In this paper, the author describes an ethnographic study of a graduate-level practicum at a large Midwestern university in order to examine one of the ways urban planners develop expertise. The graduate students in the practicum were guided in the production of a site plan for a developing area by a planner with 34 years of planning experience.…

In his recent bestseller The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman argues that countries like the United States can no longer compete in the global economy on the basis of making and selling commodities. Their competitive edge increasingly comes from how well they produce products, services, and technologies that are new . . . special . . .…

This paper examines how middle school students developed understanding of transformational geometry through design activities in Escher's World, a computationally rich design experiment explicitly modeled on an architectural design studio. Escher's World was based on the theory of pedagogical praxis (Shaffer, 2004a), which suggests that preserving…

In this paper, we argue that new computational tools problematize the concept of thought within current sociocultural theories of technology and cognition, by challenging the traditional position of privilege that humans occupy in sociocultural analyses. We draw on work by Shaffer, Kaput, and Latour to extend the analytical reach of activity…

This ethnographic study explores the underlying structure of the design practices in the Oxford Studio, a design studio course taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Architecture. The study describes elements of the practices in the Oxford Studio and then analyzes the connections among these elements at three levels: (a)…