbooks in historyclassrooms(Paxton, 1999) or how science teachersnavigatethechallengesof constructivist lassrooms Windschitl,2002). Domainspecificity,at least as a conceptthatstructures esearchpractice,can now be called "normalscience" n theKuhnian ense: anintellectualmatrix hatshapesresearchprogramsand is rarelybrought o the surfaceforexamination Kuhn,1962).

Thetaken-for-grantedatureof domainspecificity s seenmostpointedly n thedebates betweenthe cognitiveand situatedcampsof learningresearchers, xem-

plified in the spirited exchanges between John Anderson and James Greeno

(Anderson,Reder,& Simon, 1996, 1997;Greeno,1997).Examining heirrespec-tive researchprograms e.g., Anderson'swork on computer utors n algebraand

geometryand Greeno's on discoursepracticesin middle school mathclasses),there seems to be little commongroundbetween these poles. But this is where adebateoverlearning heorymasksdeeperstructural imilarities n the conductofeducationalresearch.

Both Andersonand Greenoarefundamentally

concernedwithlearning;

bothseek to understand ow learning ranspiresn institutions alledschools.Butwhatis school, when refracted hrough he prismsof these two differentresearchpro-grams?Itis herethatwe see theirfundamental nity.To Andersonandcolleagues,school becomesthe 50-minuteperioddevotedto algebraorgeometry.To Greenoandhis colleagues,the time segmentmaybe a bit longer(theseresearchers ocatetheir work in middleschool, and that venue often has blocked periods)(Greeno,1998).Butin bothresearchprograms,"school" s definedby theapportionmentftime thatfits theresearcher'spredetermined aze. How notionsof proofin geom-etry may affect students' notions of "proving"Macbeth's depravityis beyondAnderson's

scope, justas

questionsof how mathematicaldiscourse

may shapepoeticorhistoricaldiscoursearebeyondGreeno's.In both researchprograms, heschool day-in its broad emporalcontours-looks prettymuch the same.Its tex-ture s determinednotby students'dailyexperiencebutby thesubject-specific azeof the research eam.

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Stevenset al.

In accountingfor the subject-specific organizationof the field, we would beremissto cast its characteras a directconsequenceof particularhinkersand theirideas.Research ollows funding,andsince the 1960sthebiggestfunderof educa-tional research has been the National Science Foundation(NSF). But the NSF,

by temperamentandpolicy (partlyas an outgrowthof the controversyover theNSF-fundedMan: A Course of Study;see Dow, 1991), has largelyrestricted tsK-12 portfolioto two subjects:mathand science. Oneunintended onsequenceofthis patternhasbeen the cultivationof researcherswho conceive of a school dayin whichsubjects(bothconceptuallyand in practice)dwell in isolation.

Itremainsanopenquestionwhether choolchildrenxperience he different ub-

jects in theschoolcurriculum strulydifferentorwhether,oncewithinschoolwalls,these subjectsshedtheir distinctivenessand become experiencedas undifferenti-atedblurs J.S. Brown,Duguid,&Collins,1989;Palincsar,1989;Wineburg,1989).Evenallowingforepistemologicaldifferencesamongthedisciplinesin the school

curriculum,t is notclear how thesedifferencesareunderstood y studentsandhowteachersmightdrawon suchdifferencesto sharpenyoung people's epistemologi-cal sophistication.What would a school curriculumook like in whichdisciplineswere comparednot at the topicallevel (e.g., the role of plantsin biology andhis-

tory;cf. Roth,2000)but ntermsof howknowledge s made, ustified,and verified?In the following sections,we examine whata comparativeapproach o study-

ing school learningmightlook. We do so by drawingon our own experiencesin

tryingto implementsucha program.We arguethat a comparativeapproachgen-eratesquestionsaboutchildren'sexperiencesthathavehithertogone unasked,andwe conclude by laying out a set of topics that would constitutea comparativeresearchagendaon school learning.

Toward a Comparative Understanding of School Subjects

Up to this point,our review has focused on the shift from domain-general o

domain-specificapproaches o school learning.In this section,we proposea sub-

sequent shift in the study of school learning,from a fragmentedcollection of

domain-specificaccountsof school subjectsto a comparativeandunifiedone. We

explainthe basis for this proposedshift, explorethe rangeof ways in which sucha programmightbe pursued,andexemplifyone approachhatwe havepursued naninitialeffortto developa comparativeunderstanding f school subjects.

We beginby recognizingthatcontemporary ubject-specificresearch n class-rooms is dominatedby a basic constructivistgoal-to documentstudents'under-

standings of particularsubject-specific topics, concepts, and practices.5This

descriptioncharacterizesmanydifferent lines of contemporarywork (e.g., Car-

penter,Fennema,Franke,Empson,& Levi, 1999; Cobb, Wood, & Yackel, 1991;Grossman,1990;Lehrer,Jacobson,Kemeny,& Strom,1999). Ifwe trace heorig-inal insightto Piaget,the leadingintuition was in largeparta phenomenologicalone. Piaget wantedto understandconceptualphenomena,regardedas basic tohumanexperienceat least since Kant,develop amongchildren(e.g., time, space,quantity,causation).Tracinga line from

Piaget'sworkto contemporary ubject-

specific research shows many differences andtransformations,but for our pur-poses whatremainsconstant is most relevant:the focus on how adult-identified

concepts are understoodand develop among children,a basic focus sharedbyVygotsky as well (1962).

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Ourargument or a shift to a comparativeapproach o school subjectresearchalso has a phenomenologicalbasis, thougha different, nstitutionallycontextual-ized one. In ourview, the subject-specific raditionhasbroughtgreater pecificityto researchon learningby focusing on the detailsof whatand how children earn

withinthesesubjects.Inpursuing hissense of specificity,however,subject-matterresearchhas overlooked another sense of specificity that may organize chil-dren'sunderstandingsof school subjects-their embeddednessin the context ofa whole school day in which subjectscome andgo quickly, sequencedone afterthe other.

We arenotarguing hatsubject-specific esearchhasentirely gnoredthe orga-nizationalcontext of school in students'understanding f subjects.It is certainlya leitmotif of discipline-specificresearch to arguethat the durablepracticesof

"doingschool"(Tyack& Tobin, 1994;cf. Pope, 2003) obstructivelymediate stu-dents' experiencewith valuedepistemicdisciplinarypractices(e.g., Schoenfeld,1988;Wineburg,1991b).Thesemoves, however,areonly partialones in thecom-

parativedirectionwe areproposing,for two reasons.First,these studiesstronglymaintaina taken-for-grantedboundaryaroundsingle subjects. Second, these

analysesaretypicallyso tightlyfocused on students'acquisitionanddisplayof dis-

ciplinaryknowledge(or lack thereof)thatcomparativeconnectionsto other con-texts-such as othersubjectsor outside-of-schoolpractices-are not exploredintheanalysisof classroomactivity.In short,analysts'disciplinaryand educationalconcernsdominate,leaving the otherunderstandingshatmightbe displayedbystudents n the same contextunderrepresentedMacbeth,2002; Stevens, 2000b).

Looking to the origins of constructivistviews, one can see this "adultocentric"

(Bauman,1982) tensionpresentfrom the beginningin both Piaget's andVygot-sky's formulationsof constructivism.

What we areaskingcan be framed n partas a set of basic ethnographicques-tions: Are theboundariesbetweensubjects hatareso realfor researchers lso realforstudents?Do studentsdevelopdiscipline-specificunderstandings, omparativeunderstandings,or blurredunderstandingsof the subjects in the context of theschool?Befittinga basic ethnographicquestion,one body of research hatmightprovideanaccountof students'comparativeepistemicunderstandings crosstheschool dayis foundin theethnographiciterature n studentexperience.Afterall,it is

amongethnography'sistinctivevirtues o attend o

participants'enseof their

experienceswhile also relatingthese experiencesto the social andpracticalorga-nizationalconditions n whichthey areembedded.

There areseveralimportant ategoriesof ethnographically ased workon stu-dents in schoolsto consider.Onecategoryof work is distinctlymicroethnographicand hasdocumenteda common classroom orderof practicaland discursiveactiv-

ity forstudentsand teachersbeneath he officialgoals of developingsubject-matterknowledge.Whatthis line of researchdisplaysis a largely subject-general rgani-zation of public discourse and interaction n K-12 classroomlife (e.g., Cazden,1986, 1988; Macbeth,1992, 2002; McDermott,1976;Mehan,1985).Anothercat-

egoryof school-based

ethnographyooks outside the classroom but within the

school dayforits phenomena,most notablyamidstthose children'sactivitiesthatareunregulated y adults e.g., Devine, 1996; Eckert;1989;Eder,Evans,&Parker,1995; Grant& Sleeter, 1996; Thorne,1993). Still another mportant ategoryof

ethnographicwork has broadly comparedchildren's in-school experienceswith

137







Stevens t al.

theirexperiencesoutside of school (e.g., Gregory,Long, & Volk, 2004; Heath,1982, 1983;Philips, 1983).

Finally,ethnographic esearch romanthropology, ociology, andeducational

psychologyhasfocusedon thegeneralstructuralensionsbetweenstudentsandthe

official agendasof theirschools (e.g., Becker, 1972;Jackson, 1968; Rist, 1979;Willis,1977).Thistradition as ed tosuch mportantdeasas hiddencurricula,esis-

tance,andschool asasitefor thereproductionf society(cf. Yon,2003). Despitetheextentof ethnographicesearch n students' xperience nschool, however,no stud-ies that we uncovered ollowed the lead of science studies(cf. Biagioli, 1999) in

simultaneouslyxaminingboth thesocialorganizational racticesof schoolingandthe epistemicpracticesof studentworkacrossthe school day.6In thisregard,pastethnographicesearch n schools,like thecognitivistresearchdescribedearlier,hasnottakenupthecomparative uestionswe areasking.

Left with this lacunae in two leading traditionsof educationalresearch,we

undertooka classroom-basedstudy comparingstudents'understandingsn twoschool subjects: history and science. The researchapproachwe took is bestdescribedby the termdesign experiment(A. L. Brown, 1992; Collins, 1992).7Since the meaning and practiceof design experimentsare currentlyunsettled

(Barab& Squire,2004; Kelly, 2003), we explain here how we interpretedand

employedthe idea in ourproject.In introducingourspecific project,we positionit as only one researchapproachamongmanythatmightcontribute o the devel-

opmentof a comparativeunderstanding f school subjects.In fact, our method-

ological review begins with two more established approachesto conductingclassroomresearch,namely, non-interventionist, thnographic ield studies and

experimental tudiesthat ntervene hrough licitationstrategies uch as structured

interviewingandthe administration f cognitive tasks. We comparethe relative

strengthsandweaknessesof theseapproachesordevelopingacomparativeunder-

standingof school subjects, leadingto an articulationof why we initiallyenteredthis researchusinga design experimentapproach.

PossibleApproach1:

EthnographicStudiesFollowingStudentsAcross the School Day

One approach o exploringhow studentsandteachersexperiencetheconnect-

edness, or lack thereof,of school subjectscould be exclusively naturalisticandnon-interventionist.As ourquestionscan be framedas basic ethnographicones,we couldsensiblyfollow particulartudentsacross the school day,fromlanguageartsto science to historyto mathematics cf. Barker,Wright,& Barker,1966). Insuch a study, we would seek to understand,throughan analysis of students'

speech and actions, how they display senses of connection and disconnectiontoward school subjects-epistemically, practically, and emotionally. Several

empirical possibilities suggest potential outcomes of this kind of fieldwork,

includingthe following.

1. Followingstudentsacrosssubjects

mightallow us to see the emergenceof

the familiardivide between the sciences andthe humanities Bruner,1985,1986;Snow, 1959).8We mightsee thatstudentsbegin to identify subjectssuchas languagearts andhistoryas "theirs"and see others such as mathe-maticsandscience as "not for them"(or vice versa).If this divide emerges

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earlyin school life, it would be worthknowingunder whatorganizationalconditionsandon whatdevelopmental imelinesit does so.

2. Anotherpossibilitywe mightfind is thatthatthestructure f the school is an

enormously powerfulform of social organization hat balkanizesthe sub-

jects, makingthem seem like entirelydifferentand unconnectedkinds ofactivitiesto studentsandteachers.Thispossibilityseems plausiblebecausetheinfrastructure f schools is organized o keepthe subjectsdistinct.Time,

space, materials,andteachinglabor are all typically separatedacross sub-

jects. This is less truein the earliergradesbutincreasinglytrue as studentsmovethrough lementary,middle,secondary,andpostsecondary ducation.This increase in the subject-specific organizationof school suggests that

students' sense of balkanizationwould develop as they progressthroughthe system.

3. Alternatively,we mightfindunexpectedsituations n which studentsmake

connections acrosssubjects. Sensitivityto the social andtemporalstructureof the school day suggests where we could look for connectionsbetween

subjects in our field research:at the actualtemporalboundariesbetweenthem. Forexample,if thehistoryperiodfollows the scienceperiod,and stu-dentwork continues in the interim,this mightbe a strategicsite to locate

leakageof thoughtsandpracticesacrossthese subjects.94. Finally,a comparativeethnographyof school subjects might show (again)

thatwe have seriouslyunderestimatedhe capacitiesof school-agedchil-dren(Bransford t al., 1999;A. L. Brown& Campione,1990;A. L. Brown&Reeve, 1987;Herrenkohl,Palincsar,DeWater,& Kawasaki, 1999;Metz,

1995). Perhapsstudents are continuouslymaking thoughtfulconnectionsacross subjects. For example, when talking about history and literature,studentsmay spontaneouslydetermine hat bothsubjectscontainstoriesattheirheartbut that the stories in literatureclass are "madeup"while the

stories in historyare "real."All of these possibilitiessuggestthat an ethno-

graphicprogramof research ollowing studentsacross the schooldaywouldbe illuminating.

PossibleApproach2:Elicitation to Probe Students'Understandings f Subjects

Anotherparadigmto consider when studyingcomparativeunderstandingofschool subjectsinvolves the use of differenttypes of elicitationthroughclinical

interviews,administration f cognitivetasks,or both.Thisparadigms well estab-lished in psychologicallybased researchon single school subjects.The miscon-

ceptions literature n physics (D. E. Brown & Clement, 1989; Clement, 1982,

1983) is a good exampleof how these methods have been used to documentstu-dents' ideas about the physical world. Similar studies have been conductedin

mathematics J.S. Brown& Burton,1978),history(Barton,1997; Seixas, 1994a,1994b;VanSledright,2002; Wineburg,1991a),andlanguagearts(Peskin, 1998).

As with anethnographic pproach

ostudying

tudents'omparativexperiencesof school subjects,we believe that an elicitationapproach-in the form of posed

tasksand nterviewing-could tellus somethingabout tudents' omparative nder-

standings. ngeneral, heselaboratory-basedlicitationstrategiesmightallowus to

bring to the surface comparative understandings hat would otherwise remain

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Stevens et al.

submerged,because studentshad neverbeforehadreasonnoroccasionto demon-strate hem.Askingstudentsdirectly"Whatare thedifferencesbetweenthestories

youread n Englishclass andthoseyou read n historyclass?"or "Are herediffer-ences between the problemsyou solve in yourmathclass and in yourchemistry

class?"wouldprovidecomparativeunderstandingshatthe fieldcurrentlyacks.

Possible Approach3: ClassroomDesign Experiments

Althoughwe have arguedfor the value of two approaches ethnographyand

elicitation)fordevelopinga comparativeunderstanding f school subjects, n ourinitialforayinto the topic we pursuedneitherapproach. ndeed,the approachwe

selected, thatof a design experiment,blurstogetherelements of bothelicitationandethnography.Forsome commentators,hisblurrings aclearlimitationof the

approach Shavelson,Phillips,Towne, & Feuer,2003); forothers,it is a compro-mise thataddressesthe ongoing dilemmaof doing basic research n educational

settingswhile at thesametimesupporting ndimprovingeducationalpractices orthe studentsandteachersparticipatingn theexperiment A. L. Brown, 1992).

Despite ongoing controversiesover the statusof design experiments,we pre-senttwo arguments or this approach o developinga comparativeunderstandingof school subjects.First,we describe what we saw as the limitationsof the morecommonethnographyandelicitationapproaches or answering, n ourparticularresearch context, the kinds of comparative questions we believe have goneunasked.Second,we submitour recentprojectas a case studyso thatreadersmaymake their own assessmentsof our approach o pursuinga comparativeunder-

standingof school subjects. Ourpurposeis not to foreclose the value of other

approaches,but in fact the opposite-to engenderdebateaboutthe best ways toachieve acomparativeunderstanding. oward hisgoal,we concludethearticlebysettingaside ourown researchprojectandofferinga sketch of whatwe believe a

broadlycomparativeprogramof researchon school subjectsmightentail,as a col-lective endeavor or the field.

Regardinganethnographic pproach,we haveonly one substantial eservationwith respectto ourresearchfocus.10Thatis, we believe that the phenomenonofinterest-students' comparativeunderstandingsf school subjects-would be veryhard o locateempirically.The reason s thatthe cultureof schoolprovidesneithersituatedmotive nor opportunityfor the display of these connections. In other

words, makingsuch connectionspublicly would likely be out of place in mostschool settings.Ourconcern is that this fact of school culturewould lead to sig-nificantunderreportingf the connections studentsmightotherwisemake undereven minimalshifts in the material and communicativecontextsof activity.Byanalogy,consideranaccomplished ook whosedayjob is thatof anautomechanic.We would expect this cook to have few occasionsto displayhercookingknowl-

edge duringherdayjob, but in othercontexts,suchas in thekitchen,amongfriendsandfamilyafterworkhours,we wouldexpectthisknowledgeto be quitevisible.

We alsosee limitations o usingan elicitationparadigmodevelopacomparativeunderstandingf school

subjects.Our foremostconcern s thatthis strategywould

not answerourbasicresearchquestion-about students'comparativeunderstand-

ingsformedandusedin thecontextof theschoolday.If aprogram f researchakesthe contextsof elicitationand datagatheringat all seriouslyas a methodologicalissue,thenanylaboratoryindingswouldhave anuncertain elation o whatstudents

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can andactuallydo in school.Well-designed asksmightprovidean indicationofstudents'capacities o engagein disciplinary omparison,but,becauseof the natureof experimental licitation, hey wouldnot tell us whetherstudentsspontaneouslythinkaboutdisciplinaryimilarities nddifferencesf theywerenotprompted ythe

momentary emandsof the interviewsituation Cole & Means,1981).Differencesbetween the kinds of analyticinferences thatmaybe drawnfrom

out-of-settingelicitationstrategiesandin-settingobservationandrecordinghavebeenrecognizedfordecades(Becker& Geer,1957).What s at stake s ecologicalvalidity,an issue that hashauntedsocial science researchat least since the 1940s,when KurtLewin andEgonBrunswikdebated herelationsof psychologicaltasksto theirmeaningfor the lived experiencesof researchsubjects(Brunswik,1943;Lewin, 1943). Six decades after thatdebate,thereis still no settlement hatlegiti-

matelybalancesecological validityandexperimental ontrol undera single logicof inquiry Cole,McDermott,& Hood, 1978).As aresult,researchparadigmsyp-ically sacrifice one featurefor the other,with psychologists generallyforsakingecological validity andethnographers f everydaycognition generallyforsakingexperimentalcontrol.Arguably,in the debate aboutepistemologicaland educa-tionalvalues of design experiments,some versionof tensionbetweenecologicalvalidity and. experimentalcontrol lies just beneaththe surface. In light of this

seeminglyintractable ross-disciplinaryension,one reasonablecourseof actionis to eschew the technicalpurityof bothpositionsandpursuea hybridapproach.

For our project, a design experiment (A. L. Brown, 1992; Cobb, Confrey,diSessa, Lehrer,& Schauble, 2003; Cole, 1996; Collins, 1992; Design-BasedResearchCollective, 2003) representedan appropriatehybridfor exploringstu-

dents' comparativeunderstandings f school subjects.However,becausethe def-inition of "design experiments" is slippery and contested, we preface the

descriptionof ourprojectwith a moregeneralarticulation f the term.

Perhaps he most widely recognizedfeatureof design experiments s thattheyinvolve the iterativerefinementof an educational nnovation n a realeducational

setting, usuallya classroom.This featurealonehardlydistinguishesdesign exper-imentsfromtraditionalaction research(McNiff, 1988, 1993;Quigley & Kuhne,

1997). What makesdesign experimentsdifferent s thatthey are conductedas an

open researchprocessaimed at developing groundedunderstandings f learningand

activity(A. L. Brown, 1992; Cole, 1996;diSessa, 1991;Newman, Griffin,&

Cole, 1989).This feature of design experimentsemphasizes the sense in which they are

experiments.Design experimentsare not necessarilyconductedonly to addressknowneducationalproblemswithsociotechnical nnovations.Whereexistingthe-

ory is thin (as is the case with students'comparativesubject-matter nderstand-

ing), early cycles of design experimentation reoften conductedto exploremoreinchoateresearchconjecturesand establishempiricalboundarieson a questionofinterest.As in diSessa, Hammer, Sherin,and Kolpakowski(1991), an extendedclassroom intervention can produce a durable phenomenon of interest-indiSessa's

case, meta-representational ompetencies-andallow for

empiricalstudy, theorydevelopment,and subsequenteducational nterventions ied to therefinedtheoreticalaccount(diSessa,in press).

We beganourprojectwith an initialconjecture: hatelementaryschool is not

organizedfor students o develop comparativeunderstandings f school subjects

141







Stevens et al.

but thatthese understandings an be cultivated underconditionspossible within

ordinary lassrooms.Befitting heexperimentaldimensionof designexperiments,ouremergingdataanalysesentertain our distinctempiricalpossibilitiesrelated othis conjecture: a) thatcomparativeunderstandings mongstudentswere appar-

ent at theoutset; b)that heconditionswe fostered ntheclassroom ailedto estab-lish discipline-specificunderstandings,imilarto outcomesin previous ntegratedandinterdisciplinary pproaches cf. Wineburg& Grossman,2000); (c) thattheconditionswe hopedto createwould cultivatediscipline-specificunderstandingsineachsubjectbut notcomparativeunderstandings;nd,finally,(d)that hesecon-ditionscultivatedbothdiscipline-specificandcomparativeunderstandings.Cobbet al. (2003) described one of the theoreticalgoals of design experiments as

"creat[ing] he conditionsfor developing theoriesyet plac[ing] these theories inharm'sway"(p. 10).By considering hese differentoutcomes,we haveplacedourinitialconjectures n harm'sway.

An Illustrative Case: The PATHS Project

Our project, "Promoting Argumentationthrough History and Science"

(PATHS), nvolveda3-yearcomparativetudyof twosubjects, cienceandhistory,in a groupof fifth-andsixth-grade lassrooms.We selectedscience andhistoryas

starting ointsbecause hesesubjectsofferedampleopportunitiesorexploringbothsimilaritiesanddifferencesamongschool subjects.Returningo the scenario romthebeginningof thisarticle, etus consider"cause"as anexampleof akey conceptin bothscienceandhistory(less so in mathematics).

Studies of adultdisciplinarypractice suggest thatcause-or, moreprecisely,causalexplanation-refers to differentpractices n scienceandhistorybecausedif-ferentepistemiccriteriaapply.Forexample,single-sourcecausalexplanationsare

typicallysought n science andvalued as elegant,whereas n historysingle-sourceexplanationsaretypicallydistrusted; istoricalexplanationsposedin termsof mul-

tiplecausationaregenerallyregardedasmoresophisticated, incetheyareviewedas betterrepresentinghe ontologyof historicalevents (Hexter,1971;Q. Skinner,1988). Despitedifferences n causalexplanation,commonpointsbetweenscienceand history can be identified.For example, practitioners n both fields seek toanswerversionsof "why"questions,and in bothhistoryand science practitionersuse evidence to providethese answers.Such differencesand similaritiespoint to

causalexplanationand otheroverlapping hemes as legitimatestartingpointsforourcomparative esearch.

Design Principles

As an approach,design experimentsthrustresearchers nto two distinct butblurredroles: as designersof materials and activities for classroom use and as

empiricalsocial scientists seeking to understandhumanlearning.In the former

role, we adopted wo principles n designingmaterialsand activitiesforourcom-

parativeunderstanding f science andhistory.First,we designedourapproach oenable andenhancethe comparabilityof students'activitiesacross subjects,and,second,we soughtto bringstudents nto contactwithrepresentations f each sub-

ject displayinga reasonablefidelityto the disciplinarypracticesof adultprofes-sionals in each field. Attendingto these principlesled us to build our activitiesaround a representationalpracticecentral to nearly all disciplinaryknowledge

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creation:reason-giving,evidence-basedargumentation Toulmin,1958; Willard,

1989). In short,we arecomparinghow studentsmakeargumentsn eachsubject.

Design of Materials andActivities

For bothsubjects,we createdmaterials oradaptedexistingones) that allowedus to pose scientific andhistoricalquestionsto students.Studentswere asked totakepositionson thesequestionsandarguefor themon the basis of evidence. The

activity structureswe organizedin the classroomwere familiar to project-basedinstruction; tudentsworked n groupson questionsandbrought heirideas to thewhole class for teacher-leddiscussions of theirarguments.In history,we posedtwo questionsregarding he Rosa Parks bus incident thathelped sparkthe civil

rightsmovement:Wherewas Rosa Parkssitting?andWhydid she stayinher seat?We thenprovidedstudentgroupswithpossibleevidence thatthey weighed,eval-

uated,and selected to craftan argument or a particularposition. In science, we

adapted existing materials(Herrenkohl& Guerra,1998) that asked students toconductinquiryexperimentson why objects sink or float. On the basis of their

experiments, students were asked to assemble arguments to explain these

phenomenaand,as in history,present heirarguments o the class.

Formsof Data andAnalysis

Askingstudents o makearguments or their ideasaboutphenomena n historyand science has led us to collect a range of data from classroom activities.

However,our maincorpusof datacame in the formof audio-videorecordingsofstudentsand teachersworking togetheras they made,refined,andcritiquedargu-ments. Some of this classroom talk involved students nteractingwitheach otherin groupsas theytriedto collectivelybuildarguments.Using otherdatacollected,we weretrying o evaluatestudents' alk astheypresented heirgroupwork to their

classmates,whothenraisedquestionsabout heclaims, evidence,andwarrants hatconstituted these arguments.Teachersplayed a central role in these discourseactivitiesby asking questionsof their own but also by maintaining onversationalnorms of questionaskingandresponding.

In ouranalysisof this discoursedata,we aremakingcomparisonsat a numberof levels of discourseorganization.At the wordlevel, we arecomparing he mean-

ingsstudents

assignto commonwords such as "cause,"

"theory," argument,"nd

"proof" crossthesubjects.Athigher evels of discourseorganization,we arecom-

paringthe structure f students'argumentsn the two subjectsas they playedoutin talk,both in more monologic presentational orms and in multiparty nterac-tionalones. We are also studyingthe "migration"f languageacrossthe subjects.For example, in a science unit that followed a history unit in one classroom,studentsbegandiscussingthe "sourcing" f scientificevidence,a termintroducedas a heuristic n thehistoryunits(cf. Wineburg,1991b).

Studies of discourse and interaction are increasinglycommon in classroom

subject-matter tudies (cf. Boaler, 2000; Hicks, 1996; Lampert& Blunk, 1998;

Lemke, 1990).We have selectedthis area as ourfocus for severalreasons.At the

most basic level, we are interested n questionsof comparativeunderstanding fschoolsubjects n thecontextof the schoolday,andtalk s arguablyheprimary ep-resentationalmediumthroughwhich school subjectsare transacted.More specifi-cally,becauseour main nteresthas been in argument-makingractices,we viewed

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talkas themodeof expression n which we couldexpectthe mostwidelydistributed

competenceacross heparticipatingtudents.This view is groundedn a basicunder-

standing hatspeechis central o the developmentof otherrepresentationalenres(Vygotsky, 1981, 1987; Wertsch,1985). Ethnographicallyasedlanguagestudies

showthat herearemanysituationsn which childrenof thisagealreadydisplaythecapacityto engage in proto-formsof disciplinedargumentationOchs, Taylor,Rudolph,& Smith,1992).A relateddevelopmentalbasis for the focus on talkfol-lowsVygotsky(1981)inconceptualizing rgument s apractice irst earnedninter-actionwithothers,beforebecomingone thatpeopledemonstrateutonomously.One

implicationwe drewfromthedevelopmental riority f theinteractionalotheintra-actional s that,forelementary choolchildren, nteractionally ased activitiespro-videthemostsupportive ontextforargumentmaking.

We thereforeassembledparallelcorporaof data n which studentscraft,refine,andshare theirargumentsaboutphenomena n each subject.The contextsof talk

that we recorded nclude small-groupwork,where constructionof arguments smostvisible,andwhole-classpresentations,where moresettledproductsof groupactivityareshared,critiqued,defended,and revised. It is with these datathatweareseekingto answerquestionsabouthow studentsmakearguments imilarlyand

differentlyacrossscience andhistory.Seen from anotherperspective, our analyses of classroom interactionare

focusedon identifying"whatcounts" o students.Studyingwhat counts is a basic

premiseof ethnomethodologicaltudiesof epistemictopics(Coulter,1989;Lynch,1991;Stevens,2000b; Stevens & Hall, 1998). Inourproject,forexample,we are

tryingto understand"whatcounts"for studentsas good (or bad)evidence in the

science activitiesversus "whatcounts" n history.Do studentsapplysimilarcrite-ria n the two subjects e.g., trustworthiness)whenassessingthepiecesof evidenceused in makingtheirarguments?Do theyholdargumentsneach subjectaccount-able to similarstandards f provability?

Inaddition,wecollecteddataonclassroom onversations uringwhichwe soughttobringstudents' omparative nderstandingsnto directcontact.We didthisintwo

ways. One was to createinterdisciplinaryctivitiesin which studentscoulddraw

uponbothscienceandhistoryknowledge oaddressaparticular uestion.Forexam-

ple, we createda shortunitaround hehistoricaland scientific ssueof spontaneousgeneration, hypothesized iologicalprocessvigorouslydebatedn the late 17thcen-

tury.By engaging students n this unit, we have been able to see how students

weighedknowledge-making ractices rom bothsubjectsarounda commonques-tion.We soughtto understandwhenandif students ook a historicalperspectiveonthequestionor a scientificone. Wouldthey intermingleperspectives?

Across ouranalyses,we areseekingto balanceanopennessto emergentques-tionsandthemes,as advocated n interactionistapproaches o social life (Blumer,1969; Strauss & Corbin, 1998), with certain questions (what Blumer called

"sensitizingconstructs")broughtto the analysis from our understandingof the

disciplinarypracticesof scienceandhistoryamongbothprofessionalsandschool-children.Some of these aregeneraland would thereforebe relevant to compar-isons across other subjects as well: How do students understandhow new

questionsaregenerated n each subject?How do studentsunderstand he ways inwhich knowledge in the discipline is relatedto predictionand control of phe-nomena?And how do theyunderstandheappropriate enresforconstructingand

144








representingknowledge in each subject (e.g., narrativeversus propositional)?Some questionsmore specific to ourfocus on argumentationn historyand sci-ence includethefollowing:How do studentsunderstandwhat countsas a "good"argumentand whatconstitutes"good"evidencein eachsubject?How do students

understand he achievementof closure in argumentmaking n eachsubject?Whatis the role of context in makingandinterpretingarguments?

Comparative Understanding of School Subjects: A Wider Agenda

Herewe set aside ourspecificresearchprojectandaddresswhatwe see as issuesin the widerprogramof a comparativeunderstandingf school subjects.We raise

questions hatwe thinkneed to be askedandspeculate, n broadoutline,aboutstud-ies that might be organizedto answer these questions.We describe this largerprogram n termsof different dimensions of comparativestudies.These include

comparisonsacrossall subjectsof the schoolday(i.e., notjusthistoryandscience),acrosssubject-matter xperience n andoutof school, acrosssubject-matter xpe-rience over many years of schooling, and across differentethnic, national,and

geographiccontexts.Whatunites these differentdimensions s a steadfast ocus onthe phenomenologyof students'experiencesof subjectmatterandthe contextsin

whichtheyaredevelopedanddisplayed.A complete comparativeunderstandingof school subjectswould involve all

school subjects.Science andhistoryrepresentone pairwithina largercombinato-rialuniverse,andmanyothercombinationsappearo us asequallyfruitful orcom-

parative study.For example, it would be illuminatingto conducta comparativestudyof students'understandings f literature ndhistoryaround hetopicof nar-

rative. How would the "whatcounts"question play out in this comparativecon-text? How do studentsunderstand imilaritiesand differencesin the constructionof a good or believable narrative n historyandliterature?Anotherpairof com-

parative ubjects o studycouldbe mathematicsandscience,organizedaround he

topic of proof.In bothcases, practitioners nderstandhemselvesto prove things,butagainwe wonderhow studentswouldcomparativelydefinea "proof."Perhapsa more farfetchedbut in our view compelling exercise would be to look at hownotions of experimentare understood across art and science. We might expectstudents'comparative nderstandingsf "experiment"o bequitedifferent nthese

subjects,but then

again,following Dewey (1934),we

mightalso find

significantareasof overlap(cf. Eisner,2002).Another dimension of a researchprogramon comparativeunderstandings

would involve the understudied opic of the relationshipbetweensubject-matterknowledgeas it is displayed nsidethe schooland suchknowledgeasit is displayedoutsideof school.Forexample,how does thedevelopmentof mathematical nowl-

edge compare nside school andout (Lave, 1988;Rogoff & Lave, 1986; Stevens,1999, 2000a)?How is schoolknowledgeused outsideof school?How do studentsreadformeaning nside school and out (Mosborg,2002)? How do studentsrecon-cile historicalnarrativesearned n school with those absorbedby watchingpopu-lar movies

(Dimitriadis,2000; Seixas, 1994a; Wineburg, 2001; Wineburg&

Martin,2004; Wineburg,Mosborg,& Porat,2001)?Yet anothercomparativedimension of the wider researchprogramwould

involve understandinghe evolving experienceof subjectsfor students n succes-sive grades.How does the meaningof what countsas knowledgein mathematics,

145







Stevenset al.

science,history,andEnglish changefor students romelementaryschool throughhighschool and on to college?Does a subjectbecomemoreor less relevant o stu-dents' personallives? Do students'understandingsdeepen, spiral,or fragment?Does subject-matterknowledge become more "conceptual,"as one line of aca-

demicwisdomwould haveus believe, or does it become more"practical,"s maybe argued romothertheoreticalperspectives?

A particularlymportantype of gradetransition alls betweensequencededu-cational nstitutions uch ashighschoolandcollege. Ifwe acceptthatdifferentedu-cational nstitutions nactdisciplinesdifferently Traweek,1988),thesetransitionsshouldbe of greatinterest.Forexample,reformsto high school advancedplace-mentcalculusmadeduring hepastdecade,spurredby NationalCouncilof Teach-ers of Mathematicsstandards,now highlighta version of calculus that focusesalmostas muchon visual-graphic easoningas symbolic, equation-based roblemsolving. At the same time, college calculus courses appearto be taught largelywithin the traditionalequation-basedmode.'2What will transitionsbe like foradvancedplacementstudentscrossingtheboundaryromhighschool to college?

A finaldimension of comparativeresearchon school subjectswould involve

studyinghow academicsubjectsareexperiencedby studentsacrosscultural,eth-

nic, geographic,and nationalboundaries. How does a particularhistory of theAmericanCivil Warplayoutfor students iving in SouthCarolinaversusthose inNew YorkCity?Or,similarly,for African Americanversus CaucasianAmericanstudents(Epstein,2000; Horwitz, 1998;Steams, Seixas, & Wineburg,2000; cf.

Wertsch,2002)? How does an understanding f American iteraturedevelop forstudents n Moscow orToronto?A good exampleof this kindof work is foundin

theThirdInternationalMathematicsand Science Study (Stigler& Hiebert,1999),whichrevealedthatstudents n variouscountriesexperiencedsignificantlydiffer-ent types of mathematics nstruction.Whateffects do these differenceshave onstudents'understandings f the subject?And what implicationsdo these differ-ences have for theirpost-instructionalutures?

We have presenteda rangeof differentdimensionsalong which comparativeresearchon school subjectscould be conducted.Ourpurposehereis not to limittherangeof possibilitiesbut to suggestthatwhen we look at school subjects roma comparativeperspective,new questions emerge. Questionsof interest extendwell beyondthose that we have exploredin ourcomparativeresearchon science

andhistory.And, as we argue n ourconcludingsection, this broaderprogramof

research,in addition to giving us a new vantagepoint on studentlearning, mayoffer promising resources for reconstructingsubject-matter-based ducational

practices.

Conclusion

We have arguedfor a comparativeapproach o studying subject-matterearn-

ing in school. This argumenthas been basedprimarilyon a perceivedimbalancebetween how little we know about the whole (i.e., students' experience of thewhole school day) and how much we know aboutits parts(i.e., subject-specificstudies).Ourstance is basedon a strongsense thatpreviousresearchon subject-specificlearning,whilerepresenting criticalphasein theoverallhistoryof learn-

ing research,has not been specific enough.Where this line of researchhas lacked

specificity is in its focus on what we have called the phenomenologyof student

146








experience,embedded n the temporal,material,emotional,andsocial organiza-tional conditions of the school day. These conditions frame how studentslearnacademicsubjectsbutareunderrepresentedn content-focused tudiesof subject-matter earning.In the main, we have wondered and worried aboutwhetherthe

epistemologicalspecificityof subjects,so realto researchers,s anywherenearasrealto students.We are thereforearguing or a full-blowncomparative ocus, not

only across students'experienceof the sequenced subjectsof the school day butacrosstheirsubject-relatedxperiences n and out school.

What ourprojectdid for two subjects n severalelementaryschool classroomscouldbe broadened o permutations crossall of the subjects.This would involvea more dramaticreconstructionof the school experiencethan the one we haveorchestratedn ourdesign experiment.Sucha reconstructionwouldby no meansneed to displacethe subject-specificorganizationof education,butit wouldentail

creatingmoredeliberateconnective tissue across the subjects.Undersuch a sys-tematicreconstruction,ubject-matterducatorswouldhelpstudents earnwhat suniqueabouta disciplineas a way of knowing by learninghow thatway of know-

ing compareswith others.This type of systematicreconstruction ould, in turn,raisenew researchques-

tions abouteducationalpractice.Wouldsuch a reconstructionmake school learn-

ing moremeaningfulto studentsby allowing themto see scholasticpracticeas amultifaceted ut connectedapproachoexperience i.e., overlapping etscomposedof sometimessimilarandsometimes differentways of makingandusing knowl-

edge)?Would t enrichstudents'understandingsf specificsubjects o embedthese

subjects n a comparativematrix?Wouldthis reconstructionmaketeachingeasier

andmorerewarding, speciallyfor thoseteacherswho teachmultiplesubjects n a

given day?Alternatively,mightit maketeachingthemmore difficult,becauseitwouldrequireadding o analready-overcrowdedchoolcurriculum?

AndreadiSessa (1988, 2002) has arguedthat one of the definingdifferencesbetweenthe disciplinaryknowledgeof novices andthat of expertsis thatnovices

possess "knowledge npieces,"whereasexpertspossess knowledgethat s denselyconnectedandrichlydifferentiated.However accurate hismaybe as adescriptionof individualminds,we see it as a compellingpoint about our collective under-

standingof school subjects.At present,our knowledge of school subjects is in

pieces. Wemay

do a betterob

atmaking

school ameaningfulplace

for studentsto learn andforteachers o teachif we canputthesepieces together.

Notes

1 Fora notableexception,see the workof ElizabethB. Mojeandhercolleagues(e.g.,Moje,2004;Mojeet al.,2004).

2 Theterms"domainpecific,""disciplinepecific,""subject pecific," nd"content

specific" reused navarietyof waysinthe educational ndpsychologicaliteratures,oftenwithagreatdealof overlapamong hem. n thecognitive iterature,domain anbe atopicsuchas baseball Voss,Vesonder,&Spilich,1980),which s quitedifferentfromanacademic

disciplinehat

constantly rowsn

knowledge.Onthe otherhand,a

domaincan referto a bodyof knowledgesuchas thatinvolvingdinosaurs Chi &

Koeske,1983),withknowledgeentailmentsn paleontologyhatoverlapneatlywith

disciplinary nderstandings.nthisarticle,we generallyuse "domainpecific"when

contrastinghis approachwith "domaingeneral."Whenwe turnto the questionof

147







Stevenset al.

academic disciplines and their school-based referents, we use "discipline specific"wheneverpossible. Often, however, we use the terms"domainspecific"and"discipline

specific" interchangeably.3 By necessity, we are simplifying our storyline. Behaviorist approachesto learning

remain particularly strong in areas of special education and physical education, asevinced by a casual perusal of the Journal of Learning Disabilities or the Journal of

Applied Behavioral Analysis. However, in this age of education reform, we are hard

pressed to find programs of school learning of academic content that have not been

reshaped by the shift to cognitivism.4 To be sure, thereremainresearchareas that take up school learning in the spiritof

cognitivism but that have not embraced domain specificity. Work on motivation

(cf. Graham& Weiner, 1996) and study skills/learning strategies (Kiewra & Dubois,

1998) has "gone cognitive" but has not elected domain-specific paths. For an approachto motivation thattakes the domain of study seriously, see Nolen (1995).

5 The scope of reference to "understandings"is intentionally synoptic, meant toinclude how understandingsaredocumented, whetherthroughtests, experimentalelic-

itation, or naturally occurring performance.6 For a partialexception, see Reed-Danahay (1996), who included an ethnographic

description of the whole school day in a ruralFrenchprimaryschool. This descriptiondrew contrasts between the pedagogical aims of subjects that the school treats as

particularlyimportant, such as mathematics and French, and others. In this account,

however, students' epistemic practices were not broughtinto focus.

7 We use the term"designexperiment"because of its currencybutwish to makeclear

thatclosely related work from a cultural-historicalactivity theoretic approachinvolv-

ing "creating model activity systems" (Cole, 1996; Newman et al., 1989) has been

equally influential in our design and researchpractices.8 Indeed, some analysts have tied the very fact of disciplinarity to the practices of

schooling (Hoskin, 1993).9Rogers Hall suggested this possibility in a commentary on an earlierversion of this

article.10For the purposes of this argument, we are referring to a "pure"ethnographic

approachin which participantsare observed andrecorded but not interviewed (i.e., no

elicitation is involved). In practice, ethnographic studies often combine participantobservation andinformal interviewing.

1 Though talk has been the primarymedium throughwhich we have sought to cap-ture our data, we have also collected other kinds of representationsthat studentsmake

of their arguments, including visual diagrammatic representations of arguments

adaptedfrom computer-based representationsof arguments(Bell, 2002).12 This gap was proposedby LariGarrison(personalcommunication, May 29, 2003)

on the basis of her experiences in teaching advanced placement calculus.

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Authors

REED STEVENS is an Associate Professor, College of Education, Universityof Washington, 411 Miller Hall, Box 353600, Seattle, WA 98195; [email protected]. His research interests include the study of mathemat-ics in school and out, the ethnographyof cognition and technology, and discourse.

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SAM WINEBURG s a Professor,School of Education,StanfordUniversity,485LasuenMall, Stanford,CA 94305-3096; e-mail [email protected]. isresearchocuseson theteachingand earning f history, ducationalesearchnthe

publicdomain,andscholarlywriting.

LESLIERUPERTHERRENKOHLs an AssociateProfessor,Collegeof Education,University fWashington,12 MillerHall,Box353600, Seattle,WA98195;e-mail

[email protected] nterests ocus on issues of learningandhumandevelopment,cienceeducation, ndclassroomdiscourse.

PHILIP BELL is an Associate Professor,College of Education,Universityof

Washington,312 Miller Hall, Box 353600, Seattle, WA 98195; e-mail [email protected] research ocuses on innovative earningtechnologies,designexperimentation,ndepistemology.

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comparative understanding of school subjects past, present, and future

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