Journal
Articles Doris Ash
Ash,
D. (in revision).
After
the Jigsaw is over:
Ash, D. (in
revision). Making sense of living things: The need for both
essentialism and activity theory. Journal
of the Learning Sciences.
Ash, D. Lombana, J. & Mai, T. (in preparation). Museum Educators as change agents: Re-examining the theory and practice of scaffolding in informal learning settings by focusing on shared responsibility. To be submitted to Science Education.
Published
Ash, D. (2007). Thematic continuities: Talking and
thinking about adaptation in a socially complex urban classroom. Journal
for
Research in Science Teaching
This paper is a treatise on the origins and
function of complex biological thematic content (thematic continuities)
in the
urban FCL classroom. I address thematic content origins within
cognitive
development, development over time in the classroom, and I discuss how
thematic
continuities are foundational for understanding adaptation. I also
discuss the
tensions surrounding everyday, hybrid, and scientific understandings,
and
outline how thematic continuities set the stage for understanding
adaptation.
Ash, D. (2004).
Reflective scientific
sense-making dialogue in two languages: The science in the dialogue and
the
dialogue in the science. Science Education 88: 855-884.
In this
paper I focus on the transition from everyday to scientific ways of
reasoning,
and on the intertwined roles of meaning-making dialogue and science
content as
they contribute to scientific literacy. I refer to views of science,
and how
scientific understanding is advanced dialogically.
Ash, D. (2004). How
families use questions at
dioramas: Ideas for exhibit design. Curator 47(1), 84-100.
This paper explores
the role of questioning in scientific meaning-making as families talk,
look and
gesture in front of realistic and artful dioramas at the Natural
History Museum
of Los Angeles County. The focus is on the ways questioning can either
enable
movement towards scientific understanding or hinder such progress. The
socio-cultural framework of this research emphasizes Vygotsky's
interpretation
of the zone of proximal development (zpd).
Ash, D.
(2003). Dialogic inquiry of family
groups in a science museum. Journal of Research in Science Teaching,
40(2), 138
- 162.
This
research illustrates the efficacy of a new approach for collecting and
analyzing family conversational data at museums and other informal
settings.
This article offers a detailed examination of a small data set (three
families)
that informs a larger body of work that focuses on conversation as
methodology.
The dialogic content of this work centers on biological themes,
specifically
adaptation.
This
research illustrates the efficacy of a new approach for collecting and
analyzing family conversational data at museums and other informal
settings.
This article offers a detailed examination of a small data set (three
families)
that informs a larger body of work that focuses on conversation as
methodology.
The dialogic content of this work centers on biological themes,
specifically
adaptation.
The goal
of this study is to explore new tools for analyzing scientific
sense-making in
out-of-school settings. Although such measures are now common in
science
classroom research, dialogically based methodological approaches are
relatively
new to informal learning research. Such out-of-classroom settings have
more
recently become a breeding ground for new design approaches for
tracking scientific
talk and ideas within complex data-sets. The research reported here
seeks to
understand the language people do use to make sense of the life
sciences.
Ash, D., Loomis, M.,
& Hohenstein, J. (2005).
"What does it eat?": Questions as resources for bilingual families
making sense of science in a Marine Discovery Center. Sinectica 26,
51-64.
Paris, S. G., &
Ash, D. (2002). Reciprocal
theory building inside and outside museums. Curator. 43: (3)
199-210.
Ash, D. (2007).
Using video data to capture discontinuous science meaning making in
non-school
settings. In Video Research in the Learning Sciences. Peter Lang Press.
This
chapter is part of a major new
text on the use of digital media in the learning sciences. My chapter
covers
how to collect and analyze complex digital data in a newly emerging
field in
informal learning settings. Many foremost researchers in the field
(Barron,
Callanan, Derry, Goldman, Pea, Rogoff, W.M. Roth) are included as
authors. This
chapter is the culmination of my hard-won experience in museums and
aquariums
since receiving the PhD, specifically outlining the importance of a
theoretical
framework for designing research methodologies.
Published Chapters