Impact Craters and Generative Partnerships

• In Event: Tracing the Contours of Having an “Impact”: Reflections From Learning Sciences Faculty

Abstract

Purpose: Impact is a concussive word. It brings to mind images of automobile accidents, hammer blows, and craters left on the surfaces of celestial bodies. The impacted object is indelibly transformed, often through instantaneous moments of catastrophic violence. The conceptual metaphor of impact provides subtext when we talk about researchers, funding agencies, and policy makers seeking to transform target education systems. Fortunately, the learning sciences has provided a richer and more generative set of frameworks for thinking about the relationship between academia and broader educational systems. Among these, research-practice partnerships (Coburn & Penuel, 2016), design-based implementation research (Fishman et al., 2013), and participatory design research (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016) have been the most “impactful” for my own thinking. Over the past ten years, I have been working with a variety of educational partners including schools, districts, libraries, and out-of-school programs. Here I briefly share three characteristics in common across all of the most successful of these relationships and argue for a stance of humility when it comes to understanding impact.

Perspectives and Theoretical Framework: My research involves the design of curriculum, technology, and other educational resources that bring the literary forms of computing (such as programming languages) into conversation with other cultural forms of literacy (such as music and art). As literacies intersect they create space for reinterpretation and mutual transformation. Two quick observations about literacy: First, literacy, and the educational systems that support it, have historically been used as both tools of oppression and empowerment (Vee, 2017). Second, cultural movements of empowerment have often been defined by a subversion of dominant literary forms and conventions (Author, 2020). In my work with partner organizations, I have been interested in how dominant literary forms of computing might be appropriated and culturally reinterpreted to shift the intellectual property lines away from the academy (and computer science departments) and into emerging alternative computing cultures (see also diSessa, 2018).

Data and Results: Reflecting on research data collected from a variety of projects, the most successful (and impactful?) community partnerships have involved three characteristics. First, they have been responsive to specific needs of partner organizations. For example, a partner organization needed help with a summer camp program evaluation to provide evidence of support to funding agencies. That need shifted over a period of years to programmatic and conceptual support. Or, a school district reached out for help developing and implementing K-8 computer science curriculum. Second, while neither of these requests fit perfectly with my own research interests in computational literacy, there was sufficient space for parallel and co-constructed agendas that provided mutual benefit. Third, as the relationships developed, I was able to use my position in academia (especially in the role of grant writer) to distribute funding and resources largely controlled by the University through longer-term planning.

Significance: While these three characteristics have significant overlap with other learning sciences frameworks mentioned above, they help support a rhetorical shift in perspective on how we think about impact with community partner organizations.

Author

• Michael S. Horn, Northwestern University