The study described in this book arose in the contextof a three-year collective effort to bring about change in science teaching at Mountain Elementary School. 1 This opportunity emerged after I contacted the school with the idea to help teachers implement student-centered science teaching. At the same time, the teachers collectively had come to realize that their science teaching was not as exciting to children as it could be. They had recognized their own teaching as textbook-based with little use of the "hands-on" approaches prescribed by the provincial curriculum. At this point, the teachers and I decided that a joint project would serve our mutual goals: they wanted assistance in changing from textbook-based approaches to student-centered activities; I wanted to collect data on learning in student-centered knowledge­ producing classroom communities. I brought to this school my new understandings about classroom communi­ ties from several earlier studies conducted in a private high school (e. g. , Roth & Bowen, 1995; Roth & Roychoudhury, 1992). I wanted to help teachers create science learning environments in which children took charge of their learning, where children learned from more competent others by participating with them in ongoing activities, and teachers were responsible for setting up and maintaining a classroom community rather than for dissem­ inating information. After I had completed the data collection for the present study, I watched a documentary about an elementary school in the small French village of Moussac (Envoye Special, TV5, September 14, 1994).

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Introduction. Learning in Moussac. Overview of this Book. Part I: Foundations. 1. Theoretical Foundations. Practices and Resources. Communities of Practice. Design and Designing. 2. Empirical Foundations. Institutional Context. Study Context. 3. Engineering for Children Curriculum. Intended Curriculum. Engineering Design Activities. Teaching Strategies. Teacher Learning. 4. Knowing Engineering Design. Engineering Design prior to `Engineering for Children: Structures'. Post-Unit Assessment of Engineering Design Practices. Part II: Transformations of a Community: The Emergence of Shared Resources and Practices. 5. Circulating Resources. Case Studies of Resource Networking. Inventors, Copy-Cats, and Everyone Else. 6. Circulating Material Practices. Technology, Society, and Knowledge. Socio-Technical Evolution: The Case of the Glue Gun. Cultural Production and Reproduction in a Community of Practice. 7. Emergence and Circulation of Discourse Practices.Trajectories of Competence. Learning to Tell Engineering Design Stories. Engineering Design Conversations. Teachers as Network Builders. Part III: Networking Across Interstices. 8. Networking Humans and Non-Humans. Heterogeneous Design processes and Design Products. Ontology of Resources. Artifacts as Structuring Resources in Interactions. Toward a New Conception of Problem Solving. Designing as Context of Learning. 9. Networking Individuals and Groups. Networking Within and Across Groups. Case Studies of Networking. Networking and the Emergence of Culture, Power, and Norms. Part IV: Conclusions. 10. Designing Knowledge-Building Communities. Designing for the Circulation of Resources and Practices. Artifacts and the Networking ofCommunities. Designing and Assessing Collective Learning Experiences. Designing for Authentic Problem Solving. From Research to Practice: Curriculum on Simple Machines. 11. Epilogue. Participating is Learning. Networking Teachers&endash;Learning to Teach Science by Participating in the Practice of Science Teaching. Reflexive Coda. References. Index.