Use Of Boundary Objects Research Articles

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.

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.

Using boundary objects and methodological island (BOMI) modeling in large-scale agile systems development

AbstractLarge-scale systems development commonly faces the challenge of managing relevant knowledge between different organizational groups, particularly in increasingly agile contexts. Here, there is a conflict between coordination and group autonomy, and it is challenging to determine what necessary coordination information must be shared by what teams or groups, and what can be left to local team management. We introduce a way to manage this complexity using a modeling framework based on two core concepts: methodological islands (i.e., groups using different development methods than the surrounding organization) and boundary objects (i.e., artifacts that create a common understanding across team borders). However, we found that companies often lack a systematic way of assessing coordination issues and the use of boundary objects between methodological islands. As part of an iterative design science study, we have addressed this gap by producing a modeling framework (BOMI: Boundary Objects and Methodological Islands) to better capture and analyze coordination and knowledge management in practice. This framework includes a metamodel, as well as a list of bad smells over this metamodel that can be leveraged to detect inter-team coordination issues. The framework also includes a methodology to suggest concrete modeling steps and broader guidelines to help apply the approach successfully in practice. We have developed Eclipse-based tool support for the BOMI method, allowing for both graphical and textual model creation, and including an implementation of views over BOMI instance models in order to manage model complexity. We have evaluated these artifacts iteratively together with five large-scale companies developing complex systems. In this work, we describe the BOMI framework and its iterative evaluation in several real cases, reporting on lessons learned and identifying future work. We have produced a matured and stable modeling framework which facilitates understanding and reflection over complex organizational configurations, communication, governance, and coordination of knowledge artifacts in large-scale agile system development.

Bridging School and Practice? Barriers to the Integration of 'Boundary Objects' for Learning and Assessment in Clinical Nursing Education.

In clinical health professions education, portfolios, assignments and assessment standards are used to enhance learning. When these tools fulfill a bridging function between school and practice, they can be considered 'boundary objects'. In the clinical setting, these tools may be experienced as time-consuming and lacking value. This study aimed to investigate the barriers to the integration of boundary objects for learning and assessment from a Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) perspective in clinical nursing education. Nineteen interviews and five observations were conducted with team leads, clinical educators, supervisors, students, and teachers to obtain insight into intentions and use of boundary objects for learning and assessment. Boundary objects (assessment standards, assignments, feedback/reflection/patient care/development plan templates) were collected. The data collection and thematic analysis were guided by CHAT. Barriers to the integration of boundary objects included: a) conflicting requirements in clinical competency monitoring and assessment, b) different application of analytical skills, and c) incomplete integration of boundary objects for self-regulated learning into supervision practice. These barriers were amplified by the simultaneous use of boundary objects for learning and assessment. Underlying contradictions included different objectives between school and practice, and tensions between the distribution of labor in the clinical setting and school's rules. School and practice have both convergent and divergent priorities around students' clinical learning. Boundary objects can promote continuity in learning and increase students' understanding of clinical practice. However, effective integration requires for flexible rules that allow for collaborative learning around patient care.

Cultivating Data Practices Across Boundaries: How Organizations Become Data-driven

AbstractIn this paper, we analyze the efforts of a public healthcare business intelligence unit to implement and disseminate their data products and thus make the healthcare organization more data-driven. The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork in a healthcare business intelligence unit (the BIU) whose mission is to improve healthcare efficiency and quality by making data and data analyses available to healthcare managers and staff. Their primary products consist of a data warehouse and Data Reports, both providing curated and daily updated data for healthcare staff to analyze and visualize. We conceptualize these Data Reports and the data warehouse as boundary objects through which cooperation around data between various users is achieved. Our focus is on the BIU’s efforts to introduce and promote the use of boundary objects to healthcare staff while providing them with the competencies to use them in practice. Efforts that we conceptualize as collaborative boundary work through which a new joint field of working with data is created between the BIU and healthcare staff. Based on the analysis of the ethnographic fieldwork, we point to three important aspects in creating this new joint field: Mobilizing interest, building local capabilities, and propagating data locally. The paper makes three contributions: It adds to our understanding of how new joint fields can be cultivated through collaborative boundary work to make healthcare data-driven; it contributes to the emergent field of data work studies; and finally, it adds to the largely normative literature on business intelligence and self-service business intelligence through an ethnographic analysis of its efforts to make healthcare data-driven.

Enabling Collaborative Research in Project Management by Creating Gioia Data Structures as a Boundary Object

This process article reports on the use of Gioia data structures as a visual boundary object in project management research. Gioia data structures work as effective boundary objects that span a research team’s geographical distance in a virtual setting as an artifact for promoting visual collaboration in project management research. We demonstrate the use of boundary objects as generative tools for cross-disciplinary teams to share a common design method. While boundary objects have been used in project management studies, we extend their use to support collaborative research in project management.

Achieving a shared understanding in the creative industries: freelancers’ use of boundary objects in collaborative innovation projects

This paper examines how freelancers in the field of the creative industries capture and distil their clients’ needs and wants in collaborative innovation projects. Our empirical data from sixteen collaborative product-development processes led by freelancers in Finland and Spain allowed us to identify that boundary objects were critical for the achievement of a shared understanding at the beginning of the development process. In the later stages, the use of these objects decreased drastically and dialogue became the focus. The existence of a project match – whether the project was relevant and interesting for the freelancer – and a personal match – perceived similarity with the client in terms of thought and sense-making processes – were crucial to ensure engagement. From a managerial perspective, this paper stresses the importance of finding a personal and project match, highlights the role of boundary objects to create a shared understanding and reinforces the importance of dialogue in development processes and collaborative innovation.

Designing a Serious Game for Scrum Learning

Scrum approach is now an important component of project management courses in universities. Experiential learning approaches as serious games seem to be more effective for Scrum learning since they have the advantage of providing students with an opportunity of encountering complex, realistic project situations. However, these educational games often lack clear specifications as to how they are to be incorporated within an experiential learning approach following a systematic instructional design. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework that shapes serious games design, providing guidelines that allow integrating mechanisms of transfer aligned with the nature of knowledge. These transfer mechanisms rely on a “boundary perspective” with the use of boundary objects and boundary actors as a means to fostering social exchange during the game. Our framework is tested through the design of a LEGO serious game, MindScrum, to strengthen Scrum learning. We present the design principles of the game and discuss its effectiveness in the learning process.

A Changing Climate for Knowledge Generation in Agriculture: Lessons to Institutionalize Science-Policy Engagement

Effective science-policy engagement efforts are crucial to accelerate climate action. Such efforts should be underpinned by high-quality knowledge generation that enhances salience, credibility and legitimacy of research results. This is particularly important for the agricultural sector. Agriculture has been identified as a priority for climate action. The sector also constitutes well-established institutions set up to help achieve food and nutrition security. Institutionalizing high quality knowledge generation for climate change adaptation within these institutions presents a major opportunity to catalyze climate action within the sector. To contribute to insights about this institutionalization, we draw on and develop Cash et al.'s 2002 success conditions for enhancing salience, credibility and legitimacy: (1) increased accountability, (2) use of boundary objects, (3) participation across the boundary, (4) mediation and a selectively permeable boundary, (5) translation, and (6) coordination and complementary expertise. We examine how these success conditions apply in a major global case of agricultural research for development under climate change: the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). We explore these success conditions in the wider context of CGIAR reform and response to climate change as the international system for Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D). Our results specify and confirm the practical relevance of the six success conditions for institutional design and reform, but also point to the need to complement these with two inductively-derived success conditions: effective leadership and presence of incentives. To institutionalize these success conditions among AR4D institutions, there is an urgent need to create a conducive environment that enables the development of context-specific science-policy engagement strategies, along with leadership development and efforts to break traditional disciplinary silos which constrain user-oriented knowledge production.

At the temporary-permanent interface: Overcoming knowledge boundaries with boundary objects

There is no shortage of literature on managing complex projects. However, we lack an understanding of projects in which the complexity goes beyond technical, financial and time-related challenges. We report on two Nordic business school accreditation projects, where the major management challenge is the knowledge boundaries institutionalized deep into the ethos of the schools. We focus on the project team’s use of boundary objects – a communication device across social groups – to expose and overcome knowledge boundaries materializing at temporary-permanent interface. We identify three progressively more challenging boundary object uses: informative, interactive and integrative. Consequently, we suggest a dynamic approach to boundary objects wherein their use evolves throughout the project life span as a consequence of the lived “in situ” experiences.

Using Boundary Objects to Co-Create Community Health and Water Knowledge with Community-Based Medical Anthropology and Indigenous Knowledge

This article explores how Indigenous Knowledge and medical anthropology can co-construct community health knowledge through boundary work and the use of boundary objects. It will highlight how community-based participatory research (CBPR) in medical anthropology can help co-develop methods and strategies with Indigenous research partners to assess the human health impact of the First Nations water crisis. We draw on a case study of our community-based approach to health research with Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation community stakeholders and McMaster University researchers. We highlight how framing a co-constructed health survey as a boundary object can create dialogical space for Indigenous and western academic pedagogies and priorities. We also explore how this CBPR anthropology approach, informed by Indigenous Knowledge, allows for deeper foundations of culturally centered health to guide our work in identifying current and future community health needs concerning these ongoing water contamination and access issues. Through three health survey versions, priorities and research questions shifted and expanded to suit growing community health priorities. This led to collaborative action to communicate specific messages around water contamination and access across governance, community, and institutional boundaries. We demonstrate how our co-constructed approach and boundary work allows for the respectful and reciprocal development of these long-term research partnerships and works in solidarity with the Two-Row Wampum (Kaswentha) treaty established by the Haudenosaunee Nation and European settler nations.

Developing sustainability learning in business school curricula – productive boundary objects and participatory processes

Sustainability learning is holistic and complex as it draws on diverse disciplines and can be interpreted differently within individual pedagogies. Embedding sustainability across and within business schools relies on developing suitable boundary objects. These may include representations such as models, frameworks or classificatory schemes that are malleable enough to be adapted for use within the disparate disciplines and pedagogies, yet durable enough to be recognisable and to maintain consistency across them. Boundary objects thus allow the sharing of ways of knowing or practice across various social boundaries. This paper outlines how participatory curriculum development processes can enable sustainability to be embedded in a business school curriculum. Distinct phases of the process were marked by different ways of knowing, as disciplinary-specific academics developed and embedded sustainability into and across curricula. Boundary objects were both outcomes and productive facilitators of this process. They acted as catalysts and attracted ongoing processes of dialogue, debate and meaning-making between these academics. The institutional context provided enabling conditions to legitimize outcomes from the participatory process. The process may be replicable in other business schools by the use of boundary objects.

Boundary spanners: Negotiating connections across primary care and domestic violence and abuse services

Improving access to support for people experiencing domestic violence and abuse requires better connections between healthcare services and specialist domestic violence and abuse (DVA) support agencies. We examined the work involved in restructuring the relationship between primary care and specialist DVA support services. This was part of a broader study of the implementation of a general practice DVA training and support programme (IRIS). We conducted an ethnography in two different UK areas where the IRIS programme was being delivered. We investigated the work done by specialist DVA workers (Advocate Educators) in the dual role of providing training to GPs and advocacy support to patients. Drawing on concepts of boundary actors and boundary objects, we examined how interactions between clinicians and patients changed after the introduction of the IRIS programme. The referral pathway emerged as a boundary object, meeting a shared ambition of general practitioners and patients to distribute responsibility for addressing DVA. However, maintaining this as a boundary object-in-use required significant, and often unseen, work on the part of the Advocate Educator as boundary spanner. Our study contributes to scholarship on boundary work by highlighting the role of marginal boundary actors in maintaining the use of boundary objects among disparate groups.

Orchestrating conflict in teams with the use of boundary objects and trading zones in innovation-driven engineering design projects

While teamwork has been a central concern in engineering education, little research has systematically examined how conflict is managed in engineering teams of students. Socio-constructivism provides a solid base to explain how teamwork can foster innovation through the use of cultural artifacts, such as “boundary objects.” The purpose of this paper describing the anatomy of negotiation within several teams of engineering students located in universities of Northern California and Santiago de Chile from 2010 to 2017. We propose the concept of “conflict orchestration” to explain the dynamics of engineering teams working on innovation-driven engineering design challenges. A context sensitive qualitative research design was deployed using an ethnographic approach to the study team negotiation patterns observed in 11 teams of engineering students from Northern California and Santiago de Chile. The methodological focus was on identifying commonalities in the use of boundary objects and trading zones emerging from the students’ team interaction. Our findings illustrate two distinct strategies that the engineering teams adopted using boundary objects. We describe the use of Sticky Notes and Third Platforms. Finally, we explore students’ perceptions of the educational gain of PBL engineering design courses. The relevance of this study is threefold. First it conceptualizes a teamwork phenomenon that energizes innovation through scaffolded conflict. We also explore how this concept is enacted by engineering teams in two different cultural sites. Finally, we provide bottom-up strategies that can be implemented in other undergraduate engineering design programs.

Imagination, Brokers, and Boundary Objects: Interrupting the Mentor–Preservice Teacher Hierarchy When Negotiating Meanings

The mentor–preservice teacher hierarchy, that privileges mentor teacher talk and experience, often dominates mentor–preservice conversations. To realize the full potential of teacher education approaches designed to engage preservice and mentor teachers together in shared learning and teaching tasks, attention is needed to better understand the dynamics and implications of mentor–preservice teacher interactions. We analyzed how and when preservice and mentor teachers introduced ideas to group conversations and whose ideas were taken up by the group during a co-learning task. We found that mentor teachers tended to dominate group sense-making. However, preservice teacher use of imagination, the actions of teacher educators as brokers, and the use of boundary objects temporarily interrupted the dominant hierarchy. We conjecture that these moments raised preservice teacher status within the group so that mentor teachers took up preservice teachers’ ideas. Implications for promoting more equitable preservice teacher participation in sense-making with mentor teachers are discussed.

Design principles for addressing wicked problems through boundary crossing in higher professional education

ABSTRACT To an increasing extent, society requires professionals to cross boundaries in order to deal with wicked problems. However, little is known about how interventions in higher professional education (HPE) foster learning through boundary crossing in the context of addressing wicked problems. Drawing upon the three-dimension model of wickedness by Head and Akkerman and Bakker’s model of the dialogical learning mechanisms of boundary crossing, this study aims to generate conjectures for design principles for the design of educational practices that will foster students’ skills for addressing wicked problems through boundary crossing. This study applied a multiple case study design addressing six existing practices in HPE. The research questions were: (1) What characteristics of wicked problems are present in the selected educational practices? (2) How does the boundary crossing take place in the selected educational practices? (3) How is student learning during boundary crossing fostered in the context of dealing with the characteristics of wicked problems? Data were derived from document study, semi-structured interviews, and observations. The study conjectures that learning experiences at boundaries in the open-ended, joint effort of addressing wicked problems should be fostered and elicited by balancing and leveraging constructive tension and by making use of boundary objects and brokers.

Boundary Objects as the Missing Link in the Orchestration of Resources: An Exploratory Study of Dassault Aviation Mirage IV and Rafale Programs

In this contribution, we investigate the use of boundary objects (Star and Griesemer) for the orchestration of resources (Teece). We propose a comparative case study elaborating on two Dassault Aviation military fighters under an abductive approach. In this contribution, we elaborate on the micro-foundations approach. Our contribution discusses several properties of boundary objects in relation with the orchestration of resources: type, granularity, openness, malleability, and completeness. We conclude that boundary objects are critical to orchestration. Their properties explain why they diversely impact on sensing, seizing and reconfiguring. They elaborate on knowledge articulation and teamwork, and require specific ways of working.

Agricultural Knowledge Networks in Northern Ghana

Farmers, researchers and extension officers in Northern Ghana encounter productivity problems, such as striga, acidity, hardpan and bochaa (a Dagbani word denoting low productivity). We undertook a mainly qualitative study using interviews, focus groups and a workshop to investigate, from a science and technology studies perspective, the intersections between their different ways of understanding these problems. Different actors construct definitions of what productivity problems are during the performance of their occupations, for example through peer association and application of available solutions. Actors with different occupations thus disagree over what productivity problems are, with farmers defining them by their symptoms and researchers by the physical, biological and chemical mechanisms through which they act. Extension services have not trained officers to reconcile these identity-linked understandings, which has hitherto prevented hybrid knowledge about such problems from emerging. Yet actors agree on the utility of certain management practices, such as manuring. These have the potential to act as boundary objects, pointing to the possibility of a composite knowledge network within which different actors retain their occupational identities and discrete knowledges, yet share common solutions. Extension agents and researchers would benefit from training on the use of boundary objects as communication tools.

Knowledgeability and modes of identification in (dis)embodied boundary practice in networked learning

Building on a continued interest in boundaries and boundary practice in relation to ICT-based networked learning (Ryberg & Sinclair, 2016), this paper addresses the issue of knowledgeability and identification through (dis)embodiment in design for boundary practice in networked learning. According to Goodyear (2015) teaching is about designing opportunities for people to learn, and from a learning perspective, how participants respond to design through their practices and through their use of boundary objects is interesting. Inspired by Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner’s (2015) concepts of knowledgeability and modes of identification, we analyse how two different case studies conducted at the Danish online Master programme on ICT and Learning (MIL) differ with regard to potential boundary practice and use of boundary objects. In study I, the design for learning was based on a 2D virtual learning environment (Dirckinck-Holmfeld, 2006), whereas the design for learning in study II was based on a 3D virtual world (Riis, 2016). Carlile (2002; 2004) proposed a hierarchical typology for boundary objects aiming at transfer, translation and transformation, and in our analysis, we identify examples of such boundary objects in the two learning arenas. Our findings show that all identified categories of boundary objects can mediate knowledge according to the typology. Nonetheless, certain boundary objects in the 3D learning arena (study II), in particular the avatar, seem to promote a different kind of embodied transformation, which has implications for identity formation of the participants. Furthermore, the 3D virtual space affords a concrete materialised, albeit virtual, opportunity for reification, which is different to that of the 2D environment. In the paper, we will elaborate on these differences, and based on the two case studies we propose that boundaries in networked learning should not only be regarded as socio-cultural differences, but as socio-material differences and dependencies as well. In particular, the materiality of a 3D virtual arena and avatars provides new relational and performative opportunities in networked learning.

Promoting enriched coastal zone management: The role of boundary objects

In coastal zone management (CZM), scientific knowledge can help enrich and underpin the development of policy options by providing insight into ecosystems and their management, the use of ecosystem goods and services, and ecological limits to the exploitation of natural resources. Due to the large array of interests and stakeholders involved in CZM, however, it is often complicated to produce and use knowledge which is perceived to be credible, legitimate and salient. The scholarly literature advocates employing collaborative and participatory approaches, such as the development and use of boundary objects, to enhance the production and use of knowledge in CZM with the aim of enriching decision-making processes. This paper empirically explores two assessment systems as boundary objects in order to address the question ‘To what extent and in what way do boundary objects contribute to enriched coastal zone management?’. Our analysis suggests that for a boundary object to contribute to enriched CZM, the need for it to be credible is less important than the need for all stakeholders involved to perceive it and its development process as being legitimate to their interests. Secondly, without a direct ‘policy window’, the boundary object has little chance of directly enhancing decision-makers’ knowledge.