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In 1989, when I was still a graduate student, I read a chapter in an edited volume, authored by Roy Pea entitled, "Cognitive Technologies for Mathematics Instruction." It changed my life. In that chapter, Pea discussed the role of technologies as cognitive tools in the knowing and doing of mathematics. The basic thesis of his chapter is this: Technologies, even those as basic as paper and pencil, transform the practices of a field and fundamentally alter the ways in which the training and tutelage of novices to that field is accomplished.
From that moment on, I began to see technologies as more than mere tools for the means-end purposes of solving problems in say, engineering or physics, but as agents in the evolution of practices that bind individuals together in intellectual communities. In some sense, a community of practice can be thought of as a configuration of human and technological agents, organized in some fashion as to produce some material or intellectual products. In such a view, the technological agents carry important features of the discourse from one physical, human community to the next. In my own field, mathematics education for example, a spreadsheet program such as Excel performs important symbolic manipulations for the human agents who are interested in general patterns among variables, which are, in turn, represented by data points. The human researchers could perform the calculations or plots of the data, perhaps, but the tool allows the researchers to engage in other kinds of communal thought, such as, "how might this data be transformed to better reflect the relationship we are seeing" rather than to offload precious working memory on the tedium of plotting points on graph paper.
Moreover, because data can be displayed in numerous visual formats, using a tool such as Excel or SPSS or Data Desk, competing models can be compared to each other in an effort to weed out inappropriate interpretations of the data. The point of the discussion is this: The field of educational statistics has changed fundamentally, as a direct result of the advent of digital computing technologies, from one of hypothesis testing, to one of model generation (see for example Dugan & Behrens, 1998).
Indeed, this trend in arguably one of the most conservative fields in education research is echoed in the conduct of other fields. It can be said that, if the 1940s and 50s were characterized on refinement of major theories, and if the 60s through the 80s were characterized by the development of philosophical grounds for new models of thinking and behaving, that the 1990s on through the turn of the 21st century is characterized by the proliferation of models, made possible in part, by the memory, display, and calculational speed of the digital computer. These facilities, imbedded in the tool, allow researchers greater flexibility in generating conceptual models of the phenomenon they are studying, displaying and communicating these models, and sometimes, rarely, testing their models empirically.
Moreover, because the researchers accept the manipulations of the data performed by the software as legitimate, they are, in fact, accepting the programming as embodying important elements of their culture—mathematical and logical structures that are assumed to hold under certain conditions. In cases such as this, the tool, as an agent in the conduct of the discourse, becomes a defacto member of the discourse. In fact, entirely new sets of practices can develop through coordination of diverse individuals, powerful tools, and meaningful problems together in a discourse. The field of educational technology is but one example. Without digital technologies, the field would not exist, at least not as we now know it. We would revert back to the days of the Audio/Visual specialist that worked with filmstrips and 16mm movies. The development of new technologies, in essence created a new set of problems, and a new field emerged to address these problems.
I am suggesting through this analogy, that research on education, in general is a discourse, with its own tools and practices. The primary avenue for widespread communication of the work of its members has been, historically, the conference and the journal. Both of these avenues are being widened and fundamentally altered through the utilization of digital technologies. In the American Educational Research Association annual meeting, for example, we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of sessions utilizing video, interactive software, and even teleconferencing as part of their structure. I don't mean just reporting on the uses of these technologies, but utilizing these tools to facilitate the presenter(s) making their case, and increasing the understanding and interactivity of the audience. Through this application, the very structure of the discourse of educational research is being altered. Journals have been a bit slower in moving towards this end, but there is a growing number of quality publications that utilize computing technologies as a medium for display and distribution of research reports. In fact, the newest Special Interest Group in the AERA is devoted to researching and discussing issues of electronic reporting (see http://aera-cr.ed.asu.edu/).
There appear, at this time, to be six primary advantages to establishing electronic journals as the primary avenue for scholarly reporting.
First and foremost, electronic journals, like their papyrus and cellulose counterparts, render heretofore covert thoughts and practices of a culture overt. The purpose of writing in journals, apart from forcing the researcher to clarify his or her own ideas, is to provide other scholars a "window" into the researcher's work. Text does this in narrative fashion, more or less temporally linear. Graphics do this by providing a snapshot of an event, or by summarizing a complex process into a simpler diagram. Whereas in the past, such textual descriptions and static graphics could be used to communicate ideas, events, and practices across time and space, we now have the luxury of digital video, audio, software simulations, real-time and asynchronous "chat," and interactive software, either singly or in combination. These new forms of representation and depiction afford our communiity a different kind of dynamism in describing a method, or reporting results.
Second, these new forms of inscription (e.g., Roth & McGinn, 1998), make possible the explosion of information across the boundaries of traditional fields, and facilitate new ways of looking at old ideas. A different kind of synergy is established among scholars of different fields when an episode is seen from multiple perspectives. Behavior and thought, for example, once viewed as two different ways of understanding learning, are now being seen as not quite so different after all. Neither precedes or follows the other: They can be thought of as semiotic, providing layer upon layer of meaning to existence.
Third, this synergism may, if we so choose, take the form of collaborative knowledge building. Current electronic journals are experimenting with threaded discussion groups and extended commentary on fundamental ideas. It will only be a matter of time when "whiteboarding" will become a common way for scholars to interact as they react to the work of others in an electronic "manuscript."
Fourth, threaded discussions of this sort afford the community what it has not had in the past: A continuous record of a learning history. Arguments are traceable from inception to resolution. While we still do not have the facility to capture thoughts as they morph from one idea to the next, we can capture the arguments made by scholars over time, and retrace them to the seminal articles that spurred them on. Indexing systems of the past allowed us to create vast libraries of information. Indexing systems of the future will allow us to actively trace ideas.
Fifth, the economics of electronic journals will soon dictate their ascendence to dominance in our culture. Cellulose pages are becoming too costly to produce to continue to publish the numbers of small-audience, arcane research journals that now exist. Electronic journals eliminate the cost of printing to the publisher, and instead, pass this cost down to the reader (if the reader chooses to make a hard copy of the document). Moreover, because the economics of the internet, at present, allow universities, government offices, and public and private agencies to administer their own servers, distribution costs are eliminated. Granted, magnetic media has not yet found a way to create relatively permanent archives of electronic copy (15 to 20 years is the top life expectancy for magnetic record, as I gather from my colleagues in solid state science) and so, some form of hard bindery will be in existence for some time. However, the practice of printing primarily on paper and distributing through the surface and air-mail services will be severely eroded regardless of what we in the profession do or say. The economics will dictate our actions.
This brings up issues of power and intellectual boundaries. While those scholars reading this journal will, by and large, hail electronic scholarly reporting as a significant advancement in the field of education research, there are still some hard decisions we have to make to insure that the technological revolution will be to our advantage, and not erode into a Dave 'n Jen's Bar, Grill, and electronic education research journal affair. Issues of integrity, standards, and focus will become paramount if the electronic forum is to be of any scholarly use. The use of electronic media has the potential to democratize access to powerful ideas and practices in education. It also has the potential to allow a multitude of undisciplined ideas be published under the guise of "education research," making it difficult for the novice or uninitiated to discern what is and what isn't legitimate educational scholarship.
These are the new challenges of scholarly communication. If we buy Pea's (1987) argument that technologies transform thinking, then we must be prepared for the challenges that such transformations engender.
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