Paper based rapid prototyping of a dilemmatic pedagogy for the interpretation of narrative texts in classrooms

Abstract

Educational design-based research (DBR) posits classrooms as ‘learning ecologies’, and is distinguished by its ambition to design rather than simply describe them. However critics point to a lack of specificity as to the ontological status of these environments and in the argumentative grammar by which theory and method are coordinated to this end (Sandoval 2014). This thesis advances a model for DBR at programme level, coordinating ethnographic methods and single subject experiments in the design and research of learning ecologies involving the interpretation of narrative in classrooms. Section One begins with the ‘teaching dilemma’ that inspired the research. This is then reconceptualised as a subtype of ‘interpretive dilemma’- a dynamically changing problem space whose structural and relational dimensions are realised in the symbols by which people position themselves and others in the course of their interactions. On this basis, interpretive dilemmas are proposed as a unit of analysis for the research of learning ecologies in general and, specifically, those that may remediate students’ restricted orientation to narrative texts. Each of the following three sections is given over to a different DBR output relating to the design and research of a dilemmatic pedagogy for narrative interpretation. Section Two advances a ‘domain theory’ which models the role code may play in the realisation of interpretive dilemmas in school. Section Three sets out the ‘design methodology’ by which prototype materials derived from this theory can be researched and developed. Microgenetic analysis of video recorded rapid prototyping sessions in Section Four serves to identify ways that the ‘design framework’ can be addressed to particular micro-ecologies during the subsequent field trial proposed in Section Five.