SYMP 340 - Rich artefacts at the boundary of the activity systems of teaching and research

This interactive symposium brings together researchers and practitioners (elementary and high-school teachers and pedagogical consultants) to examine the different ways that video data from authentic classrooms are interpreted in the respective and hybrid activities of research and teaching.
Most participants are from a research-practice partnership –PRACTIS (Partnership for Reflective and Collaborative Teaching, Inquiry and Support)– that includes a university-based research team and school-based pedagogical consultants and teachers, engaging in, and investigating, activities of: a) co-design of challenging learning activities, b) video capture of authentic classroom activities and, c) collaborative reflective conversations. Video-based artefacts documenting students’ work are used as boundary objects, allowing collaborative design and reflection as boundary activities between teaching and inquiry/research, mediated by rich artifacts from practice (mostly but not limited to video records of classroom events), that are experienced mostly through discourse, and that can be scaffolded by various facilitation processes. We share the perspectives on design and reflection as culturally mediated action, and investigate how to move “from individual reflection on action to joint reflection on collaborative activity” (Virkkunen  Ahonen, 2011).
Our analyses identify key elements of the activity systems of collaborative design and reflection, the socio-technical conditions enabling the productive capture and use of videos, the possible tensions and contradictions that emerge and how they are resolved, the mediating cultural tools, conversational manifestations and artefacts that are used, and how participants are responsive to features of the situations and develop adaptive forms of expertise.