Integrating Social, Conceptual and Embodied Perspectives on Reasoning in Networked Physics Classroom

This dissertation comprises three empirical studies of learning in university Physics classrooms supported by networks of handheld devices. The first study investigates the relation between task-specific and conceptual knowledge, and the relation between individual and group-level understandings. To this end, I apply a theory of perspectival understandings to a case of a group of collaborators who hold different perspectives on their activity, and yet are able to come to a consensus on conceptual questions. The goal of my analysis is to uncover not only the processes by which the group constructs meaning together, but also the processes by which this meaning is organized, by the individuals and by the group, into conceptual understandings related to the disciplinary concepts intended to be addressed by our designed learning environment. I demonstrate the utility of the perspectival framings theory for characterizing individual understandings as well as their relation to group processes of co-constructing knowledge. I argue that the students' distinct perspectival framings of their activity create opportunities to coordinate and make connections across a variety of representations of concepts, and argue that such coordinations are central to a deep understanding of Physics.;In my second study, I investigate how modern computing and networking tools enable new approaches to supporting collaborative learning in Physics. While most computer-based simulations currently used in physics classrooms target individual or whole class instructional configurations, this chapter focuses on technology designs and learning activities to support learning in small groups. I presents an approach to distributing simulations of physical phenomena across the devices of several students in order to support collaborative learning. Two empirical cases are presented in order to highlight some of the ways in which the networked and distributed nature of the designs influences student learning about physics concepts.;My final study has two aims: to understand how prior embodied experience is recruited in a particular setting for reasoning, and how scientific concepts are abstracted from these discrete, concrete experiences and then related to one another to do conceptual reasoning. I investigate those questions in analyses of episodes of conceptual reasoning in which learners make evident aspects of prior embodied experience in speech and gesture, for example in invoking the experience of participating in a "Stadium Wave" in reasoning about the behavior of a simulation of mechanical waves. I argue that in communicating conceptual relations to one another, learners coordinate schemes of action and perception from prior embodied experiences with aspects of their material setting, and demonstrate to one another specific ways of seeing concepts and performing reasoning with them.