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…

Design research is strongly associated with the learning sciences community, and in the 2 decades since its conception it has become broadly accepted. Yet within and without the learning sciences there remains confusion about how to do design research, with most scholarship on the approach describing what it is rather than how to do it. This…

This study investigated how interaction with peers influenced the ways students managed uncertainty during collaborative problem solving in a 5th-grade class. The analysis focused on peer responses to individuals' attempts to manage uncertainty they experienced while engaged in collaborative efforts to design, build, and program robots and…

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…

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'…

Despite the fact that teaching is increasingly referred to as a design science, teacher education programs devote relatively little time to developing expertise in the design of instruction, beyond lesson planning. Yet today's teachers not only plan lessons that incorporate existing classroom activities and instructional resources, they also…

Teachers' involvement in curriculum design is essential for sustaining the relevance of technology-enhanced learning materials. Customizing--making small adjustments to tailor given materials to particular situations and settings--is one design activity in which busy teachers can feasibly engage. Research indicates that customizations based…

Teachers are not typically involved as participatory designers in the design of technology-enhanced learning environments. As they have unique and valuable perspectives on the role of technology in education, it is of utmost importance to engage them in a participatory design process. Adopting a case study methodology, we aim to reveal in what…

Increasingly, teacher involvement in collaborative design of curriculum is viewed as a form of professional development. However, the research base for this stance is limited. While it is assumed that the activities teachers undertake during collaborative design of curricular materials can be beneficial for teacher learning, only a few studies…

Teachers often find themselves in a position in which they need to adapt technology-enhanced materials to meet the needs of their students. As new technologies--especially those not specifically designed for learning--find their way into schools, teachers need to be able to design learning experiences that use these new technologies in their local…

While the benefits of teacher involvement in designing technology enhanced learning are acknowledged in the literature, far less is known about shaping that involvement to yield those benefits. Research is needed to understand how teachers learn through design; how teacher design activities may be supported; and how teacher involvement in design…

This article reports on a qualitative study of the construct of shared epistemic agency, investigated in the context of collaborative instructional design activities of university students. The aim of the study is to shed light on the notion of shared epistemic agency and to create empirical grounding for its theoretical description. The current…

This paper introduces the MAPLET framework that was developed to map and link teaching aims, learning processes, learner expertise and technologies. An experimental study with 65 participants is reported to test the effectiveness of the framework as a guide to the design of lessons embedded within larger units of study. The findings indicate the…

The purpose of this research is to investigate the relative effectiveness of using three different question-prompt strategies on promoting metacognitive skills and performance in ill-structured problem solving by examining the interplay between peer interaction and cognitive scaffolding. An ill-structured problem-solving task was given to three…