In its focus on social practices, the feature article presents an interesting theoretical framework for rethinking not only where and how knowing and learning in science education exhibit themselves but also we might change our own research practice. The framework is not new to me, as I have advocated it explicitly for more than 15 years. But over…

Although the importance of understanding the social and cultural processes mediating pre-service teachers' expansion of the power to act has been increasingly recognized lately, the way the concept of "agency" is portrayed in most of the studies focuses almost exclusively on the subject of activity and therefore, there is insufficient…

The aim of this study is to advance current understanding of the transactional processes that characterize students' sense-making practices when they are confronted with multiple representations of scientific phenomena. Data for the study are derived from a design experiment that involves a technology-rich, inquiry-based sequence of…

Constructivist epistemologies focus on ethics as a system of values in the mind--even when previously co-constructed in a social context--against which social agents compare the actions that they mentally plan before performing them. This approach is problematic, as it forces a wedge between thought and action, body and mind, universal and…

In cultural historical activity theory, the entities that make a system are not conceived as independent but as aspects of mediated relations. Consequently, an individual, a tool, or a community cannot be theorized in an independent manner but must be understood in terms of the historically changing, mediated relations in which they are integral…