In his article "Principled Practical Knowledge: Not a Bridge but a Ladder," Carl Bereiter (2014) argues that theoretical knowledge is too shallow to support the generation of innovative learning activities. He makes a case for principled practical knowledge (PPK)--"principled know-how and know-why"--to fulfill this practical…

"Practicality Studies" (Janssen, Westbroek, & Doyle, 2015/this issue) starts with a critical commentary on "Principled Practical Knowledge: Not a Bridge but a Ladder" (Bereiter, 2014) but consists in the main of an essay on what the authors consider to be "really" practical knowledge for teachers. The gist of…

We question widely accepted practices of publishing articles that present quantified analyses of qualitative data. First, articles are often published that provide only very brief excerpts of the qualitative data themselves to illustrate the coding scheme, tacitly or explicitly treating the coding results as data. Second, articles are often…

The much-lamented gap between theory and practice in education cannot be filled by practical knowledge alone or by explanatory knowledge alone. Principled practical knowledge (PPK) is a type of knowledge that has characteristics of both practical know-how and scientific theory. Like basic scientific theory, PPK meets standards of explanatory…

A growing body of research has examined the experiential grounding of scientific thought and the role of experiential intuitive knowledge in science learning. Meanwhile, research in cognitive linguistics has identified many "conceptual metaphors" (CMs), metaphorical mappings between abstract concepts and experiential source domains, implicit in…

We use a concept of framing to explain 3 cases in which participants initially lacked mutual understanding but then achieved significant mutual understanding. The cases were all consistent with a pattern of "positional framing" that includes a human participant who is inquiring, which we call a "listener", and a "source", which may be another…

We describe findings from a research partnership involving a global airline manufacturing company (The Boeing Company), and learning scientists and aeronautical engineers from the University of Washington. Our starting point for the partnership focused on an 8-hour introductory composites course that was designed for company employees. In phase…

We compared how 8 religious believers (historians and clergy) and 8 skeptics (historians and scientists) read a series of documents on 2 topics: the Biblical Exodus and the origins of the first (American) Thanksgiving. Readings by religiously committed historians differed from those of their non-religious peers. Navigating between the competing…

In this article, we describe the design principles undergirding "productive failure" (PF; M. Kapur, 2008). We then report findings from an ongoing program of research on PF in mathematical problem solving in 3 Singapore public schools with significantly different mathematical ability profiles, ranging from average to lower ability. In the 1st…

Many types of learning require the mapping of information across situations. The proposed organizational framework extends the cognitive study of mappings across problems to include mappings across representations, solutions, and sociocultural contexts. I apply one-to-one, one-to-many, and partial mappings to analyze representative cases that…

This study compared the affordances of 4 multimedia learning environments for specific learning processes. The environments covered the same domain but used different instructional approaches: (a) hypermedia learning, (b) observational learning, (c) self-explanation-based learning, and (d) inquiry learning. Although they all promote an active…

Some intensive quantities, such as slope, velocity, or likelihood, are perceptually privileged in the sense that they are experienced as holistic, irreducible sensations. However, the formal expression of these quantities uses "a/b" analytic metrics; for example, the slope of a line is the quotient of its rise and run. Thus, whereas students'…

Evaluating the impact of instructional innovations and coordinating instruction, assessment, and testing present complex tensions. Many evaluation and coordination efforts aim to address these tensions by using the coherence provided by modern cognitive science perspectives on domain-specific learning. This paper introduces an alternative…

In this article we describe and illustrate an analytical perspective in which educational policies are viewed as designs for supporting learning. From the learning design perspective, a policy comprises 3 components that we term the what, how, and "why of policy": the goals for the learning of members of the group targeted by the policy, the…

Linking research to a compelling societal interest can build financial commitments to research, bring increased attention to findings, and grow support for scaling up impacts. Among many compelling societal interests that learning scientists can cite--such as increasing the quality of life, preparing citizens to make decisions in a complex world,…