In a recent article published in this journal, Williams ("Educational Studies in Mathematics, 92," 59-72, 2016) offers a critique of neo-Vygotskian perspectives exemplified in recent work on the "funds of knowledge" and on "cultural-historical activity theoretic" perspectives. The critique has great value in that it…

There is considerable agreement about the fact that the presence of researchers in the classroom mediates teaching and learning. Why "should" two very different forms of human activity, one designed to study the other, interact and mediate each other? In this article, we propose cultural-historical activity theory as a framework for understanding…

Science educators are confronted with the challenge to accommodate in their classes an increasing cultural and linguistic diversity that results from globalization. Challenged by the call to work towards valuing and keeping this diversity in the face of the canonical nature of school science discourse, we propose a new way of thinking about and…

The purpose of this article is to describe the history of a state-sponsored salmon enhancement project in British Columbia and to explicate the development of the former using cultural historical activity theory. We make thematic the notion of inner contradictions, which express themselves outwardly as a function of both quantitative and…

This ethnographic study of teaching and learning in urban high school science classes investigates the ways in which teachers and students talk, gesture, and use space and time in interaction rituals. In situations where teachers coteach as a means of learning to teach in inner-city schools, successful teacher-teacher collaborations are…

Employed the actor network theory to examine the transformation of a grade-four classroom community as new resources and practices became available. Found that the diffusion and enculturation metaphors are insufficient to model important aspects of learning in a student-centered classroom. (MOK)

Information processing models do not account for much of human competence in everyday scientific and lay contexts. Situated cognition models account better for competence in widely differing situations. In situated cognition models, the purpose of science education must be reconceived as preparing citizens to participate in public enactments of…