Adopt an activist research paradigm: simultaneously create and study changes in learning with new cognitive and educational tools¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 2 claims (2 for) · 1 study (1 theoretical), q1 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 2 claims rest on one study

Description¶

Pea recommends an "activist research paradigm" in which researchers do not merely observe existing practice but simultaneously create new cognitive and educational tools and study the resulting changes in the processes and outcomes of human learning. The urgency he attributes to updating education's goals and methods motivates this combined design-and-study approach.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Researchers must build or introduce new cognitive and educational tools while studying learning processes and outcomes as those tools are used.

Constraints¶

• Motivated by the article's argument that education's goals and methods need urgent updating; no empirical validation of the paradigm is reported in the available text.

Target Learners¶

• learners using newly created cognitive and educational tools

Target Learning Goals¶

• changes in processes and outcomes of human learning with new tools

Affordances¶

• Computer As Reorganizer Of Mental Functioning

Claims¶

• Cognitive technologies serve as instruments of cultural redefinition, changing rather than just amplifying what people do [+W]
• Software analyses are presented as illuminating advantages of the reorganizer view for new visions of computers' cognitive benefits [+W]

Related Strategies¶

• Use scientific visualization to link the aims of education to the practices of science through exploratory, inquiry-driven learning

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Roy D. Pea. (1985). Beyond Amplification: Using the Computer to Reorganize Mental Functioning. Educational Psychologist, 20(4), pp.167-182. https://telearn.hal.science/hal-00190536