transforming practice: designing for liminal transitions along trajectories of participation

226 Pages·2007·3.81 MB·English

by  Steven Zuiker

TRANSFORMING PRACTICE: DESIGNING FOR LIMINAL TRANSITIONS
ALONG TRAJECTORIES OF PARTICIPATION

Steven J. Zuiker

Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree
Doctor of Philosophy
in the Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology,
Indiana University
June 2007
Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Doctoral Committee

Daniel T. Hickey, Ph.D.

Sasha A. Barab, Ph.D.

Kathryn Roulston, Ph.D.

Thomas Schwen, Ph.D.
Date of Oral Examination
May 24, 2007

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© 2007
Steven J. Zuiker
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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DEDICATION

For Mark
because he never quit, even when enough was enough.

To my Zissou
for the hapdef and the kwajadoo.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I extend endless amounts of gratitude to the students, teachers, and researchers who
contributed to the broader project from which this dissertation derives and, in particular,
to the 67 students, 2 teachers, and 7 other researchers who directly contributed to the
studies reported here. Only through the diligent effort of so many talented and inspiring
individuals and communities could this work have been realized. I am thankful to my
mentor, Dan Hickey, for fostering six full years of opportunities to do research and be a
researcher. I am also grateful to my parents and siblings for the levity of their
encouragement, even the “punny” one.
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PREFACE

When looking from a window at beings passing by on the street below, I … say that it is
men I am seeing. … [But] what do I see from the window beyond the hats and cloaks,
which might cover automatic machines?
—René Descartes, 1641

She could see the image of her son, who lived on the other side of the earth, and he could
see her. … “What is it, dearest boy?” … “I want you to come and see me.” “But, I can
see you!,” she exclaimed. “What more do you want?” … “I see something like you …,
but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this phone, but I do not hear you.”
The imponderable bloom, declared by discredited philosophy to be the actual essence of
intercourse, was ignored by the machine.
—E. M. Forster, 1920

Until you are at home somewhere, you cannot be home everywhere.
—Mary Catherine Bateson, 1995
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Steven J. Zuiker
TRANSFORMING PRACTICE: DESIGNING FOR LIMINAL TRANSITIONS
ALONG TRAJECTORIES OF PARTICIPATION
Schooling is grounded in the notion of transfer—the idea that classroom activities
serve students beyond mastering the intended curriculum—but theorizing general
consequences of learning and ways curricula can support them remain open questions.
Building on “situative” perspectives, this dissertation enlists video game technologies and
methodologies to simultaneously design for and theorize about transitional, or liminal,
forms of participation as an alternative conceptualization of the general consequences of
learning. Liminal transitions are activities along the pathway through a gaming
curriculum that engage learners with ways of doing science and being scientific that are
different from but complementary to curricular experiences. A video game-based ecology
curriculum in a multi-user virtual environment called Quest Atlantis served as the
primary curriculum, but incorporated liminal transitions for the purposes of this
dissertation. Enactments in a fourth and a sixth grade classroom were analyzed to
understand ways that these embedded activities both support learning and make knowing
visible. Corresponding design strategies were also examined in order to understand and
refine learners’ opportunities to transform scientific practices and evolve scientific roles.
These interpretive analyses focused on learners’ trajectories of participation with the
curriculum and the transformations arranged by liminal transitions. Findings consider
cases that illuminate how students leveraged liminal transitions to make meaning with
and across the curriculum and other cases that explore design tensions encountered in
arranging these activities. A multi-level assessment framework also generated a
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quantitative profile of individual learning in terms of formal scientific concepts and
learning standards. Assessment across these levels framed concepts and standards with
increasingly general relation to the curriculum that provides broader perspective on
learning and its general consequences. In order to better understand the impact of liminal
transitions, a quasi-experimental comparison contrasted these assessment outcomes with
a classroom that enacted the primary curriculum with unembedded formative assessments
and feedback. Effect sizes were consistently around 0.2 larger when the curriculum was
paired with liminal transitions, but differences were statistically unlikely. Conclusions
discuss participation in terms of the reciprocity between game player roles and practices
for productive transitions across and beyond curricula and designing for situative
generalizations.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
DEDICATION...............................................................................................................iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.............................................................................................v
PREFACE......................................................................................................................vi
ABSTRACT..................................................................................................................vii
LIST OF APPENDICES..................................................................................................x
LIST OF TABLES.........................................................................................................xi
LIST OF FIGURES.......................................................................................................xii
CHAPTER
1 INTRODUCTION....................................................................................1
2 LITERATURE REVIEW.......................................................................17
3 METHODS............................................................................................43
4 QUALITATIVE FINDINGS..................................................................97
5 DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS............................................................130
6 QUANTITATIVE RESULTS..............................................................149
7 CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS..................................................160
REFERENCES............................................................................................................173
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LIST OF APPENDICES
Page
Appendix A: Introductory Letter to Curriculum.........................................................189
Appendix B: Overview and Goals for Mission 2.5 Liminal Transitions.....................191
Appendix C: Text of Mission 3.5 Reports.................................................................193
Appendix D: Formative Assessment Condition Quizzes and Feedback......................195
Appendix E: Dates, Topics, and Duration of Site Visits for Each Study....................200
Appendix F: Themes, Categories, and Their Descriptions for Chat Logs and
Email Logs...........................................................................................202
Appendix G: Sample Content Log.............................................................................203
Appendix H: Analytic Categories for First Three Student Submissions (Quest 2,
2.5A, and 2.5B)....................................................................................204
Appendix I: Example of Sequenced Student Submissions With Codes.....................207
Appendix J: Study and Condition Means, Standard Deviations, and Effect Sizes......208
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