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Mid-Atlantic Regional Technology in Education Consortium
1301 Cecil B. Moore Ave.
Ritter Annex 9th Floor
Temple University - CRHDE
Philadelphia, PA 19122
800-892-5550
215-204-5130 (fax)
General Inquires:
Laurence Peters
Judith Stull
Technical Assistance:
Barry Mansfield
Professional Development:
Joan Pasternak
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Temple University Center for Research
in Human Development and Education |
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Boundary objects
MAR*TEC originally thought that RC’s role in the teacher training program was to bridge two large spaces of interaction: the classroom environment where the teachers were engaged in their apprenticeships and the academic environment related to their senior seminar at the university. The small subgroups successfully utilized the environment to document and provide access to their practices and to sustain dialogues. However, MAR*TEC’s interviews suggest that RC had become, for some teachers, a tool with diverse acquired purposes. In some cases, the collection of artifacts and reflections were perceived as threatening to teachers’ mentors since it revealed the private practices of their classrooms. In other cases, the artifacts caused great excitement in the children who viewed their worked displayed on the computer as having a unique value for others. Some practices were framed in the preferred light that potential employers could favor. |
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These observations are consistent with Star’s (1989) construct of boundary objects. Based on historical case studies of interdisciplinary scientific work involving both professional scientists and amateurs, Star and her colleagues found that participants in interdisciplinary collaboration: (1) cooperate without having good models of each other’s work; (2) successfully work together while employing different units of analysis, methods of aggregating data, and abstractions of data; and (3) cooperate while having different goals, time horizons, and audiences to satisfy. Star derives from these observations the critical role of boundary objects sitting in the middle of a group of actors with divergent viewpoints. MAR*TEC’s interviews document how the stories, samples of student work, and other materials collected by participating novice teachers through RC served as purposeful bridges among the spaces that they cross when interacting with collaborating partners, supervisors, parents, students, potential employers, and other members of the community. The challenge for the design of successful professional development programs and corresponding technological supports involve the understanding of how these different spaces shape the reasons and methods that define teacher participation.
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