Adaptation Begets Adoption: How an Unusual Educational Innovation Became Part of the Regular School Day

• In Event: 53.030 - FUSE Studios: Exploring the Adoption and Sustainability of an Informal STEM Education Innovation in and out of School

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the first phases of adoption of an innovative educational program. The paper traces the associations among actors (human and non-human) in an ongoing research-practice partnership that has led to the stabilization of this program (called FUSE Studios) as part of the school day in a large school district. The research question our case study addresses is how a new actant (i.e. the FUSE Studio) was incorporated into a standing and relatively stable actor-network (i.e. the traditional public school day)? Given that FUSE can be characterized as an alternative learning infrastructure (Stevens et al, 2016), making it a highly unusual actant in the context of traditional schools, an analysis of its stabilization represents an interesting case study of the adoption and adaptability of an educational innovation.

The study employs actor network theory (ANT, e.g., Latour, 2005) to conceptualize the adaptation of FUSE and call attention to the socio-material aspects of the processes of adoption and spread, largely undocumented in the existing literature. The study also employs the notion of mutual appropriation (e.g., Downing-Wilson, Lecusay, & Cole, 2011) to show how both sides of the research-practice partnership made adjustments during the course of implementing FUSE in the school district, which in turn is argued to have led to its adoption and spread.

The data for this study comes from open-ended interviews (Patton, 2002) with key personnel working on both sides of the FUSE research-practice partnership; this includes the FUSE program coordinator, its two creators/founders and district coordinators and administrators.

During the time period analyzed for this paper (Spring 2013 - Summer 2016) the implementation of FUSE in the district expanded significantly. Starting as an out-of-school program in just a few schools, FUSE spread and stabilized into a in-school class at the elementary and middle school levels for all students in the district. In addition to the district and university actors, important nonhuman actors in this expansion were the 3D printed objects made by students in the district’s early FUSE studios. Our analysis suggests that these material objects circulated among students, some in FUSE and some out, and sparked parents of children not yet doing FUSE to contact school and the district leadership to ask why their children were not doing FUSE. As a result, the district responded by providing more opportunities for the students to do FUSE. Along the way this expansion was accommodated on the district level by the creation a new administrative position to support the implementation of FUSE, the addition of a no-grade course to the district curriculum and in new lines of communication among FUSE studios for sharing practices in this novel environment. At the same time, on the university side the expansion was accommodated by developing new facilitation training and online facilitator tools in the FUSE online environment. In sum, adoption and spread within the district was supported by mutual adaptations on both sides of the research-practice partnership, adaptation supported by the flexible structuring of FUSE model.

Authors

• Jaakko Hilppö, Northwestern University

• Reed Stevens, Northwestern University

• Kemi Jona, Northwestern University