Inventing Interventions: Cases from CoVis--An Analysis by SES

This paper presents the preliminary results of ongoing case study research in the Learning through Collaborative Visualization Project (CoVis) testbed. The goal of CoVis is to promote project-enhanced science pedagogy. The project focuses on three areas: (1) project-enhanced science teaching and learning; (2) developing communities of practice; and (3) providing a facilitative technological infrastructure as a means for transforming science education. The purpose of the case study research is to understand how local schools invent CoVis. The notion of inventing CoVis arises from the recognition that innovations are never adopted whole-cloth; rather, they are adapted by members of local communities to meet their own needs. Teachers, administrators, and technology coordinators at eight CoVis schools were interviewed about their first year of participation in CoVis. Results show dramatic differences among practices invented between high and low socioeconomic schools. Those differences are examined through three lenses. First, local school capacity is examined vis-a-vis constraints and affordances that bear on local inventions. Second, invention is examined with regard to the three phases of the CoVis program model. Finally, the practices of two teachers (one from a high and one from a low socioeconomic school) are contrasted to shed more light on how study-wide factors from the earlier analyses bear on particular teachers' practice. Contains 15 references. (Author/PVD)