Exploring Disciplinary Boundaries in Early Elementary Students’ Developing Practices

Abstract

In CSCL we often refer to knowledge in terms of "practices" to highlight how knowledge is performed in context rather than abstracted from it (e.g., Greeno, 1998). One aspect of context is the notion of disciplines such as science, math, and the language arts (Sawyer, 2006). To date, however, research that explores the relationship between knowledge and disciplinary context has typically focused within a single disciplinary frame, such as science (e.g., Banks et al., 2007). This paper aims to explore the influence of disciplinary boundaries between science and language arts on students' developing practices. We present data from a mixed-age first and second grade classroom where students collaboratively engaged with a book about honeybees from either a science or a language arts frame. Analyses of students' individual written critiques reveal how they consistently adapted their criteria for what makes a good representation based upon the disciplinary framing.