Iris Tabak
Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Education, Faculty Member
- Computer Science, Psychology, Languages and Linguistics, English Literature, Health Sciences, Cognitive Science, and 12 moreHuman Computer Interaction, Discourse Analysis, Theatre Studies, Web Design, Teaching and Learning, Pedagogy, Behavioral Sciences, Medical Education, Information Society, Digital Divide, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), and Design (Theatre Studies)edit
- Dr. Iris Tabak holds a B.S.E. in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in Learning Science... moreDr. Iris Tabak holds a B.S.E. in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University. She is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Learning Sciences (JLS) with Josh Radinsky, and is a former President of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS).
Dr. Tabak develops models of learning in complex domains, emphasizing the role of domain-specific strategies and epistemologies. She also develops learning technologies and distributed learning environments involving computational, material and human agents (see for example, The Galapagos Finches published in the BioQuest Library). Her research is grounded in sociocultural theory. She studies the ways in which knowledge is distributed in computational, mental, material and discursive representations. She examines how culture shapes these representations, and how interactions produce knowledge and identities.
Academic distinctions include:
Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies - AERA Division C Jan Hawkins Award (2006);
Mandel Fellowship for Research in Education (2004);
Guastalla Fellowship for the Advancement of Science Education, Rashi-Sacta Foundation (2000-2003);
NARST Outstanding Dissertation award (2001);
NIMH Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA (1999-2000);
Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellow (1998-1999);
Educational Testing Service Predoctoral Research Fellowship (Summer 1996).edit
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Is public engagement with science deliberative and evidence‐based? The public is often perceived as underprepared to use data and susceptible to partisan and emotional manipulation. Consequently, educational efforts focus on the ability... more
Is public engagement with science deliberative and evidence‐based? The public is often perceived as underprepared to use data and susceptible to partisan and emotional manipulation. Consequently, educational efforts focus on the ability to identify reliable information. We posit that effective engagement with science goes beyond this and hinges on data literacy. We leveraged the unique circumstances of COVID‐19, where diverse people inundated with pandemic‐related data representations in the media needed to make consequential decisions, to examine whether people use data and what factors affect such use. In a survey of a representative Israeli adult sample, participants reported their information habits and beliefs before and during COVID‐19. On being presented with graphs and datasets, they answered data literacy and COVID‐19‐related functional reasoning assessments (e.g., would you travel abroad?). Data literacy distinguished those who incorporated data from those who did not. Yet, participants incorporated moral, social, and economic considerations at all data literacy levels, suggesting that people may be deliberative even when they do not attend to quantified data. Moreover, participants' trust in science and data interpretation competence were key factors mediating the relationship between self‐efficacy in data interpretation skills and the incorporation of data in reasoning. The findings extend beyond COVID‐19 to a broader understanding of the factors influencing public engagement with quantitative representations. Rather than focusing solely on remediating data interpretation, we suggest that educative efforts work on multiple fronts and that cultivating trust in science is key to a broader, more deliberative engagement with science.
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Discusses the design of policy documents, their nature, structure, and role, for enhancing implementation; draws on the idea of pattern language
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Recent analyses point to the importance of communication and policy representation in understanding and fostering reform success. I propose adopting the idea of a pattern language (Alexander, Ishikawa, Silverstein, Jacobson,... more
Recent analyses point to the importance of communication and policy representation in understanding and fostering reform success. I propose adopting the idea of a pattern language (Alexander, Ishikawa, Silverstein, Jacobson, Fiksdahl-King, & Angel, 1977) as a profitable direction for ...
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Abstract: In this paper, we explore cross‐domain versus domain‐specific scientific epistemological understanding. Research about relationships between such understandings shows mixed results. The ambiguities may result from the... more
Abstract: In this paper, we explore cross‐domain versus domain‐specific scientific epistemological understanding. Research about relationships between such understandings shows mixed results. The ambiguities may result from the instruments ...
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This paper examines whether model annotations can foster disciplinary literacy in higher education. Using history as a test case, 102 education undergraduates participated in a training and transfe...
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Abstract The substantive and the political are part of most educational endeavors. Researchers tend to be cast as more powerful in interactions between research and practice. This structural historical hierarchy is at the backdrop of... more
Abstract The substantive and the political are part of most educational endeavors. Researchers tend to be cast as more powerful in interactions between research and practice. This structural historical hierarchy is at the backdrop of research-practice partnerships (RPP) and threatens to marginalize practitioners’ perspectives. Drawing on Bakhtin and Goffman and responding to a set of papers that transcend these structural constraints, I propose productive tension between alterity and affinity as a framework for analyzing and designing equitable and generative RPP. In broaching different design goals, set in different contexts, and employing different strategies, the papers in this special issue each depict a productive RPP in which all participants were able to contribute and influence each other, as well as advance efficacious and just educational programs. Part of RPPs’ contribution is having the values and practices of both research and practice intermingle and shape educational design and enactment. Therefore, what is needed is an interactional structure that invites participants to draw on their communities of affiliation while establishing a climate in which interactions operate on a level plane and each participant’s perspective is invited and valued, but open to face-saving modifications. I suggest that such conditions arise from a productive tension in the dialectic between alterity—the distinction between research and practice—and affinity—the kinship and identification with shared goals between research and practice.
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In this article, I argue that when design and intervention are central to the research process, context as a construct is problematized. How we define context can facilitate or impede our ability to construct rich and veridical accounts... more
In this article, I argue that when design and intervention are central to the research process, context as a construct is problematized. How we define context can facilitate or impede our ability to construct rich and veridical accounts of learning. A design stance may ...
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Participatory Design to Support Students’ Web-based Inquiry of Complex, Socio-scientific Problems.
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Who we are is often a function of who is around us: the self is in many ways defined by the other with whom it is compared, contrasted, and co-constructed. The articles in this issue, representing scholarship from three countries, examine... more
Who we are is often a function of who is around us: the self is in many ways defined by the other with whom it is compared, contrasted, and co-constructed. The articles in this issue, representing scholarship from three countries, examine processes of positioning and identity construction in three subject areas. They offer interesting insights into perspective-taking and the negotiation of relationships of power, and the ways people learn through these processes:
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In this article, I examine distributed scaffolding, an emerging approach in the design of supports for rich learning environments intended to help students develop disciplinary ways of knowing, doing, and communicating. Distributed... more
In this article, I examine distributed scaffolding, an emerging approach in the design of supports for rich learning environments intended to help students develop disciplinary ways of knowing, doing, and communicating. Distributed scaffolding incorporates multiple forms ...
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International audienc
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Research Interests: Psychology and Scaffold
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Research Interests: Computer Science, Science Education, Computer-Based Learning, Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, Classroom Interaction, and 10 moreNatural Selection, Inquiry Learning, Learning Environment, High School, Computer Based Learning, Science Learning, Domain Specificity, Natural Phenomena, Support System, and Student Teacher
Research Interests: Engineering and Scaffold
Discusses the design of policy documents, their nature, structure, and role, for enhancing implementation; draws on the idea of pattern language
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Scaffolding is often strongly associated with the structure of classroom educational software (Quintana et al., 2004), despite originally not involving classrooms or technology (Wood et al., 2007). Tabak argued that scaffolding can be... more
Scaffolding is often strongly associated with the structure of classroom educational software (Quintana et al., 2004), despite originally not involving classrooms or technology (Wood et al., 2007). Tabak argued that scaffolding can be productively distributed across a learning environment’s varied educational resources, proposing a “synergistic scaffolding” design pattern: “different supports that augment each other; they interact and work in concert to guide a single performance of a task or goal” (Tabak, 2004). This symposium argues that synergistic scaffolding is particularly apt for informal learning environments like museums, where visitors draw on a diverse array of technological, social, and physical resources while learning. Examples spanning collaborative data exploration, multi-context inquiry learning, mixed-reality simulations, and augmented reality exhibits are presented. Each details the educational resources either intentionally designed into the environments or appro...
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We propose that ethnographic studies that precede, but inform, design, can be a productive addition to CSCL design practices. We anchor our claims in a case example of an ethnography of an undergraduate history course. We describe how the... more
We propose that ethnographic studies that precede, but inform, design, can be a productive addition to CSCL design practices. We anchor our claims in a case example of an ethnography of an undergraduate history course. We describe how the ways in which learners self-organized and created practices for producing, sharing and reproducing knowledge in the course can serve as a blueprint for CSCL design. Such learners’ counterculture practices may not readily emerge in participatory design discussions. This approach identifies points of contact between pre-existing collaborative practices and pedagogical considerations. Designers can then infuse pedagogical innovations into the activities that participants already value and perform, achieving benefits akin to participatory design.
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This conceptual paper examines the educative potential of social media as a platform for everyday on-demand computer-supported collaborative informal learning. We propose three dimensions: reliability, learnability and... more
This conceptual paper examines the educative potential of social media as a platform for everyday on-demand computer-supported collaborative informal learning. We propose three dimensions: reliability, learnability and critical-construction, as a framework for investigating collaborative learning within naturally occurring social media. We use YouTube as a focal case. Our review of literature on YouTube as a space for informal peer learning suggests that postvideo deliberative comments hold much promise as precursors for co-construction of knowledge. However, questions remain concerning the veracity of user-contributed videos, and the adequacy of this medium for different learning goals. Nonetheless, investigating the educative value of non-formal person-to-person knowledge sharing on social media can be an important direction for CSCL research in its aim to support learners in formal environments for future life-long learning and civic engagement.
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Abstract This paper presents research that is part of a broader project called BGuILE (Biology Guided Inquiry Learning Environments) on supporting learning through student-directed inquiry in high school biology classes. In this paper we... more
Abstract This paper presents research that is part of a broader project called BGuILE (Biology Guided Inquiry Learning Environments) on supporting learning through student-directed inquiry in high school biology classes. In this paper we describe how student-directed inquiry in an environment designed to focus students on key principles of evolution can provide them with opportunities for challenging their alternative beliefs, and forming new, scientific conceptions.