Examination of the systemic properties and forms of interaction that characterize classification and categorization reveals fundamental syntactic differences between the structure of classification systems and the structure of categorization systems. These distinctions lead to meaningful differences in the contexts within which information can be apprehended and influence the semantic information available to the individual. Structural and semantic differences between classification and categorization are differences that make a difference in the information environment by influencing the functional activities of an information system and by contributing to its constitution as an information environment.

Educational research is not very influential, useful, or well funded. This article explores why and suggests ways that the situation could be improved. Our focus is on the processes that link the development of good ideas and insights, the development of tools and structures for implementation, and the enabling of robust implementation in realistic practice. We suggest that educational research and development should be restructured so as to be more useful to practitioners and to policymakers, allowing the latter to make better-informed, less-speculative decisions that will improve practice more reliably.

We live in an era when everyday activities are shaped by environments that are not only artificial—almost half of humanity lives in cities—but also mediated. Emotional and cognitive activities in all levels and segments of society are increasingly vested in information-rich venues supported by television, radio, telephone, and computer networks. Even in very remote areas, hunters and farmers watch satellite broadcasts and play battery-operated video games. And in the depths of the Amazon River basin, tribes use tiny video cameras to document territorial encroachments and destruction of rain forest habitat. 10.1 OVERVIEW This chapter explores the metaphor of media as lived environments. A medium can be considered an environment to the extent that it supports both the perception of opportunities for acting and some means for acting. This environmental metaphor can help us understand how media users exercise their powers of perception, mobility, and agency within the constraints

The computer metaphor of cognitivism that has had such a strong influence on cognitive science over recent decades seems to be confronted (again) by a competitor: the brain metaphor put forward by connectionism (e.g. [McClelland and Rumelhart 1986] and [Sejnowski et al. 1988]). Connectionism assumes that mental phenomena can be explained in terms of the parallel activation and interaction of a large number of units (model neurons). These units are linked by connections (artificial synapses) which modulate the transmitted activity. Knowledge is represented in these connections between the units and learning takes place by adjusting their strength. An important, and much emphasized, aspect of connectionist models is their emergent behaviour. The massive parallel interaction of a large number of simple units can lead to qualitatively different and more interesting forms of behaviour. Successes of this connectionist approach range from models of human

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Distributed cognition provides a means of describing the co-ordination of collaborative activity. A single framework is applied to examine the interactions between people, the tools they use, and the environments that their activities are situated within. The resultant analyses show how the system resources are applied to result in problem solving activity. Examples from fieldwork are used to explore these issues. The paper critically evaluates DC, exploring the problems and the benefits that such an approach brings to understanding the organisation of information in its contexts.

In the debate between simple inference heuristics and complex decision mechanisms, we take a position squarely in the middle. A decision making process that extends to both naturalistic and novel settings should extend beyond the confines of this debate; both simple heuristics and complex mechanisms are cognitive skills adapted to and appropriate for some circumstances but not for others. Rather than ask “Which skill is better? ” it is often more important to ask “When is a skill justified? ” The selection and application of an appropriate cognitive skill for a particular problem has both costs and benefits, and therefore requires the resolution of a tradeoff. In revisiting satisficing, we observe that the essence of satisficing is tradeoff. Unlike heuristics, which derive their justification from empirical phenomena, and optimal solutions, which derive their justification by an evaluation of alternatives, satisficing decision-making derives its justification by an evaluation of consequences. We formulate and present a satisficing decision paradigm that has its motivation in Herbert Simon’s work on bounded rationality. We characterize satisficing using a cost-benefit tradeoff, and generate a decision rule applicable to both designing intelligent machines as well as describing human behavior.

Over the last several years, researchers have begun to appreciate the ways in which questions of interest to personality and social psychologists can be addressed with neuropyschological case material (e.g., Klein & Kihlstrom, 1998; Klein, Loftus, &

During the 1990s, the teaching of mathematics became the subject of heated controversies known as the math wars. The immediate origins of the conflicts can be traced to the “reform ” stimulated by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics. Traditionalists fear that reform-oriented, “standards-based ” curricula are superficial and undermine classical mathematical values; reformers claim that such curricula reflect a deeper, richer view of mathematics than the traditional curriculum. An historical perspective reveals that the underlying issues being contested—Is mathematics for the elite or for the masses? Are there tensions between “excellence ” and “equity”? Should mathematics be seen as a democratizing force or as a vehicle for maintaining the status quo?—are more than a century old. This article describes the context and history, provides details on the current state, and offers suggestions regarding ways to findaproductive middle ground.

The goal of our research is to develop computer systems that support designers' collective creativity; such systems support individual creative aspects in design through the use of representations created by others in the community. We have developed two systems, IAM-eMMa and EVIDII, that both aim at supporting designers in finding visual images that would be useful for their creative design task. IAMeMMa uses knowledge-based rules, which are constructed by other designers, to retrieve images related to a design task and infers the underlying "rationale" when a designer chooses one of the images. EVIDII allows designers to associate affective words and images, and then shows several visual representations of the relationships among designers, images and words. By observing designers interacting with the two systems, we have identified that systems for supporting collective creativity need to be based on design knowledge that (1) is contextualized, (2) is respectable and trustful, and (...