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Reed Stevens Associate Professor, Cognitive Studies in Education Overview of my research interests My research program focuses on learning and activity in a wide range of places and situations. Past and current settings for my research include classrooms, design-centered and scientific workplaces, and science museums. Across this spectrum of places, I'm interested in understanding how people make and use knowledge and where that knowledge comes from. Since I believe we need theories of learning that don't presume that schools are the only or the best place for learning to occur, I keep the settings for my research diverse. Context is a core issue for research. As a former teacher, I am however very interested in the places we design for learning to happen. A key element of research program is thinking about how what I learn about learning in diverse settings can help rethink and reenvision how particular learning environments—like schools and museums—are organized. In this regard, I also design things for people to learn with—curriculum, activities, and technologies. My strongest committment as a researcher is to detailed studies of naturally-occuring activity. Were I pressed to find a label for my approach, I would probably choose 'interactionist' since I want to understand how people interact with each other and with things like computers and the representations and tools they use to do their work. To understand these interactions in fine detail, I typically collect audio-video records of people working and analyze them with a variety of methods adapted from cognitive science, science studies, and ethnomethodology/conversation analysis. Other methods I use in conjunction with these are long-term ethnographic fieldwork and interviewing. Another core component of my work is that it is often comparative. Currently I'm leading a project with three colleagues at University of Washington that is studying how students and teachers understand the similarities and differences between science and history as ways of working, talking and writing. Our more specific focus is on argumentation, by which I mean how people use discourse practices to be convincing. In the late 90s, as part of the Math@Work project UC Berkeley, I compared how mathematics was learned in used in classrooms and in professional work places. This work has implications in particular for how we think about what counts as math and how we should think about mathematics in school. The final major componet of research program is a focus on technology in context. There are long traditions of laboratory-based studies of technology use, but especially in education, ethnographically-grounded studies are still infrequent. I do these kinds of studies because I want to know if technology really helps people think, work, and learn and if so how. I also think of 'technology' more broadly than just computers. My research argues that paper-based representations, video, and even hands and eyes also need to be understood as technologies for work and learning. I also have designed a piece of software that allows people to collect digital video clips and annotate them with talk or gestures.These video traces as I call them have a lot of possible uses for teaching and learning. So far, I and some of my colleagues at UW and around the country have been using Video Traces in museums and in higher education. If any of this interests you and you want to learn more, dig into the materials linked to this site or contact me at reedstev@u.washington.edu
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