From design experiments to formative interventions

Abstract

So-called “design experiments” have been presented as a radical alternative to traditional experimental designs in behavioral sciences. A closer scrutiny of design experiments shows that they share the basic linear methodology of traditional randomized controlled trials, and thus ignore resistance and agency of learners as a source of surprise and novelty. Formative interventions based on Vygotsky’s principle of double stimulation offer an alternative that builds on and purposefully fosters learners’ agency. Formative interventions may be characterized with the help of an argumentative grammar which proposes (a) the collective activity system as a unit of analysis, (b) contradictions as a source of change and development, (c) agency as a crucial layer of causality, and (d) transformation of practice as a form of expansive concept formation. These four epistemic tenets are concretized with the help of analysis of data from a Change Laboratory formative experiment conducted in a Finnish hospital. The analysis shows that double stimulation is a multi-layered and longitudinal process in which both the initial problem situation (first stimulus) and the mediating conceptual tool (second stimulus) are reformulated and enriched in successive steps. Such a process of double stimulation generates a thirdness, a new concept for the activity under transformation.