KEYWORDS: cultural-historical activity theory, dialectics, theory-praxis gap, activity systems, contradictions, learning, development.More than seven decades ago, the Russian psychologist Lev S. Vygotsky (1934Vygotsky ( /1986) noted that (educational) psychology was in a state of crisis because of the "atomistic and functional modes of analysis . . . [that] treated psychic processes in isolation" (p. 1). Specifically, he pointed out that the separation of intellect and affect as subjects of study [was] a major weakness of traditional psychology, since it [made] the thought process appear as an autonomous flow of "thoughts thinking themselves," segregated from the fullness of life, from the personal need and interests, the inclinations and impulses of the thinker. (p. 10) These analytic challenges remained unresolved for years, leading Vygotsky's student A. N. Leont'ev (1978) to continue expressing dissatisfaction over the eclectic state of (educational) psychology. As readers will quickly verify, it is difficult to find research recommendations concerned with knowing and learning in and out of schools and across the life span that take into account the kind of holistic integration that Vygotsky had originally championed. Now, as then, we are confronted with a number of conundrums in educational research and practice, which advances in modern psychology have not fully overcome. To better place these issues in context, we present a short vignette below that conveys something of the multiple tensions facing classroom teachers and educators everywhere.

ABSTRACT:In this paper, we take up and advance the project of rethinking "scientific literacy" by Eisenhart, Finkel, and Marion (American Educational Research Journal, 1996, 33, 261 -295). As part of a project of rethinking science education, we advance three propositions. First, because society is built on division of labor, not everybody needs to know the same basic sets of concepts; it is more important to allow the emergence of scientific literacy as a collective property. Second, scientific knowledge ought not to be privileged in democratic collective decision making but ought to be one of many resources. Third, rethinking science education as and for participation in community life sets up the potential for lifelong participation in and learning of science-related issues. To show the viability of these propositions, we provide a case study based on a 3-year, multisite ethnographic research project as part of which we investigated science in the community. Framing our work in terms of activity theory, we provide descriptions of science in a local middle school, where students learn science while participating in a community effort to contribute to the knowledge base about a local creek. The children's activities are continuous with those of adults concerned about environmental health. In this way, rather than preparing for life after school, science education allows students to participate in legitimate ways in community life and therefore provides a starting point for uninterrupted lifelong learning across the presently existing boundary separating formal schooling from everyday life outside schools.

Gestures are central to human cognition and constitute a pervasive element of human communication across cultures; even congenitally blind individuals use gestures when they talk. Yet there exists virtually no educational research that focuses on the role of gestures in knowing and learning and the implications they have for designing and evaluating learning environments. The purpose of this article is to provide a review of the existing literature in anthropology, linguistics, psychology, and education and, in the context of several concrete analyses of gesture use, to articulate potential focus questions that are relevant to educational research of knowing, learning, and teaching.

Instructional strategies and curriculum sequences aimed at teaching process skills have received considerable attention in science education. On the other hand, the teaching of domain‐independent, context‐free skills has been subject to criticism on the ground that important aspects of cognitive activities are functions of meaningful contexts. The intent of this study was to examine the development of integrated process skills in the context of open‐inquiry laboratory sessions. The data‐collection approach was qualitative and included videotapes of laboratory sessions, laboratory reports of students, and the reflective journals kept by the two teachers involved in the study. Forty‐eight students from the Grade 11 introductory physics course, 29 students from the Grade 12 physics course, and 60 students from the Grade 8 general science course from an all‐boys private school participated in the study. An interpretive research methodology was adopted for construction of meaning from the data. Students worked in collaborative groups during all of the open‐inquiry laboratory sessions. Findings from the study indicate that students develop higher‐order process skills through nontraditional laboratory experiences that provided the students with freedom to perform experiments of personal relevance in authentic contexts. Students learned to (a) identify and define pertinent variables, (b) interpret, transform, and analyze data, (c) plan and design an experiment, and (d) formulate hypotheses. Findings of this study suggest that process skills need not be taught separately. Integrated process skills develop gradually and reach a high level of sophistication when experiments are performed in meaningful context.

Classrooms are complex environments in which curriculum, students, and teachers interact. In recent years a number of studies have investigated the effect of teachers' epistemologies on the classroom environment, yet little is known about students' epistemologies and how these interact with those of teachers. The purpose of this study was to document students' epistemologies and their concurrent views about knowing and learning. Using a written essay, short‐answer responses to statements, a preferred classroom environment inventory, and interviews, students' views on scientific knowledge and their own knowing and learning were collected from 42 students in three sections of an introductory physics course. Our rather broad, qualitative inquiry provides a dynamic view of students' understanding of knowing and learning in high school physics. Our analyses reveal a spectrum of epistemological commitments commensurable with positions from objectivism to relativism, most of them with experientialist coloring. Even within individuals, these commitments could be at once commensurable and incommensurable with the same epistemological position. We also find rather significant inter‐ and intra‐individual differences with respect to the consequences of a specific epistemological stance to learning, the learning strategies employed, and the learning environment preferred. Students' views on knowing and learning in physics are presented in the form of an emergent theory. The findings are discussed in terms of their application to classroom environments.

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Although laboratory activities have long been recognized for their potential to facilitate the learning of science concepts and skills, this potential has yet to be realized. To remediate this problem, researchers have called for constructivist learning environments in which students can pursue open inquiry and frame their own research problems. The present study was designed to describe and understand students' experimenting and problem solving in such an environment. An interpretive research methodology was adopted for the construction of meaning from the data. The data sources included videotapes, their transcripts, student laboratory reports and reflections, interviews with the students, and the teacher's course outline and reflective notes. Forty-six students from three sections of an introductory physics course taught at a private school for boys participated in the study. This article shows the students' remarkable ability and willingness to generate research questions and to design and develop apparatus for data collection. In their effort to frame research questions, students often used narrative explanations to explore and think about the phenomena to be studied. In some cases, blind alleys, students framed research questions and planned experiments that did not lead to the expected results. We observed a remarkable flexibility to deal with problems that arose during the implementation of their plans in the context of the inquiry. These problems, as well as their solutions and the necessary decision-making processes, were characterized by their situated nature. Finally, students pursued meaningful learning during the interpretation of data and graphs to amve at reasonable answers of their research questions. We concluded that students should be provided with problem-rich learning environments in which they learn to investigate phenomena of their own interest and in which they can develop complex problem-solving skills.

In education research, a polar distinction is frequently made to describe and produce different kinds of research: quantitative versus qualitative. In this article, the authors argue against that polarization and the associated polarization of the “subjective” and the “objective,” and they question the attribution of generalizability to only one of the poles. The purpose of the article is twofold: (a) to demonstrate that this polarization is not meaningful or productive for education research, and (b) to propose an integrated approach to education research inquiry. The authors sketch how such integration might occur by adopting a continuum instead of a dichotomy of generalizability. They then consider how that continuum might be related to the types of research questions asked, and they argue that the questions asked should determine the modes of inquiry that are used to answer them.