Stories as Prototypes for Interdisciplinary Learning

Abstract

Although recent research has emphasized the importance of understanding science practices and how people teach and learn them, much of this is set within mono-disciplinary classrooms, providing limited vision for how people might learn from one another in the context of an interdisciplinary lab. We present data from participant observation collected over a three-year period in an interdisciplinary scientific research laboratory as a lens into how people can learn science from one another. We depict how the participants used stories as a means to prototype their ideas over time, and how their approach to treating these stories as tentative and contingent supported them to make progress and learn together.