Misconceptions of science principles are frequent among university students. This is particularly problematic in teacher education, as these misconceptions can be passed on by teachers to pupils at school. In this study, 40 preservice teachers studied 8 common misconceptions by 3 different approaches: learning by teaching (LbT) and learning from…

Providing contingent or adaptive support (i.e., scaffolding) is effective. Yet it is unclear how it promotes students' learning. In this mixed-methods study, we investigated to what extent the effect of contingent support for students' learning is mediated by the extent to which students take up teachers' support in subsequent small-group work. We…

In recent decades, important advances have been made in understanding how discursive symmetry can be achieved in whole-class dialogue. However, very little is known about how this dialogue may progress in the sense of critically linking ideas in coherent lines of collective inquiry. This article investigates this issue by analyzing 4 consecutive…

Designers who create computer-based learning experiences for places like museums, out-of-school programs, and homes face a number of challenges related to the informal nature of such settings. Designs must generally function on their own without the support of teachers or curriculum while at the same time engaging a diverse audience, supporting…

Most research related to learning in groups focuses on the unit of the group and/or group members. However, students may benefit from crossing the boundaries of their own group, as students in different groups may provide access to new, nonredundant knowledge and opportunities for learning. Whether boundary crossing between groups is beneficial…

This study examines learning in home care visits aimed at systematic facilitation of clients' physical mobility. Building on the theory of expansive learning, we ask what kinds of learning cycles may be identified in home care encounters charged with implementing the new Mobility Agreement practice, what kinds of interplay may be detected between…

Learning implies change. Inside and outside schools, we aim for students to change into people with more skills and knowledge as well as with a growing sense of agency and responsibility. Furthermore, education itself is subject to constant change. In this article, we examine change in 3 case studies in the context of individual music lessons from…

This article examines formative interventions as we understand them in cultural-historical activity theory and reflects on key differences between this intervention research tradition and design-based research as it is conceived in the learning sciences tradition. Three projects, including 2 Change Laboratories, are analyzed with the help of…

Research in the learning sciences is often motivated by the goal of shaping a better future through design. Architects and urban planners share this goal, and the history of their more ambitious designs provides clear examples of how attempts to build the future can turn out. After discussing similarities and differences between design in the…

This article explores how to research the opportunities for emotional engagement that mobile technologies provide for the design and enactment of learning environments. In the context of mobile technologies that foster location-based linking, we make the case for the centrality of in situ real-time observational research on how emotional…

This study aims to understand the recurrent challenges of professional development school (PDS) partnerships experienced by many countries. It does so by conceptualizing PDS partnerships as endeavors to cross institutionally and epistemologically developed boundaries between teacher education, schooling, and academic research. After introducing…

In this article we present an analytical framework for approaching transfer episodes--episodes in which participants declare or can be declared to bring prior experience to bear on the current task organization. We build on Dewey's writings about the continuity of experience, Vygotsky's ideas of unit analysis, as well as more recent developments…

This ethnographic study examined students' opportunities to learn in linguistically diverse mathematics classrooms in a Canadian elementary school. I specifically examined the contextual change of group work, which influenced opportunities to learn for newly arrived English language learners (ELLs). Based on analyses of video-recorded…

The goal of this article is to contribute to understanding the interplay between students' disciplinary engagement and their identity construction. The term appropriation, borrowed from scholars in linguistics and education, was chosen to capture this broader sense of productive learning that sits at the nexus of disciplinary engagement and…

This article reports on a qualitative study on the dialogical approach to learning in the context of higher education. The aim was to shed light on the "I"-Position and multivoicedness in students' identity building and to provide empirical substantiation for these theoretical constructs, focusing especially on the connection between…