Boundary Objects Research Articles

Proverbial economies of STS.

This article discusses examples from an extended family of aphorisms, stories, and themes that have circulated widely in STS and remain associated with the formation and integration of the field. Drawing upon Harvey Sacks's insightful remarks about features of everyday conversation, which he related to ancient practices in oral culture, we argue that familiar citation magnets in STS operate in many respects like proverbs, parables, and an extended family of neatly and memorably packaged viral articulations in ordinary language. After discussing the contingent production of proverbial truth, the article focuses on three well-known examples that combine memorable proverbs and themes with parables: Winner's account of the low parkway bridges designed by city planner Robert Moses to show that technology has politics; Pinch and Bijker's concise history of the bicycle to illustrate the social construction of technology, and Star and Griesemer's viral two-word theme of 'boundary objects' as artifacts that sustain collaboration across organizational contexts. The discussion of these cases suggests that different elements of these examples become the focus of subsequent citations and applications, and that ambiguities about the origins and meanings of the cited items opens new avenues for critical reflection on practicing citational justice and the nature of STS as an affiliative discipline.

Seeing the Whole Together Through Relational Mapping: A Method for Engaging in Complex Systems Change

Complex global challenges cut across organizational and sectoral boundaries, increasing calls for holistic responses. Seeing the whole across diverse stakeholders is challenging for participants in complex systems, yet doing so is essential for engaging effectively in systems change. A promising new method known as relational mapping, based on relational coordination theory, has been used to facilitate complex systems change. Here, we propose that relational mapping can be applied to help participants (1) see the whole in relation to the parts, (2) share their explicit and tacit knowledge, (3) engage in dialogue across distinct perspectives supported by the map as a boundary object, (4) reduce the impact of power differences, and (5) prepare to co-design interventions from multiple perspectives. This paper presents an illustrative case of relational mapping in the context of public administration in a South Carolina community engaging in complex systems change. Our analysis suggests a set of boundary conditions for the success of relational mapping, including the willingness of participants to seek integrative solutions to a conflict or problem and facilitation that is attentive to differential power and status among stakeholders. We conclude that relational mapping is a powerful, theoretically grounded method that enables the visual assessment of multi-level stakeholder relationships, preparing participants to engage in complex systems change and then present a template for use of relational mapping more broadly.

Grensekryssing i yrkesfaglærerutdanningen: Betydningen av studentenes utviklingsprosjekter

This article aims to explore how vocational teacher students’ work with development projects can create coherence between learning in the university and learning in teaching practice. Previous research indicates that students often perceive a lack of coherence between the academic knowledge culture in the university and the experiential knowledge they encounter in teaching practice. The study uses boundary crossing as a theoretical approach, and the results are based on interviews with vocational teacher students. The results reveal that their work with development projects strenghten programme coherence by linking the learning arenas university and teaching practice. The development projects also acted as boundary objects, facilitating the integration of the different knowledge cultures and practices. This study contributes to understanding the potential of development projects to create coherence between university and teaching practice in vocational teacher education. The results suggest the need for closer collaboration between universities and schools in supporting vocational teacher students’ work on development projects to enhance boundary learning.

Using boundary objects to enhance learning in history and develop students’ numeracy capabilities

ABSTRACT Informed citizenship in the 21st Century requires individuals to be numerate. In Australia, all teachers are expected to attend to numeracy inherent in the subjects they teach. Many teachers, however, find this approach challenging and may not see potential benefits for subject learning. Drawing on lesson vignettes and post-lesson interviews, a conceptual approach based on Wenger’s communities of practice was used to analyse the use of boundary objects by four secondary history teachers. Their use of boundary objects was categorised by their attention to the contextual and mathematical meanings of the artefact they used. Findings suggest that there is potential for teachers to concurrently enhance subject learning and develop students’ numeracy capabilities if they attend to both the contextual and mathematical meanings of the boundary objects they use. Research is needed into how numeracy is addressed in curriculum pedagogy courses. One aspect worthy of investigation is how boundary objects can be used effectively in subjects across the curriculum to enhance subject learning and promote numeracy development.

Jewellery Making, Boundary Objects and Creativity in Social Work

The use of the arts in social work is creating space to reimagine effective communication, meaningful relationships and social change. Peripheral to this growing body of knowledge is jewellery design and making, a lacuna that this paper addresses within the context of recovery journeys. The paper presents art as an activity which can lead to tangible outputs, understood as ‘boundary objects’ and as an embodied aesthetic and sensory experience, for building dialogical relationships. Using the concept of ‘boundary objects’ is a new, yet achievable ambition for social work. Insights are presented from a small qualitative study on the use of jewellery making for assisting women, who have experienced trauma, to develop a positive self-identity and confidence. Jewellery making is introduced as a method for reframing trauma narratives into tangible objects. Part of the women’s embodied experiences are situated in the jewellery, an object of adornment external to them, rather than remaining trapped inside their body. For social workers, identifying objects (a piece of jewellery, a photograph, or any range of items) that symbolises or contains meaning for service users, can unlock a conversation that can lead to a deeper understanding of the person, their past, present and future ambitions.

Teachers Learning On-the-Job Through Participation in an Organizational Routine: A Comparative Case Study of Three Curriculum Materials Adoption Processes for Elementary Science

ABSTRACT There is limited time for elementary teacher professional learning in science in order to meet the aspirational goals of current reform efforts. In this study, we investigated what and how teachers learn on-the-job to gain insight into modes of support less often included in teacher education design. Specifically, we studied elementary teachers’ participation in a system-level organizational routine: curriculum materials adoption processes (CMAPs). Using a communities of practice framework, we explored teacher learning in a comparative case study of three U.S. school districts’ CMAP routines, observing CMAP committee meetings and interviewing participants about their expeirences. We found that what teachers learned varied across each district’s CMAP. We argue this variation can be traced to two CMAP features: (1) teachers’ use of boundary objects and (2) their boundary spanning roles and structures. Results have implications for the design of educational systems’ organizational routines to more intentionally serve a dual role as a professional learning opportunity.

Bridging Academia and Practice with Digital Boundary Objects

ABSTRACT Extant research emphasizes the need for research artifacts to span the academic boundaries, to result in societal benefits. Digital boundary objects (DBOs), with their inherent ability of boundary spanning, are the key to translate research artifacts for non-academic audiences like practitioners. We explore the creation and dissemination of DBOs as a mechanism to bridge the epistemic divide between academics and practitioners. We employ the Gioia methodology and conduct in-depth interviews, netnography and archival data analysis. This method is apt, given our exploratory research objective of understanding the creation of DBOs through the lens of Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) theory. Our findings reveal a three-phase cyclical process model, termed epistemic framing for DBO creation. We identify DBOs as key in bridging the epistemic divide and the novelty of our research lies in identifying the iterative epistemic framing process model that helps in knowledge translation for societal advancement.

Reference architectures as boundary objects in the co-engineering of system properties: An empirical study

Reference architectures as boundary objects in the co-engineering of system properties: An empirical study

Unbounding the future: New directions for climate‐changed geographies

AbstractThis commentary reflects on the contributions that human geography has made to climate change research, as well as future directions for human geographic work on climate change. I suggest that one of the key achievements of the field is to render climate change a boundary object: an entity whose interpretive flexibility allows it to become a shared object of knowledge that, in principle, facilitates collaboration across disparate communities of practice. However, the ways in which that contribution has been made, and made possible, have effects that ripple elsewhere. While the subfield of political ecology and its historiographical methods have played vital roles in laying the intellectual foundations for human geographic work on climate change, and thus its ability to construct climate change as a boundary object in the first place, I suggest that they and other neo‐Marxian approaches to the study of the (climate‐changing) environment tend to diminish human geographic engagement with the future as an object of scholarly inquiry. To address that limitation and help push climate‐changed geographies in novel directions, I suggest that climate‐changed futures be engaged problematically. I then conclude with a discussion of key empirical domains—chiefly climate reparations and climate adaptation—where such problem‐oriented work may be productively applied.

Use of Focus Groups and Reflexive Thematic Analysis to Uncover the Essential Conditions for UK Built Environment Degree Apprenticeships

ABSTRACT Degree Apprenticeships within UK Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) organizations present a raft of unprecedented opportunities. However, little is understood on precisely how AEC Employer Organizations (EO’s) truly engage with Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s) in order to create “meaningful” Built Environment Degree Apprenticeships. Understanding this challenge and minutia of this engagement forms the starting trajectory of this work. To do this, and informed by Boundary Object Theory, an interpretivist approach was used to capture qualitative data from transdisciplinary focus groups – representing domain experts from AEC/HEI sector bodies. Primary data was evaluated using reflexive thematic analysis. An integrated inductive/deductive approach was used to examine nuance, subjectivity, understanding and meaning. Research findings culminate in the form of a thematic map, highlighting four essential conditions to support the delivery of UK AEC DA’s; specifically, the need for: (i) Onboarding, (ii) Structure (iii) Cooperation, and, (iv) Infrastructure. These findings identified that the knowledge needed to support engagement goes beyond existing acknowledged boundaries – ergo, that the corollary impact of these essential conditions require much deeper understanding than first thought. These findings form part of a wider study, the results of which will be reported in later works.

Climate risk maps as boundary objects for future forests

Climate change poses significant threats to ecosystems and biodiversity. Conventional management strategies often fall short, leading to uncertainties in addressing these challenges. Natural and environmental scientists play a crucial role by providing evidence-based guidance. Social science research, at the same time, highlights the complexity of transferring and applying knowledge across different social and professional groups and shows that further research is needed. Using a German case study, my research addresses this issue by examining the dynamics between predictive climate risk maps, intended as decision-support tool for forest management, the developing scientists, the receiving environmental managers and further political actors. Semi-structured qualitative interviews with representatives from these groups were conducted and analyzed, revealing that climate risk maps can function as predictive boundary objects, balancing flexibility and robustness. With their high level of visual and epistemic power, these maps generate knowledge tensions, facilitate interactions, and foster the implicit co-production of broader environmental management discourse. At the same time the maps are continuously contested, discussed, and updated through feedback, becoming themselves part of an ongoing informal co-productive process. This dual role creates ambiguity: they provide concrete answers to specific management related questions while highlighting simultaneously limitations that prompt more fundamental inquiries, driving an overall societal learning process. Hence, future efforts should enhance formal support for co-productive processes to ensure evidence-based advisory tools are scientifically robust, contextually adapted, and democratize knowledge dynamics through continuous dialogue, mutual learning, and integration of scientific as well as local knowledge.

Bridging science communication and open science—Working inclusively toward the common good

The 2020–2022 pandemic highlighted concerns about “information disorders”, pressing for approaches capable of guiding the science-society alliance toward a mutually beneficial direction. This essay advocates for and presents a framework proposing the combination of Open Science (OS) and Science Communication (SciComm) practices. OS encourages public access to scientific material, while SciComm has historically enabled public understanding of scientific knowledge. Despite their similar goals, these two communities are disconnected. We draw on the concepts of “boundary object” and “epistemic trust” to demonstrate how this framework could foster a bond between scientific expertise and public reason toward an informed and inclusive common good. The OS-SciComm framework is based on the notion that ensuring transparency in science also requires “bridging tools” that deal with the complexity of scientific lexicon and processes. It values scientific expertise, but does not undermine citizens' capabilities in information processing and their interest in accessing scientific outputs. Our proposal also acknowledges controversies involving open scientific materials during the COVID-19 pandemic and advises caution when drawing conclusions from cases that are often context-specific. The OS-SciComm framework requires innovative ideas, platforms and actions. We invite both communities to join us in this endeavor.

Deciding on “next steps” together: Using progress guides to better differentiate feedback for all in diverse middle school math and science classrooms

While researchers and practitioners have long known that differentiating formative feedback (FF) is a requisite for creating more equitable learning opportunities for students, less is known about how teachers plan for, enact, and reflect on differentiated FF dialogues with students individually, in small groups, or as a whole class—a lens on practice we refer to as “configurations”. This empirical, qualitative case study used a new FF framework to explore how middle-school math and science teachers engaged in FF dialogues with students in different configurations, modalities (written, spoken, nonverbal feedback), and directionalities (teacher-driven, peer-to-peer-driven, self-driven feedback). Findings from analyses of classroom videos, transcripts, and reflections on the use of criterion-referenced assessment tools, including a tool called a “progress guide”, found participants engaged in differentiated FF conversations with students more frequently when using scaffolds/tools. Teachers reported more confidence when using progress guides to launch one-on-one and small-group discussions of “first-draft” responses to tasks. The use of progress guides in student-driven self-assessment protocols also increased teachers’ sense of self-efficacy in providing differentiated feedback during class time. Results showed that equity-oriented feedback exchanges in high-needs schools centred on visible boundary objects such as progress guides helped teachers and students plan “next steps” with purpose and intention.

Codifying transformative learnings: Examining the codified boundary object characteristics that afford project-to-project learning between sustainability demonstrations

Sustainability demonstration projects, which bring emerging technologies closer to large-scale adoption through public-private collaborations, are critical for sustainable development and climate change response. These projects are motivated by knowledge development however immature practices are resulting in missed opportunities for project-to-project learning. This challenge is consistent with cross-domain findings that effective project learning is complex and rare, constrained by temporal, geographical and organisational barriers. A key approach to spanning scale-barriers and community-of-practice boundaries is the externalised sharing of codified learnings within boundary objects, where these objects require structural characteristics that afford project-to-project learning. To date, these characteristics have not been studied in sustainability demonstration contexts, forming a significant research gap. We conduct an integrative review of the cross-domain literature and, as a new contribution to knowledge, propose a reconceptualised 13-characteristic schema for codified boundary objects affording project-to-project learning between sustainability demonstrations. The study advances the theory of knowledge sharing from projects for sustainability by putting boundary object characteristics into context providing insight into enabling and restricting potential along with identifying key research gaps for future research.

Bridging Professional Practice and Academia: Using the Pilot Study as a Practice-Based Pedagogy in an EdD Program

Professional practice doctoral education is distinguished by its focus on practice-based pedagogies aimed at fostering students’ development as researching professionals—individuals who are adept at using evidence to tackle educational issues. To advance students’ research competence, the doctoral study should facilitate the integration of theoretical knowledge acquired in the program with their professional worlds, a process that can be considered as boundary crossing. Drawing upon the theory of boundary crossing, we used the pilot study as a practice-based pedagogy in an EdD course, which aims to link students’ professional practice with their developing scholarly practice. We explored how students encountered the boundary between professional practice and academia and how they navigated the tensions inherent in this boundary-crossing process. We found that the pilot study served as a boundary object, generating tensions at the boundary between students’ professional and academic worlds. In navigating the tensions, students utilized research as a mediating tool, leveraging productive dissonance, reflection, and idea sharing within Critical Friends groups. We draw implications about the use of the pilot study in professional practice programs to support students in their transition from practitioners to scholarly practitioners and researchers.

Continuity or Disruption? Rethinking Engagement in Multi-Stakeholder Forums Through the Lens of Boundary Objects

Multi-stakeholder forums (MSFs) are crucial for managing complex decision-making; yet ways for evaluating engagement, especially for Indigenous peoples, remain ambiguous. This study examines the Honduran Mosquitia, where conflict over the illegal occupation of Indigenous lands led to the creation and eventual dissolution of an MSF. It questions whether the continuity of formal dialogue structures signifies genuine engagement or if disruption might better indicate it. The study applies the lens of boundary objects—concepts or devices that enable collaboration among actors with differing agendas—to assess engagement. In Mosquitia, territorial governance served as a boundary object, fostering the establishment of an MSF. Government, donor, and Indigenous stakeholders had their distinct interests in supporting territorial governance. Indigenous stakeholders exited the MSF when their aims for securing land tenure were unmet, turning to civil disobedience to assert territorial governance. The MSF’s dissolution prevented the co-optation of territorial governance by government and donors, remaining a contentious term that more accurately reflected the tensions among stakeholders. This case shows how engagement might paradoxically be reflected in the MSF’s disruption.

Co-producing Sustainable Supply Chain Transitions: Proposing a template for interdisciplinary systemic service design facilitation

This article aims to explore the underutilised potential of systemic service design methods in providing the necessary overview and facilitating green transitions in sustainable supply chains by being a facilitator of the interdisciplinary process. We will introduce a ‘Mess/Gigamap’ template with an influence from Geels´ (2005)1 ‘Multi-Level Perspective’ model. In addition, we will show how ‘Mess/Gigamaps’ are tools that can aid conversations between stakeholders to visually understand the complexities that they are facing. The aim of this template is to enable the creation of systemic maps as boundary objects to facilitate discussions between multiple stakeholders.

‘Not elsewhere specified’: a case study of preservice teachers’ perceptions and practices of outdoor learning

ABSTRACT This case study premised that outdoor learning situates within a unique ontological category of where learning happens, distinct from curricular (what) and pedagogical (who/how) concerns of learning. By shifting preservice teacher learning experiences during mandatory teacher education methods courses outdoors, we conjured a boundary object for where learning occurs. We collected and analysed preservice teacher reflections generated from the outdoor learning experiences. Three overarching outdoor learning dimensions (OLD) were distilled from 90 reflection-outputs: outdoors as 1) experience, 2) concept, and 3) place. Discussion considered purposes of outdoor where in teacher preparation for 21st century learning in relation to the aim of inhabitancy, through the lens of useful learning. Useful learning was scoped as learning concerned with health and wellbeing, pro-environmental actions and beliefs, and experiential/inquiry-based learning.

Understanding the social construction of the metaverse with Q methodology

Following social constructivism, the Metaverse can be seen as a “boundary object,” allowing “interpretative flexibility” across communities while maintaining a “common identity” to facilitate interactions and consensus. Understanding the social construction of the Metaverse requires acknowledging diverse perspectives that shape the discourse surrounding it. This research employed an internet-based Q methodology study to examine such “boundaries” within the Metaverse discourse. The study involved 46 participants from 14 countries and diverse sectors within the global Metaverse industry, who engaged in online card ranking exercises using statements covering five essential aspects of the Metaverse: Terminology, Cultural Values, Societal Impact, Economics, and Regulation. The factor analysis revealed four prominent frames of perspective: 1) Debating Liberal Globalism; 2) Critiques of the Metaverse as a Threat to Humanity; 3) The Metaverse as Neoliberalization; and 4) the New Prometheans: Techno-Optimism in the Digital Revolution. These frames underscore polarized perceptions related to the political-economic aspects of Metaverse development, particularly concerning affordability, infrastructure limitation, and digital literacy, all crucial for preventing global divisions. The findings contribute to policy dialogues focused on the social impact of technology innovation. Additionally, this research provides hands-on experience in designing and implementing a digitalized Q methodology, resulting in more systematic and transparent Q exercise procedures.

Questioning the why and the how: Collective transformative agency of experienced teachers co-designing a justice-oriented high school introductory computing program

We report findings from qualitatively analyzing audio recordings and teacher-generated products from a two-day in-person collaborative design (co-design) workshop where nine experienced high school CS teachers revised parts of an existing introductory high school program toward justice. In response to our research question of how teachers demonstrated agency as co-designers, our analysis revealed that they collaboratively questioned the purpose, the “why,” and the approach, the “how,” and captured ideas in lesson templates and unit descriptions to transform future practice. We discuss co-design with teachers as openings to explore nuances of teachers’ visions for equitable CS education. We highlight the foundational longstanding relationships and politicized trust, and enabling features of the co-design space for equitable participation and joint creation of boundary objects to sustain ideas.