The substantive and the political are part of most educational endeavors. Researchers tend to be cast as more powerful in interactions between research and practice. This structural historical hierarchy is at the backdrop of research-practice partnerships (RPP) and threatens to marginalize practitioners' perspectives. Drawing on Bakhtin and…

This special issue joins the recent but growing effort to expand knowledge in the learning sciences, by examining the notion of participation in teacher-researcher collaborative design (co-design). Co-design is not just a means to an end; it is a context where professional learning happens. Each of the seven papers describes teacher-researcher…

In the literature on numerical cognition, the presence of the capacity to distinguish between numerosities by attending to the number of items, rather than continuous properties of stimuli that correlate with it, is commonly taken as sufficient indication of numerical abilities in cognitive agents. However, this literature does not take into…

Research on spatial navigation is essential to understanding how mobile species adapt to their environments. Such research increasingly uses virtual environments (VEs) because, although VE has drawbacks, it allows for standardization of procedures, precision in measuring behaviors, ease in introducing variation, and cross-investigator…

Mobility provides the fabric of everyday life but is rarely considered part of learning and is almost never used as relevant, experiential content in teaching. This special issue integrates ideas and efforts across different fields into a more unified framework to study and design for what we call Learning on the Move. Approaches used in these…

This essay examines the role of public education in the process of place-remaking that relies on a false separation between teaching and issues of race, politics, and power. I construct a historical case study of my hometown that presents a counter narrative, presented by students, of race and legacy in the context of a public school and the…

This article introduces an accessible approach to implementing unmoderated remote research in developmental science -- research in which children and families participate in studies remotely and independently, without directly interacting with researchers. Unmoderated remote research has the potential to strengthen developmental science by: (1)…

What responsibilities do researchers of learning have in the wake of Trump's election and the proliferation of far-right, populist nationalism across the globe? In this essay, we seek to prompt and engage a dialogue about the political role and responsibilities of our field at this historical moment. First, we situate the social hierarchies that…

This commentary focuses on the ways the set of articles in this issue, taken together, engage an important and much needed conversation in design-based approaches to inquiry: that is, what does it mean to do work in and with nondominant communities? Drawing on cultural historical activity theory, decolonizing methodologies, and indigenous…

This article is intended as a companion document to the more focused report provided by the author at the 2017 American Education Research Association (AERA) Conference as part of the Technology, Instruction, Cognition & Learning Special Interest Group's Symposium on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs). Both the AERA talk and this article…

This paper summarizes key stages in development of the Structural Learning Theory (SLT) and explains how and why it is now possible to model human tutors in a highly efficient manner. The paper focuses on evolution of the SLT, a deterministic theory of teaching and learning, on which AuthorIT authoring and TutorIT delivery systems have been built.…

Computer technology has been used for over 50 years to tailor learning experiences to the needs and interests of individual learners at all levels of instruction. It provides adaptation and individualization that is difficult, if not impossible to apply in a classroom of 20-30 students. This article provides a brief background and discussion about…

This article summarizes the current status of AuthorIT authoring and TutorIT delivery platforms available at www.TutorITweb. It is based on two recent publications, and includes a short history of developments along with references and relationships to the goals established for the GIFT framework established by the Army Learning Model (ALM). Also…

Developmental theory has long emphasized the importance of linking perception, cognition, and action. Techniques designed to record the spatial and temporal characteristics of hand movements (i.e., "manual dynamics") present new opportunities to study the nature of these links across development by providing a window into how perceptual,…

Developmental psychologists are increasingly writing articles, columns, books, and blogs for the general public, but this type of writing can be challenging. Here, I provide guidance on how to communicate scientific ideas to nonscientists, touching on what content to cover, how to organize that content, what language to use, and what tone to…