Stories of, for, and as Designing

• In Event: 61.086 - Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: 61.086-12 - Educational Design as a Holistic Endeavor

Abstract

Story plays myriad roles in collaborative inquiry, designing and learning, but it remains unclear if there are consistent ways that telling stories in these professional contexts supports or blocks progress. This study investigates a range of educational settings to investigate how stories functioned in the designing. Meeting transcripts were selected from a range of cases to deliberately contrast disparate settings. Across these settings we found that stories could be categorized as three types and in turn functioned differently in the designing. Stories of designing tended to narrow the design space. Stories for designing tended to leave the space intact but did not necessarily lead to progress. Stories as designing tended to alter the design space and generally led to progress.

Authors

• Richard J. Reeve, Queen's University

• Vanessa Svihla, University of New Mexico