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BARAB AND PLUCKERSMART CONTEXTS
Smart People or Smart Contexts? Cognition, Ability, and
Talent Development in an Age of Situated Approaches to
Knowing and Learning
Sasha A. Barab and Jonathan A. Plucker
School of Education
Indiana University
Intelligence, expertise, ability and talent, as these terms have traditionally been used in educa-
tion and psychology, are socially agreed upon labels that minimize the dynamic, evolving, and
contextual nature of individual–environment relations. These hypothesized constructs can in-
stead be described as functional relations distributed across whole persons and particular con-
texts through which individuals appear knowledgeably skillful. The purpose of this article is to
support a concept of ability and talent development that is theoretically grounded in 5 distinct,
yetinterrelated,notions:ecologicalpsychology,situatedcognition,distributedcognition,activ-
ity theory, and legitimate peripheral participation. Although talent may be reserved by some to
describe individuals possessing exceptional ability and ability may be described as an internal
trait,inourdescription neither ability nor talent are possessed. Instead, they aretreatedasequiv-
alent terms that can be used to describe functional transactions that are situated across per-
son-in-situation. Further, and more important, by arguing that ability is part of the individ-
ual–environmenttransaction,we take the potential to appear talentedoutof the hands (or heads)
of the few and instead treat it as an opportunity that is available to all although it may be actual-
ized more frequently by some.
Inthe wake of the cognitive revolution, learning theorists and
researchers treated learning and knowing as if they were
self-contained processes taking place in the confines of indi-
vidual minds (Fodor, 1975; Newell & Simon, 1972). Intelli-
gence, giftedness, talent, ability, and cognition were also
consideredfeatures(orpossessions)ofindividualminds(Pea,
1993).Thislineofthinking,rootedinCartesiandualism(Des-
cartes,1637/1978), is founded onthe separation ofthe learner
from the learning context, effectively isolating the body from
its mind, the self from its world, the content from its context,
and ability from those situations in which one is competent
(Barab et al., 1999; Turvey & Shaw, 1995). Especially in dis-
cussions of talent, intelligence, giftedness, and related topics,
researchers have traditionally located constructs in the minds
of those considered talented or intelligent, or gifted, or not.
Educators too have fallen victim to a circular logic: Tradi-
tional,entity-based theories, placed knowledge in the head of
the learner, which led to the creation of educational systems
that focused on transmitting content into individual minds.
Decades later, the same educational systems remain in place,
implicitly reinforcing the value of traditional conceptions of
learningandability. Given this history,itis not surprising that
many attempts to conceptualize learning lead back to tradi-
tional conceptions and instructional strategies. Lim, Plucker,
and Im (in press) found evidence that even Korean college
students’ implicit theories of intelligence are surprisingly
similar to those of Americans, and they hypothesized that ap-
plication of American-style instructional strategies, includ-
ing an emphasis on standardized testing, could be leading
Korean students to think of intelligence in “Western” ways.
However, in spite of the overarching influence of Cartesian
dualismoneducationalthought, many contemporary thinkers
from a variety of domains describe knowing not simply as a
psychologicalconstruct existing in the head but as an interac-
tion(or whatDewey, 1938,referred toas atransaction)ofin-
dividuals and physical and social situations (Barab, Hay,
Barnett, & Squire, 2001; Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989;
Greeno, 1998; Kirshner & Whitson, 1998; Stanford Aptitude
Seminar [SAS], 2001; Sternberg & Horvath, 1998).
Talentdevelopment, while alsovictim to thesame circular
logic,implies consideration of a muchbroader set of perspec-
tives on learning, providing an opportunity to step out of
dualistic thinking. In this article, we offer an overview of five
EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST, 37(3), 165–182
Copyright © 2002, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Sasha A. Barab, School of Educa-
tion, Indiana University, Room 2232, 201 North Rose Avenue,
Bloomington, IN 47405. E-mail: sbarab@indiana.edu
theoretical perspectives that couple individuals and environ-
ments as the minimal ontology for describing knowing and
learning. Central to these perspectives and to the argument
being advanced in this thesis is the belief that
A clearer understanding of human cognition would be
achievedifstudieswerebasedontheconceptthatcognitionis
distributed among individuals, that knowledge is socially
constructed through collaborative efforts to achieve shared
objectives in cultural surroundings, and that information is
processedbetweenindividuals and the tools and artifactspro-
vided by culture. (Salomon, 1993, p. I, italics in original)
From this perspective, ability does not reside (and talent de-
velopment does not occur) in the head of the learner, but is
bestconceptualized as acollection of functional relations dis-
tributedacross persons andparticular contexts throughwhich
individualsappear knowledgeably skillful. Through these re-
lations, and the context in which these relations are actual-
ized, individual and environment are functionally joined and
in some cases talented transactions occur (Snow, 1992). Per-
sonal identities are also constituted through these relations,
especially those identities (and sets of relations) that the
learner perceives as meaningful (Barab & Duffy, 2000;
Csikszentmihalyi, 1993; Michael, 1996).
To build a theoretical grounding for a perspective of abil-
ity and talent development based on this relational and dy-
namic conception of knowing, we first review and analyze
traditional concepts of ability, intellectual talent, and
giftedness. While talent may be reserved by some to refer to
individualspossessingexceptionalability, in our descriptions
neither ability nor talent are possessed and, as such, we treat
ability and talent as two different terms that may (or may not)
be used to describe functional transactions among per-
son-in-situation. We then discuss five areas of theory and re-
search that hold promise for reconceptualizing talent
development, and propose a new conceptualization of talent
development. Finally, we consider implications for educa-
tional systems that strive to engage and foster intellectual
ability and talent development. We view discussions of abil-
ity and talent development as a specific case of the more gen-
eral problem of placing knowing solely (or primarily) in the
head of the individual.
TRADITIONAL VIEWS ON
INTELLIGENCE, ABILITY, AND
TALENT
Traditionalconceptions of intelligence, ranging from general
factors and related approaches (Cattell, 1987; Jensen, 1998;
Spearman, 1904) to differentiated models (Carroll, 1993;
Guilford, 1967; Thurstone, 1938), view intelligence as a con-
struct that resides within the individual. Although many of
thesetheories acknowledge the role of the environment in the
development of intelligence, the focus is firmly placed on the
individual as the locus of control and unit of interest. Ap-
proaches to talent development based on these traditional
conceptions of intelligence are common and popular. For ex-
ample, the Talent Search model initiated at Johns Hopkins
University now works with more than 250,000 children per
year at several university-based regional centers across the
country (Stanley, 1980; Stanley & Benbow, 1981). Many
schooldistricts around thecountry base theirgifted education
andtalentdevelopmentprograms on the identificationofhigh
ability children using instruments focused primarily on indi-
vidual capabilities tested in impoverished contexts using pa-
per-and-pencil items (e.g., Callahan, Tomlinson, Hunsaker,
Bland, & Moon, 1995; Hunsaker & Callahan, 1995).
A few contemporary approaches include reference to the
environment when they discuss intelligence. For example,
Sternberg’s (1985) triarchic theory includes environmental
interactions within its contextual subtheory, Ceci’s (1990)
bioecological approach notes the role of context, Das,
Naglieri, and Kirby’s (1994) PASS theory describes specific
cognitive processes that may be influenced by the environ-
ment, and Gardner (1983) emphasizes cultural context
throughout his theory of multiple intelligences. These theo-
rists discuss the role of the environment or context, yet none
ofthem directly articulateexplicit processes for how these in-
teractions occur. When they do refer to intellectual talent,
they describe a trait that exists in the individual’s mind with
allusions to context simply being about the application of tal-
ent—not its ontological existence.1Perhaps the most
well-known theory of giftedness, Renzulli’s (1978)
three-ring conception, focuses on the interaction among
above average ability, creativity, and task commitment.
Other conceptions of giftedness vary qualitatively from
Renzulli’s approach, but most still focus on the qualities of
the gifted individual (see Sternberg & Davidson, 1986). Al-
though these broader theories of intelligence and giftedness
are much more comprehensive than earlier conceptions of
ability regarding environmental factors, the focus remains on
the individual during her interactions with the environment.
Educational approaches to talent development based on
these broader theories (e.g., Renzulli & Reis’s, 1985,
Schoolwide Enrichment Model, several of the strategies de-
scribed in Coleman & Cross, 2001, and Karnes & Bean,
2001) are becoming more prevalent, but the traditional
pull-out or “find the gifted child” model remains a common
166 BARAB AND PLUCKER
1We see the same thing currently in much theorizing about cognition.
Muchofthediscussionofcontextbycognitivescientistshasbeenintermsof
howcontext enriches the cognition of individuals (what Lave, 1997, referred
to as the “cognition plus” view). This is in contrast to how cognition is pro-
duced by individuals (the “interpretive” view) or, perhaps more accurately
stated, how individuals (including their cognitions) and contexts
codetermineeachotherthroughpractice(“situatedsocialpractice”).Thelast
view acknowledges the transactional nature of the interaction in that
individuals, environments, and even sociocultural relations all have the po-
tential to be impacted and transformed by the interaction.
approach across much of the country and the world. These
strategies, similar to the theoretical assumptions upon which
they are based, are predominantly focused on the individual
as the unit of analysis or, more accurately, on establishing
through an assessment procedure that a student is intellectu-
ally gifted and then providing environments in which gifted
individuals can thrive academically. In contrast, new areas of
theory and research hold promise for the reconceptualization
of talent development efforts. In particular, talent can be
taken out of the hands of the few and talent development can
become an opportunity available to all.
Limitations of Traditional Perspectives
The absolute separation of mind and matter that lies at the
coreoftraditionalapproaches to talent development polarizes
learner and context, postulating the distinct unidirectional
and linear flow of cause onto effect (Pepper, 1942/1970). In
the case of ability, talent, and giftedness, the individual im-
pacts or acts on the environment. This has resulted in a set of
post-Cartesiandualisms: stimulus versus response, behavior-
ist versus cognitive, reactive versus motivated, innate versus
learned, talented versus incompetent—all of which stem
from the overriding dualism separating individual and envi-
ronment (Swenson & Turvey, 1991):
This polarization of learner from environment creates prob-
lems that in effect isolate the self from its world, the body
from its mind, the content from its context, and the parts from
the whole. The history of such dualistic thinking reveals its
inadequacies as a way of explaining thought and knowledge
in that it sets up an incommensurability between knower and
known, with one language to describe that which is known
and another to describe the individual doing the knowing.
(Barab et al., 1999, p. 355)
Dualisticlinesofthought in which abilityandtalentis con-
sidered a possession of the individual still dominate most lay
and many theoretical conceptions of talent. In 1992, Snow
commentedontheproblemsoftraditionaltheoriesofaptitude:
The conceptual limitation derives from our tendency to think
ofpersonsandsituationsasindependentvariables,ratherthan
[to see] persons-in-situations [italics added] as integrated
systems. To build the aptitude theories of tomorrow, we need
a language for describing the processes that connect persons
and situations—the processes that operate in their interface.
(p. 19)
Traditional notions that place ability in the head of the indi-
vidual have been challenged not only on philosophical
grounds but also on psychological grounds—especially as
they relate to perception. For example, ecological psycholo-
gistshave performed numerous studies to support the conten-
tion that the environment contains numerous opportunities
foractionforan individual with the requisiteabilitiesto act on
theseopportunities(Turvey,1996). These studies have exam-
ined what Gibson (1979/1986) referred to as environmental
affordances—namely, possibilities for action that the envi-
ronment offers to individuals. For example, Gibson, et al.
(1987) studied crawlable surfaces, while others have studied
sittable and steppable heights (Mark, Balliet, Craver,
Douglas, & Fox, 1990; Pufall & Dunbar, 1992; Warren,
1984). These studies lend support for the hypothesis that in
explaining perception it is not necessary to infer symbolic
calculations on the part of the individual; what is needed is a
better understanding of how the individual becomes apprised
of these affordances or possibilities for action—in other
wordsweneed to know moreaboutphysics to accompany our
psychology (Barab et al., 1999; Kim, Turvey, & Carello,
1993; Turvey, 1996). Central to the ecological psychology
perspective (discussed more later) is the assumption that per-
ception is a property of the individual–environment system
and not the individual mind (Gibson, 1979/1986).
Ata more appliedlevel of critique,the anthropologist Jean
Lave (1986, 1993, 1997) researched the discontinuities in
performance of mathematical activity by the same persons in
different settings, suggesting that the competence of the indi-
vidual is situationally specific. For example, in the Adult
Math Project in California (Lave, 1977, 1986; Reed & Lave,
1979) they found that during price arithmetic calculations in
the supermarket, shoppers almost never made an error in the
final outcome. In 90% of the observed episodes the shopper
correctly solved the problems and identified the best buy,
while the same individuals averaged only 57% correct when
attempting comparable problems in a math testing situation.
Another example was reported by Saxe (1992) who studied
children selling produce in open markets in Brazil. In this re-
search, psychologists posed as difficult customers so as to
presentanumber of arithmetic problemsto the children. They
found that the children’s arithmetic was correct 99% of the
time in the market, but their performance on the same prob-
lems on a math test was successful only 65% of the time.
Herndon (1971) cites a similar observation of a high school
teacher who observed one of the lowest achieving kids in his
class keeping score for a bowling league, where he was able
to manage up to eight bowling scores at once without making
an error. Commenting back in the classroom, Herndon said
I figured I had this particular dumb kid now. Back in eighth
period I lectured him on how smart he was to be a league
scorer in bowling. Naturally I then handed out bowling-score
problems … The brilliant league scorer couldn’t decide
whether two strikes and a third frame of eight amounted to
eighteen or twenty-eight or whether it was one hundred eight
and one half. (pp. 94–95)
These studies, in which people perform differently in differ-
ent settings even when performing comparable or the same
problems, challenge the validity of official competence and
performance distinctions in which talent is considered to be a
SMART CONTEXTS 167
possession of the individual and not an outcome of per-
sons-in-situations (Lave, 1997).
From a motivational standpoint, recent research provides
evidence that the perspective of talent residing solely within
theindividualhasimportantlimitations.Forexample,attribu-
tion theory suggests that internal, stable attributions (e.g., “I
am an intelligent and talented person”) may be difficult to
maintain in light of challenging assignments, whereas inter-
nal,unstable attributions (e.g., “I succeeded or failed because
ofmyeffort”)place agreatersenseofresponsibilityontheper-
son-in-situation and leads to achievement motivation
(Weiner,1992). Conversely, students who are not succeeding
can quickly descend into learned helplessness if they believe
that they are not talented and will not succeed, regardless of
theirlevelofeffort(Diener&Dweck,1978). The creation and
maintenance of stable internal attributions for success and
failureproducefurther complications when the labelof“good
student” or “bad student” is attached to a learner. Teachers
treatstudentsdifferentlybasedonteacherexpectanciesofstu-
dent ability, often resulting in increased or decreased student
achievement(Jussim & Eccles, 1995). At the policy level, be-
liefs in stable internal attributions can also manifest
themselvesin practices such as tracking and inflexible ability
grouping, which also tend to lower or raise teacher expecta-
tions and subsequent student achievement (Goodlad, 1983).
Advancesin research over thelast 20 yearshave further illus-
tratedtheweakness of traditional approaches toabilityand talent
in light of learning and thinking styles, the importance of con-
text, and other factors (Snow, 1997; SAS, 2001; see also Marsh,
Byrne, & Shavelson, 1988; Plucker & McIntire, 1996;
Simonton, 1999, 2001). As educational psychologists, we know
much more about human learning and achievement than we did
only a generation earlier, yet educators often use instructional
strategies that are based on conceptions of talent and ability that
are decades old (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). An ex-
ample from our own work involves the experiences of a student
during an intensive academic summer program for “talented”
students.The student, whoattended an urbanhigh school, took a
course that required a great deal of group work, self-regulation,
and creativity due to its constructivist, problem-based curricu-
lum.Her performance throughout the first half ofthe course was
verypoor, and her social interactions with herpeers began to de-
teriorate. The two teachers for the course initially questioned,
usingon a traditional “talentin the head”model, how thestudent
could have been admitted into the program, given her apparent
lack of ability.
Around that time, the class had a social event at a local
swimming pool and the teachers discovered that the student
hadnever beenin a pool before. This led to a frank discussion
during which the student revealed that she was very uncom-
fortable in a classroom with bright, suburban students. Fur-
thermore, the standard mode of instruction in her high school
waslecturing,ofwhichverylittleoccurredinthesummerpro-
gram. She was completely out of her instructional element.
Thestudentwasconsideredtobelackingin“talent” according
to traditional conceptions: Her performance, in a technology
rich,well-designed curriculum was below average, therefore,
shehadlowability. In contrast, wearguethatinstead the diffi-
cultiescanbefound at the nexusofperson-in-situation, in that
herpotential to act wasa poor fitfor this specificenvironment
(SAS,2001)andthat,asaresult,theinteractiondidnotsupport
theemergence of talent. Inthe aforementioned case,when the
teachers made adjustments to the curriculum to address this
student’sconcerns,herperformanceimprovedsignificantly.
We have described limitations of traditional perspectives,
critiquing these on philosophical, perceptual, practical, and
motivational grounds. Central to these criticisms is the con-
viction that talent cannot be characterized in purely cognitive
terms (as an internal stable trait), nor does it have a purely en-
vironmental explanation that locates its origins in a changing
environment (or in a person’s permissible relations with it;
Lave, 1986). Instead, we will advance a perspective on talent
that acknowledges person-in-situation and locates talent fun-
damentally in the active relations of individual and environ-
ment. However, prior to this ecological description of talent,
we review the theoretical grounding of our conceptualization
of talent development in five distinct areas: ecological psy-
chology, situated cognition, distributed cognition, activity
theory, and legitimate peripheral participation.
ECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY
Although Plato espoused a line of thinking that advanced an
animal–environment dualism, Aristotle posited that the
knower and the known are united in a functional interdepen-
dency (Lombardo, 1987). Consistent with Aristotelian
thought, a line of thinking emerged that challenged the static,
analytic, and segmented thought of absolute dualism. The-
oriesfoundedonthisAristotelianecologicalheritagehavebe-
come more pronounced, with examples occurring in fields
ranging from robotics and artificial intelligence (Brooks,
1991;Clancey,1993),tothephysicaland lifesciences(Pattee,
1979;Swenson & Turvey, 1991), to the social and behavioral
sciences(Bruner,1996;Ennis, 1992;Greeno,1989;Roschelle
& Clancey, 1992; SAS, 2001). Despite the different subject
matter,whatremains invariant acrossthesedomains is the be-
lief that individuals are firmly seated within a context that
co-determinestheir perspectives andunderstandings of “con-
tent.” This belief, predicated on a relational ontology, pro-
videsa set ofassumptions regarding reality and how we come
to know about it that is alternative to more mechanistic or or-
ganismic explanations (Pepper, 1942/1970).
Recognition of the interdependence of individuals and
their environments is clearly evident in ecological psychol-
ogy (Gibson, 1979/1986; Turvey & Shaw, 1995). Ecological
psychology is based on the premise that perception is a prop-
erty of an ecosystem, not an individual, and is co-determined
through the individual–environment interaction. An ecosys-
tem consists of an individual plus a mutually compatible en-
vironment (or equivalently, an environment plus a mutually
168 BARAB AND PLUCKER
compatible individual). Gibson (1979/1986) introduced the
relational terms affordance and effectivity. As previously
noted,anaffordance is a specificcombination of properties of
an environment, taken with reference to an individual, that
can be acted upon—opportunities for action (Gibson, 1977).
Reciprocally,an effectivity is a specificcombination of prop-
erties assembled by an individual, taken with reference to the
environment, that allow for the dynamic actualization of a
possibility for action (Shaw & Turvey, 1981).
Different features of the environment afford activities for
anagentwhohas appropriateeffectivities.Forexample,apool
is swimmable for someone who has the ability to swim. The
student in the summer program mentioned previously would
have had a better chance to foster her talents if the instructors
hadrealizedinitiallythatthelearningcontextinlargepartpre-
ventedhersuccess (i.e., the affordancesand effectivities were
mismatched). A central commitment of ecological psycholo-
gistsis that an individual’s perception of the environment can
beexplainedwithoutthepostulationofmentalrepresentations
or an objective reality (Kim et al., 1993; Mark et al., 1990;
Pufall & Dunbar, 1992). This is because when one expands
their unit of analysis to consider person-in-situation, much of
the knowing that was traditionally placed in the head of the
learner can now be found in the interaction:
There is a reason to suspect that what we call cognition is in
fact a complex social phenomenon. The point is not so much
that arrangements of knowledge in the head correspond in a
complicatedway to the social world outside the head, but that
they are socially organized in such a fashion as to be indivisi-
ble. “Cognition” observed in everyday practice is distrib-
uted—stretched over, not divided among—mind, body, ac-
tivity and culturally organized settings which include other
actors. (Lave, 1988, p. 1)
Perceptionandaction,fromthisperspective,areproperties
ofanagent–environmentsystem, not of an individual,orofan
environment alone (Turvey, 1992; Turvey & Shaw, 1995).
Oneimplicationofthistheoryisthatitisnotnecessarytoposit
inferencestosymboliccalculationson thepartoftheobserver;
what is needed is a better understanding of the coupling or
transaction between environmental affordances and how the
perceiver becomes apprised of these possibilities for ac-
tion—the perception-action system (Turvey & Shaw, 1995).
Swenson(1999) argued that “theplace to lookfor meaningful
content is not in the normal physical descriptors of individual
particles[nor in the individual], but instead in the variables of
theflowitself” (p. 21).It is within thiscoupling, in theflow it-
self,thatecologicalpsychologistsplacetheability to act intel-
ligently. In addition, and consistent with pragmatist lines of
thought(Dewey,1938), what makesone individual’s cycle of
perception-action more “intelligent” (or functional) than an-
other is not some objective representational meaning but its
contextualized functional value—that is, its usefulness in
termsoftheparticularcontextsinwhichitisapplied.Although
Gibson’s (1979/1986) work was primarily concerned with
perception, his ecological coupling of individual–environ-
mentandmeaning–contexthasimplicationsfor,andis consis-
tent with, current views of situated cognition.
SITUATED COGNITION
In contrast to theories that depict truth as an objective sub-
stanceexisting in theworld or thosethat conceive of knowing
asaproductof human mental activity,ecologicalviewsmain-
tain that knowing is an activity that is co-determined by indi-
vidual and environment (Brown et al., 1989; Prawat &
Floden,1994).Cognition is explained intermsof the relation-
ship between learners and the properties of specific environ-
ments (Gibson, 1979/1986; Young, 1993). From this per-
spective, separating the learner, the material to be learned,
and the context in which learning occurs is impossible and ir-
relevant. Knowledge is more aptly phrased knowing about,
and knowing is a perceptual activity that always occurs
within a context (Prawat & Floden, 1994). Only after the
event, or in anticipation thereof, can knowing about be dis-
cussed as a thing (Suchman, 1987). Barab and Duffy (2000),
consistent with the situativity perspective,2described the
central tenets that characterize knowing about:
Knowing about refers to an activity—not a thing; knowing
about is always contextualized—not abstract; knowing about
is reciprocally constructed within the individual- environ-
ment interaction—not objectively defined or subjectively
created;andknowingabout is a functional stance on the inter-
action—not a “truth.” (p. 28)
Theimportantpoint about thischaracterizationis the funda-
mentally situated treatment of knowing. Plucker and Stocking
(2001) have discussed the importance of not separating learn-
ersfrom their various contextsin their discussionofgifted ado-
lescents. They argue that the traditional approach for viewing
the affective development of high achieving students (i.e., a
one-time administration of a self-concept instrument) is limit-
ing and ineffectual. Rather, researchers should acknowledge
that many of these students move frequently among various
educational contexts (e.g., different classes, afterschool expe-
riences, weekend classes, summer programs, interactions with
family and friends, interactions within the larger community),
and that the intellectual and affective experiences of these stu-
dents will only be usefully understood when researchers con-
sider the multiple interactions of individual and context that
occur in the daily lives of these students.
In Brown et al.’s (1989) seminal piece on situativity theories
andtheculture of learning, theyadvancedthe belief that learning
SMART CONTEXTS 169
2Greeno and Moore (1993) preferred the term situativity over situated
cognitiontodenotethecontentionthatsituativityisfundamentaltoallcogni-
tive activity and not simply one kind of cognition.
is always situated and progressively developed through situated
activity. They contended that learning involves more than ac-
quiringa set ofself-contained entities. Itactually involves build-
ing a contextualized appreciation of these entities as tools, as
well as for the situations through which these tools have value.
Greeno (1989), in a similar vein, argued that thinking is situated
incontext, comprised of a relation between cognitive agents and
thesituations in whichthey are acting.In general, situativitythe-
orists explain cognition in terms of the relations among learners
and the properties of specific environments (Bredo, 1992;
Clancey, 1993; Greeno, 1997; Lave, 1997; Young, Barab, &
Garret, 2000). From a situativity perspective, knowing about is
described as a dynamic process distributed across the knower,
thatwhich isknown, theenvironment inwhich knowingoccurs,
and the activity through which the learner is participating when
learning or knowing occurs. In this way, situativity theory al-
lows for the “unification of the world, the individual, and the re-
lations among these reciprocal components” (Barab et al., 1999,
p. 360).
The claim that thinking is best conceived as an activity in-
volvingconcreteparticularsof the situation, asopposedtoab-
stracted symbolic representations in the mind, is apparent in
Lave’s (1988) discussion regarding the observation of de la
Rocha, who conducted a study of individuals participating in
a Weight Watchers diet program. In this case, the interviewer
asked an individual what would happen if he wanted to serve
three fourths of his day’s normal portion, which was two
thirds of a cup of cottage cheese. These individuals, even
though they had taken advanced mathematics courses, in-
stead of performing the symbolic calculation, actually dis-
pensed two thirds of a cup of cottage cheese and divided it
into four equal parts, and reserved one of the quarters—using
the concrete particulars of the situation. We have insufficient
data to determine if the same answer would have been pro-
vided if the individual was not outfitted with these resources.
In other words, do we credit the correct response to the indi-
vidualorto the situation?The argument underlying thispaper
is that this question is moot; instead, we should be trying to
understand how some individuals are able to take advantage
and function effectively within context, aided by whatever
physical and social resources they use (Greeno, 1997;
Salomon,Perkins, & Globerson, 1991). This situated (or eco-
logical) view of knowing not only captures the world and in-
dividualparticipationasit is, but stresses theopportunitiesfor
learners to reveal their ability and talent.
This notion of situativity in general and situated action in
particular is evident in Gladwin’s (1964) discussion contrast-
ingthemethodsin which the Europeans andtheTrukesenavi-
gate the open sea. Whereas the former use a plan related to
navigational principles, the latter begin with an objective and
use local environmental circumstances—the color of water,
the waves, winds and clouds, birds, and so forth. What is in-
teresting about the Micronesian navigator is that navigation
seems to be distributed across the interaction of individual
and environment, as opposed to some preconceived plan.
Gardner (1983) has used the same example to argue for the
existenceof multiple intelligences.The grocery shoppers,the
children in Brazil, the student in our summer program and
manyother examples fromthe literature allprovide examples
of knowing about being a situated activity.
DISTRIBUTED COGNITION
Central to the preceding two sections is the conviction that
perception and cognition are not properties or possessions of
individual minds but are dynamic and contextualized acts or
sets of relations distributed across individuals and social and
physical resources (e.g., textbooks, collaborators, previous
experiences, and computer representations) and the contexts
through which they function. Said another way, knowing and
context are irreducibly co-constituted, and learning is funda-
mentally connected with and constitutive of the contextual
particulars through which it occurs (Barab & Kirshner, 2001;
Cobb& Yackel, 1996). A learner’s ultimate understanding of
any object, issue, concept, process, or practice, as well as her
ability to act competently with respect to using these, can be
attributedto, and is distributed across, the physical, temporal,
and spatial occurrences through which her competencies
have emerged. It is in this sense that cognition is embodied,
situated, or, as described in this section, distributed.
The distributed nature of cognition was discussed by
Hutchins (1993) who studied how navigating a vessel is ac-
complished through a cooperative effort among its crewman,
interactingwithoneanotherandthetoolsavailableontheship.
The shared experiences on the ship among the crewmen en-
ablethemtocommunicatewitheachother.Eachcrewmanhas
specific responsibilities in terms of navigating the ship (e.g.,
quartermastersshareamongthemselvesthetaskoftheplotter,
bearing tracker, the bearing time-recorder), and manipulates
appropriatetools for the task. The result of this cooperation is
the community knowledge for how to navigate the ship. It is
the group knowledge, as well as the tools on the ship, that en-
able the proper navigation of the naval vessel. Hutchins con-
cluded that in a complex activity involving joint problem
solving among a team of individuals (such as a group of stu-
dents working on a collaborative project), individual minds
cannot be considered the only locus for structures that orga-
nizethinking.Itisimpossible, and of little value,todividethis
sharedknowledge andcredit individual owners—instead this
knowledge is distributed across multiple individuals and re-
sources—anditis,inpart,thestructureofthisdistributionthat
must be described (Cole, Engeström, & Vasquez, 1997).
Pea (1993) similarly argued that the ability to act intelli-
gentlyis accomplishedor engagedrather thanpossessed. Pea
describesintelligenceas an activitythatis present in thetools,
modes of representation, human collaborators, and other arti-
facts an individual uses to act intelligently. He added
When we look at actual human practices, we see that human
cognition aspires to efficiency in distributing intelli-
170 BARAB AND PLUCKER
gence—across individuals, environment, external symbolic
representations, tools, and artifacts—as a means of coping
withthecomplexity of activities we often call“mental.” (Pea,
1993, p. 81)
Integral to thinking on the phenomena of distributed cogni-
tionis the conviction that resources typically conceived as exter-
nal to the individual thinker, fundamentally change the nature
and function of the system through which competent action
emerges.These system changes thenaffect conceptions ofwhat,
how, and why one needs to know (Cole & Engeström, 1993;
Perkins,1993;Salomon,1993). If, as Pea(1993)and others have
argued, social, historical, and possibly other external processes
are to be taken as integral parts of competent action, then tradi-
tionalnotionsofcognition and intelligence (whichrelegatethese
processes to the individual mind) ought to be re- examined
(Salomon, 1993). Competent action is described as neither ex-
ternal nor internal, but instead is reconceived as external, inter-
nal, and that which is actualized through the transaction of both
components (Barab et al., 1999; Barab & Kirshner, 2001).
Barab et al. (2001) studied learning within a technol-
ogy-rich environment by tracking the emergence of shared
understanding and products through an examination of stu-
dentandteacher practices. They observedstudentsparticipat-
ing in a one-week camp in which they worked in groups with
three-dimensional modeling software to develop a virtual
world. Barab et al. traced the history of transactions that ac-
counted for the emergence, evolution, and diffusion of
learner practices in the learning environment.
These tracings revealed the reciprocal nature of learning
anddoing, with building conceptual understanding occurring
inrelationto local conditions andpractices.Through building
their models, students engaged numbers and equations by di-
rect manipulation of their virtual objects, supporting them in
building an understanding of quantitative relationships of as-
tronomical phenomena without defining these through their
formalisms. As such, it was significant to hear one student
say, “Wow, finally a use for math!” Consistent with how stu-
dents came to understand other conceptual tools, mathemat-
icswas not introduced as a set of rules to be memorized but as
acollection of useful tools to support studentsin their activity
ofbuilding 3-D worlds,with their understandings coevolving
through their actions. This perceived applicability of the ma-
terialis considered to be a key factor in creating the task com-
mitment often observed in talented children and adults
(Bloom, 1985; Csikszentmihalyi, 1991; Renzulli, 1999).
Atone level, conceptualizingknowing and doingas insep-
arable is simply a theoretical commitment that we have cho-
sen, and their interrelations are present because we have
chosen to situate them in this manner. However, at another
level, we believe “that situating our learning environments
andour interpretations in terms of this commitment allows us
todevelop more useful learning environments and interpreta-
tions of the student experience in these environments than if
we maintained the dualistic tradition” (Barab et al., 2001, p.
33).Only through acknowledgementof the distributed nature
of knowing (and talent) can meaningful learning contexts be
fostered. It is also in this way that knowing, ability, and talent
are considered properties of systems, not individuals
ACTIVITY THEORY
Conceptions of distributed intelligence in which individual
functioningis considered tobe distributed across and situated
in the transaction among the subject, available tools, and the
communitycontextresonateswith systemviewsofthinkingin
whichentiresystems,notindividualor environmentalcompo-
nents,areconceivedastheminimalontologicaldescriptorsfor
describingactivity(Barab,2002;Ford&Lerner, 1992). In de-
finingthevariouscomponentsofasystemthroughwhichcog-
nition is situated, we have found it useful to draw on the
theoretical perspective of activity theory (Barab, Barnett,
Yamagata-Lynch, Squire, & Keating, in press; Engeström,
1987, 1999; Leont’ev, 1974), referring to a line of theorizing
and research that was initiated by Leont’ev, Vygotsky, and
Luriaat the beginning of the20th century. Activity theory isa
psychologicalandmultidisciplinary theory with anaturalistic
emphasis that offers a framework for describing activity and
provides a set of perspectives on practice that interlink indi-
vidual and social levels (Engeström, 1993; Nardi, 1996).
When referring to activity, activity theorists are not simply
concernedwith doing as disembodied action, but are referringto
doing to transform some object, with a focus on the
contextualized activity of the entire system—not on isolated ac-
tivity(Engeström,1987,1993;Kuutti,1996). An activity system
consists of a subject (individuals or groups that act, and whose
agencyisselectedasthepointofviewfortheanalysis)andanob-
ject(thatwhichisactedupon), aswellasthecomponentsthatme-
diate the relations of subject and object. The meditating
components are tools (conceptual and physical), community,
rules, and divisions of labor (Engeström, 1987). This collective
system constitutes the minimal meaningful context through
whichto understand human praxis, such as talent (Barab, 2002).
In other words, activity is distributed across subjects (those con-
sidered talented or not talented) and the tools they use, all of
which occurs as part of some expanded community context.
Returning to the 3-D modeling environment discussed
earlier, Barab, Barnett, et al. (in press) used activity theory as
an analytical lens for understanding the transactions and per-
vasive tensions that characterized course activities. Spe-
cifically, they focused on the relations of subject and object
(virtual reality models and astronomy understandings) and
how, in their course, object transformations leading to deep
scientific understandings were mediated by tools (both tech-
nological and human), the overall classroom microculture
(emergentnorms), division of labor (group dynamics and stu-
dent–instructor roles), and rules (informal, formal, and tech-
nical). Reflecting on their analyses, they interpreted the
various course tensions and innovations in the framework of
the overall course activity system, modeled in general form
SMART CONTEXTS 171
usingEngeström’s (1987) triangularinscription for modeling
the basic structure of human activity (see Figure 1). Note that
eachofthecomponents Engeström hypothesized as constitut-
ing activity, of which knowing is but one type, are depicted in
bold at the corners of the triangle. The figure captures the
multiple and interacting components that, from an activity
theory perspective, constitute activity.
Figure1, asan analyticcharacterization ofcourse activity,
captures the interacting dynamics of course activity. In this
figure, Barab, Barnett, et al. (in press) illustrate the pervasive
tensions of the course, characterizing them in the form of di-
lemmas within each component of the triangle (e.g., subject:
passive recipient vs. engaged learner). Tensions within a
component are listed under each component. Cross-compo-
nent tensions are illustrated by dotted arrows and are viewed
as part of the transaction, not as individual or environment
(see a, b, c in Figure 1). Viewing the class as an activity sys-
tem allows an understanding of how dualities, analyzed as
pervasive tensions, lead to outcomes that are inconsistent
with students’ developing astronomical understandings. An
appreciation of these tensions fueled changes in the course.
The figure further illustrates the mediated transaction
among subject and object, and captures the theoretical com-
mitment that activity is distributed across sociocultural con-
texts. Although the illustration depicted in Figure 1
obscures the multiple and varied strings of actions that
characterize activity in situ (thereby neglecting the dy-
namic, evolving nature of activity systems as well as the
transactional functions within and between activity sys-
tems), it does have the benefit of accounting for activity as
a contextualized set of events that are distributed across
physical tools and rich contexts, all of which are embedded
in a rich sociocultural history. From this perspective, know-
ing about, or exhibiting talent, as types of activity, should
also be conceptualized in terms of the sociohistorical con-
texts through which they are manifested.
In contrast to analysis methods that treat interacting sys-
temcomponents in isolation, the methodsof analyses used by
activitytheorists provide ameans to account for the complex-
itiesof course dynamics.First, the methodsacknowledge that
subject–object relations and outcomes of understanding all
existaspart of acontext.This recognition ofcontextshifts the
unit of analysis from the individual or the environment to the
system. Second, it looks for explanations in the activity (per-
son-acting-in-situation) and not in the mind of the individual
nor the environmental components. By treating activity as a
contextualized set of events that are distributed across physi-
caltoolsand rich contexts,all of which areembedded in a rich
sociocultural history, activity theory has much to offer in
tacklingthe theoretical andmethodological questions thatare
central to theories that suggest cognition is practice-bound or
situated. An important feature of activity theory is the ac-
knowledgment that each current system is nested, physically,
socially, and historically within various other activity sys-
tems. In the next section on talent development, we describe
how talent is best conceived as one’s ability to participate as
172 BARAB AND PLUCKER
FIGURE 1 The basic structure of human activity. The figure illustrates the mediated relationship be-
tween subject and object, and the interrelations among the various components of the system. Spe-
cifically, it illuminates the systemic dynamics and pervasive tensions of the course activity of students
participating in the VSS course (see Barab, Barnett et, Yamagata-Lynch, et al., in press).The figure illus-
tratesthemediatedrelationshipbetween subject and object, andtheinterrelationsamongthevarious com-
ponents of the system.
Tools :
Inst. Tool/ Textbook, Lectures,
Student-Generated Docs.
vs
Inst. Tool/ Textbook, Lectures, Student-
Generated Docs., WWW, VR Tool, VR Model
Object :
Scientific Understanding
vs
Dynamic VR Model
Division of Labor :
Individual Work
vs
Distributed Work
Classroom Microculture :
Unversity Grades
vs
VR Modeling "Community"
Rules:
Pre-Specified, Teacher-Centered
vs
Emergent, Student-Directed
Subject :
Passive Recipient
vs
Engaged Learner
Outcome :
Everyday Knowledge
vs
Scientific Understanding
(b)
(c)
(a)
part of these various systems. We later discuss how talent is
bestdeveloped through participation that is nested asa part of
these various systems.
LEGITIMATE PERIPHERAL
PARTICIPATION
Current theorists, both within and outside schools, have
been exploring the lessons learned from apprenticeship
learning. After examining five apprenticeship situations,
Lave and Wenger (1991) noted that in the successful cases
there is little observable teaching, yet large quantities of
learning. In these examples, the practice of community cre-
ates the potential “curriculum” in the broadest sense. In
their view, learning is not simply one kind of activity, rather
learning—or, alternatively, talent development—is viewed
as an aspect of all activity.
The process of learning, which is always situated, must
be described in relation to the context through which it oc-
curs. Of prime importance are one’s reasons for learning.
This line of thinking led to the notion of legitimate periph-
eral participation, in which the primary motivation for
learning involves participating in authentic activities that
move one towards becoming more central to a community
of practice. For example, Barab, Barnett, and Squire (in
press) have been researching a Community of Teachers
(CoT) over a period of 2 years. A CoT is a professional de-
velopment program for preservice teachers working toward
teacher certification. The program is highly field-based in
that each member is expected to commit to one school
where he or she will do all fieldwork. These students are
not assigned to a teacher, but rather, spend time visiting the
classes of and talking with teachers who are a part of the
program. An apprentice relationship is formed for the dura-
tion of the program with one of the teachers based on a so-
cial negotiation and a mutual determination that the
relationship will be beneficial. Similarly, each student joins
an ongoing community of preservice teachers and remains a
part of that community for the duration of their studies. Stu-
dents in the community attend seminars together and, as
with any community, a continuum of experience exists with
veterans (seniors or students with teaching experience) at
one extreme and newcomers (sophomores) at the other. Stu-
dents complete the program not through an accumulation of
credits but through building a Portfolio of Expectations that
demonstrates their competence as an effective teacher.
InCoT,developingthe talentofteachingisnotmemorizing
facts and principles through specific coursework, but instead
involves a social negotiation as students integrate seminar
readings with their field experiences in the schools. One fos-
ters understanding (i.e., supports the process of being a
teacher)byattendingseminars,teachingintheirchosen place-
ments, doing readings, and integrating these experiences into
their portfolio. Lave (1988) suggested that learning is more
than simply receiving a body of factual knowledge; rather,
learningisaprocessthatinvolvesbecomingadifferentperson
with respect to possibilities for interacting with other people
andthe environment. In theCoT program, the“old-timer” (an
individualwhohasbeen amemberofthecommunityforanex-
tended period) is expected to be better prepared for teaching
thanwhenhe or she first enteredtheprogram. Talent develop-
ment, in this case, involves the construction of new identities
as the individual becomes enculturated into a community of
learners. The individual is no longer the same individual with
new skills, but is a new person who has become more
enculturated into the practice of teaching, negotiating mean-
ingsbasedon his or herjointexperiences as a student inthe K-
12schools,whileat the same time beingastudentin a seminar
committedtopreparingteachersandtransformingtheschools
within which students are working.
Lave and Wenger (1991) further argued that in many ap-
prenticeship situations the desire to become central to a com-
munity of practice makes learning legitimate and of value for
the individual. We propose extending this observation to the
developmentoftalent:As onedevelopshertalentsinaspecific
domain,her status in the communitymoves along a trajectory
fromtheperipherytoamorecentralroleinthecommunity.For
example, initially the newcomer to the CoT program mostly
listensandreceivessupport,butslowlyhebegins to takeonre-
sponsibilitiessuchasleadingseminars,sharing classroom ex-
periences, and building a portfolio, until eventually he
becomes responsible for mentoring newcomers. However, in
many school contexts “there is no cultural identity encom-
passing the activity in which newcomers participate and no
field of mature practice for what is being learned, exchange
value (grades) replaces the use value of increasing participa-
tion” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 55). This is not to imply that
schoolsaredevoidofasituation,ratherthatincreasingpartici-
pation is not the primary motivation for learning.
OUR CONCEPTION OF ABILITY AND
TALENT
Taken as a whole, these five perspectives suggest that ability
does not exist as a collection of symbols or even relations
within the head of an individual, but rather must be under-
stood as a function of a person’s thinking in a situation (SAS,
2001). Existing conceptions of ability (or talent) and tradi-
tional views of talent development must be reconceptualized
to account more fully for advances in our understanding of
human learning and achievement. While talent may be re-
served by some to refer to individuals possessing exceptional
ability, in our description neither ability nor talent are pos-
sessed and, as such, we find little utility in distinguishing
amongthem. Rather, weview intellectual ability and talent as
different terms to describe the same process, a process that is
bestdescribed using relational terms such as talented transac-
tions. Further, although the use of the term talent develop-
ment has become popular (Feldhusen, 1998; Gagne, 1995;
Renzulli,1994;Simonton, 1999, 2001; Treffinger,1998; Van
SMART CONTEXTS 173
Tassel-Baska, 1998), we know of very few definitions of the
construct and only one that accounts for the transactional na-
ture of development that is being advocated for in this manu-
script(SAS,2001, pp. 49–54).Inpart, constructs suchasabil-
ityandtalent (or creativity)have the mixed blessingof people
having widely held implicit theories of these constructs.
Their unofficial definitions, therefore, are often taken for
granted, making definition even more difficult.
Ourview of ability and talentare influenced by the diverse
body of work on talent development as well as the theoretical
perspectives discussed above, but with a different emphasis.
In our view, intelligence, expertise, ability, and talent, as
thesetermshave traditionally been usedineducation and psy-
chology,aresociallyagreed upon labels thatminimizethedy-
namic, evolving, and sociocultural nature of
individual–environmentrelations. Instead of a propertyof in-
dividuals, we characterize ability or talent as a set of func-
tional relations distributed across person and context, and
through which the person-in-situation appears knowledge-
ably skillful. In other words, ability and talent arise in the dy-
namic transaction among the individual, the physical
environment, and the sociocultural context (see Figure 2).
Thistransaction involving person-in-situationforms the min-
imal meaningful ontology for describing talent, ability, or
even knowing. We are not discounting the contribution of in-
dividuals to the production of talented interactions, but rather
we are reacting to the failure of traditional perspectives to ac-
count for the contexts and sociocultural structures and rela-
tions through which talented interactions emerge.
The argument being advanced suggests that intellectual
abilitycouldnot exist in theform in which itis realized except
in relation to the context. Our view of ability and talent ex-
tends Gibson’s (1979/1986) ecological notions regarding
perceptiontoaccount for talent andcognition more generally.
Gibson’s core contribution was his claim that an individual
profile of abilities (effectivities) can only be understood with
respect to environmental affordances. Whereas Gibson’s
work was focused on structural properties of information
taken with respect to the individual, our perspective also in-
cludesthosesocioculturalstructures and frameworks thatfur-
ther come to define what is considered talented behavior and
how it is shaped. For example, children in Brazil, shoppers in
California, or students in our courses can appear talented in
their everyday contexts, but appear challenged in more for-
malschool settings. In addition to the distributed or relational
description of talent, our perspective treats ability not as a
cause but as an effect—an effect that is actualized as part of
the person-in-situation flow itself.
Given our relational and fundamentally situated descrip-
tion of ability, we view talent development as a transactional
process that involves active transformation of individual, en-
vironment, and the sociocultural world. Talent development
is a process that involves doing, not acquiring (Barab &
Duffy, 2000; Sfard, 1998). In this manner, talent is a social
entity, both one that is socially produced and socially vali-
dated (Dewey, 1938). Clearly, at some level talent develop-
mentinvolves the transformation of the individual. However,
similar to Gibson’s (1979/1986) ecological description of
effectivities, talent development involves the transformation
of the individual in relation to the contexts through which the
individual transformation is realized.
We characterize this individual transformation as the edu-
cation of intention and attention. Intention refers to the goals
or motives of the individual and attention refers to the imme-
diate situational (material and social) processes and struc-
tures to which the individual attends—again, neither
intention nor attention resides solely within the individual.
Instead these are distributed among the individual, environ-
ment, and the sociocultural world. The selection of goals de-
termines what is relevant at the intention and attention levels.
Thecritical role of intention in talent is its ability to set the fo-
cus of attention, isolate it from other potentially distracting
influences, and serve as an attractor around which behavior
takes shape (Barab et al., 1998).
Whether a particular individual–environment interaction
is considered talented is very much socioculturally deter-
mined.Therefore, an importantpart of exhibiting talented be-
havior involves understanding how to act in a manner that is
consistent with those ways that have been socioculturally en-
dorsed—that is, functional for a particular group. As such,
talent development involves becoming more able to engage
in interactions that “live fruitfully and creatively in subse-
quentexperiences” (Dewey, 1938, p. 28). Consistent with the
goalsofpositivepsychology3, this places talent inthereach of
all learners, treating it less as an endowment of a few special-
ized individuals and instead as an opportunity for all individ-
174 BARAB AND PLUCKER
FIGURE 2 Visual representation of the emergence of talent,
which is conceptualized as emerging from the dynamic transaction
among the individual, the physical environment, and the
sociocultural context.
3The goal of positive psychology is to focus on personal strengths as op-
posedtothediseasemodelthathaspredominatedmuchofthesocialsciences
forseveraldecades.AsSeligmanandCsikszentmihalyi(2000)note,positive
psychology encourages movement from a focus on pathology to one on pre-
vention, positive personality characteristics, and a focus on individuals’
strengths. The emphasis on pathological foci is also apparent in nearly all as-
pectsof education, with the possible exception of organized athletic teams in
which strength- based approaches are more common.
uals.Further, by equating talentwith useful participation,and
by treating it as a potential of effective individual-environ-
ment transaction, we have expanded the definition of what
constitutes talent and who can appear talented, advocating
that all learning can be understood as talent development.
Thiscommitment, coupledwith the above argument position-
ing talent in the transaction, suggests that no one is talented,
yet everyone can exhibit talents. In the next section we dis-
cuss the design of learning environments that will best sup-
port talent development.
ENGAGING ABILITY AND SUPPORTING
TALENT DEVELOPMENT
The argument made thus far is that ability does not emerge or
exist in a contextual vacuum, and, as a result, talent develop-
mentsituated withinthe contextof schoolsmay lead to a very
different understanding than talent development taking place
outsidethecontextofschools.All toofrequently,learningtak-
ing place in the context of schools contributes to knowledge
that is inert (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt
[CTGV],1993;Lave, 1997; Whitehead,1929)and fails to en-
gagetalented interactions outside of the school walls. This ar-
rangementalsohinders students’ effortsto develop the ability
and motivation to learn independently throughout their lives
and, we believe, severely hampers the development and po-
tentialengagement of talented interactions. Thisis due in part
tothe fact thatmany formal schooling contexts are predicated
ontheknowledgeacquisitionmetaphor,withthegoalbeingto
determinethemostefficient means of transferring knowledge
into the head of the learner. In other words, the focus of much
schooling practice is on developing talented individuals, not
establishing rich contexts that engage talented interactions
with all individuals. In this article, we have challenged the
conceptsofabilityandtalentasthings,andinsteadarguedthat
ability and talent are relational acts involving the individual,
the physical environment, and the sociocultural relations
through which talented transactions may occur.
To clarify, the ecological or situativity theorist is not con-
cerned with supporting the learner’s acquisition of knowl-
edge, but instead focuses on establishing functional
transactions through which individuals increase their poten-
tialto effectively participatein subsequent transactions. With
respect to supporting learning, the overriding question be-
comes
Whichcombinationsand sequences of learning activities will
prepare students best for the kinds of participation in social
practices that we value most and contribute most produc-
tively to the development of students’ identities as learners?
(Greeno, 1997, p. 9)
This question is of central importance when educators adopt
anecological (person-in-situation) unit ofanalysis, leading to
an emphasis on how various social circumstances influence
individuals’ potential to engage talented transactions, and
how individuals develop this potential through transactions
with the social and physical features of the environment. In
other words, educators must support the development of
smart contexts—not simply smart individuals.
Acentralassumptionunderlyingthisarticle is thatabilityis
notatraitexistingwithinanindividual,butinsteadisadescrip-
tionof entire systems through which some individuals appear
tobetalented.Inthis way of thinking, the individual–environ-
menttransaction can belabeled as “gifted,” or not, and the re-
sponsibilityoftheeducatoris toestablishcontextsforlearning
that support individuals in becoming more adept at function-
ing as part of multiple systems. Although content knowledge
isnecessaryforsuccessfulparticipation,educatorsmustplace
increased emphasis on the context through which talented
transactionsare engaged and onincreasing the potentialof in-
dividuals to engage these transactions.
Through participation in learner-owned interactions, stu-
dents come to participate in, and even create, situations
through which they appear talented and excellent. Clearly,
somestudentsappear to excel atschoolingsimply for the sake
of learning or because of a preparedness or readiness to per-
ceive systems of relations that others find less visible (SAS,
2001). However, most young students require support and
guidance in appreciating socially agreed upon meanings and
inunderstandinghow school activitieshave relevance to their
broader lives. A central responsibility of educators is to en-
gage students in experiences that expand their functioning
with respect to those practices that are considered to be of
valuefor the greater culture.Drawing on hisexpertise, the ed-
ucator is responsible for initiating the students into those
practices and meaningful relations that are reflective of the
types of relations occurring in the culture at large. This initia-
tion cannot be handed to the student all at once. Rather, this
coupling must emerge from individual–environment interac-
tions. Student-owned—not textbook- or teacher-owned—in-
teractions provide meaning and value to the subject matter,
and build connections to the student’s life and activity more
generally (Lave, 1997). For example, the student reported in
Barab, Hay, Barnett, and Squire (2001) saw the value of, and
therefore wanted to learn, mathematical formalisms because
they were necessary for the development of the virtual reality
solar system he was modeling.
The important point is that the emphasis is on supporting
meaningful student—environment couplings, not on “smart”
individuals for whom ability and talent are treated as con-
structssolely within the individual. This shifts the focus of in-
struction and instructional design. Instead of treating the
student as an object to be changed, she is treated as an active
agent who coproduces meaning and context. The focus is on
the creation of contexts and support of children in successful
transactionswiththese contexts. In thisway,educators do not
design learning or talented individuals; instead, they design
contexts for engaging talent development and support suc-
cessfulparticipation. Theimportant questionis whattypes of
SMART CONTEXTS 175
contexts can most usefully engage the emergence of talented
interactions.The central challenge for educatorsis to develop
participatory structures that bring together the individual, en-
vironment, and sociocultural relations. Throughout this dis-
cussion we described a number of such educational systems
for talent development, next we discuss additional examples
of the types of talent development contexts that we are advo-
cating.
Learning and Talent Development as
Contextualized Activity
Giventhecontextualizednatureofknowing,4studentsneedto
learn the information in the context of those situations in
which it is used and through which it is actualized (Dewey,
1938).In responseto thisconcern, andwith thegoal ofdevel-
opingthesetypes of contexts, theCTGV introduced anchored
instruction (see CTGV, 1990, 1993). Briefly, anchored in-
struction refers to instruction in which the material to be
learned is presented in the context of a specific topic or prob-
lem(anchor) that serves toestablish a macro-contextthat pro-
vides meaning to the material. In contrast to the disconnected
setsof “application problems” located at the ends of textbook
chapters, macro-contexts refer to stories that take place in se-
mantically rich, open-ended environments (CTGV, 1993).
Thework of the CTGV has focused primarily on video-based
macrocontexts intended to overcome inert knowledge by an-
choring learning within the context of meaningful prob-
lem-solving activities. In contrast to the disconnected sets of
“application problems” located at the end of textbook chap-
ters, macrocontexts refer to stories that take place in semanti-
cally rich, open-ended environments (CTGV, 1993).
Asanexample,Journey to Cedar Creek isananchoredles-
sonor storypresented onvideodisc in which students watch a
15-min story where Jasper, the main character, purchases an
oldcabin cruiser. Students must determineif Jasper can make
it home given that the running lights are broken and there is
only a small temporary gas tank. To make a correct decision
students must revisit various scenes on the videodisc where
theyobtainfactssuchashowmuchgasthetemporarytankcan
hold, how much money Jasper has left, when sunset occurs,
distance home, and gallons per hour. An accurate solution to
the problem requires “picking up” relevant information and
eventually applying the distance-rate-time formula. Students
must discover and satisfy 17 mathematical subproblems nec-
essaryfor determining if Jasper can return home. In these les-
sons, there is no separate content (e.g., the distance-rate-time
formula) and medium (e.g., the videodisc story in which Jas-
per’sproblemisintroduced),thereissimply a context(i.e.,de-
terminingifJaspercanmakeithome). Young(1993)designed
the Jasper Planning Assistant software to help students exter-
nalizetheirproblem-solvingactionswithintheJourneytoCe-
dar Creek solution space. The software affords students the
opportunity to record their plans, to save facts, to bring up
scenesfrom the video, and it also poses multiple-choice ques-
tionsabouttheJasperstory,aswellasratingscaleitemsofcon-
fidence and interest. Student responses are time-stamped and
saved into a logfile for summary and analysis, providing the
researcherawindowintotheproblem-solving activities of the
learnerastheyunfolded.Talentin this contextinvolvestheap-
plicationofsuccessfulproblem-solvingstrategiestowardsthe
production of a correct solution (Young, 1993).
In another project, Barab and Landa (1997) worked with
teachers and students to develop integrated units, treating the
core element of these elements as an anchor. During the Stu-
dents’RightsUnit, as oneexample, students were expectedto
generatea bill ofrights that was representative of the views of
studentsin the school. In this unit, studentslearned about per-
centages and graphs in a context of determining various
group preferences—which is consistent with why one might
use percentages outside of schools. Similarly, students work-
ing on personal historical maps did not learn mapping and
compass skills through didactic instruction, rather they
learned these skills in various contexts, in an attempt to navi-
gate to specific locations. The design focus in these projects
was to support the development of contexts in schools that
aided students in learning the material in a manner that was
consistent with those situations in which they would use the
materialoutside of schools (Greeno,1997). Further, thefocus
was not solely on person, but instead focused on person-
in-situation, aiding students in developing an appreciation of
those situations in which they could be talented. In under-
standing person-in-situation, Barab (1999) conducted inter-
views over time with the students, examined their portfolios
andteacherassignedtests, and observed class presentations.
Another example involved high school students partici-
pating in a summer program on invention and design
(Gorman, Plucker, & Callahan, 1998). Students in this con-
text were told that the historical setting for the class was im-
mediately before Alexander Graham Bell filed his telephone
patent in 1876, and they were asked to work in groups to de-
signa telephone, build aworking prototype, writea patent ap-
plication, and present and defend their design and prototype
to a person acting in the role of a patent examiner—a role un-
dertakenby an inventor from AT&T.Students had access to a
varietyofmaterials,most of which wouldhavebeenavailable
to inventors around the time of the Bell patent, and they were
176 BARAB AND PLUCKER
4This is not to imply that practices, principles, and resources learned in
one situation (such as schools) cannot be used in other situations (such as,
outside of schools)—although there is clearly a base of literature indicating
the difficulty of promoting such transfer (Detterman & Sternberg, 1993;
Gick & Holyoak, 1993; Greeno, 1989; Lave, 1988). Rather, we believe that
thesituationinwhichinformationis learned has its own setofconstraintsand
affordances that contribute to an individual’s understanding of what is
learned and when it can be applied. Therefore, transfer requires that the
learner was initially attuned to specific invariance, as related to the variance,
so that he or she will perceive similar invariance as related to the variance in
the transfer situation (Detterman, 1993; Greeno, Smith, & Moore, 1993).
also provided with access to various patents, notebooks, and
paperwork from many of the inventors who worked on voice
transmission technology in the late 1900s. Most of the stu-
dents had little knowledge of circuit design, the physics of
sound,and other important content. Theinstructor, an experi-
enced physics teacher, circulated among the groups and de-
liveredminilectures on these topics to students who appeared
to need the information. The teacher occasionally stopped all
thegroupsand delivered a 20to 30 min just-in-timelectureon
content with which most of the class was having difficulty.
These lectures were infrequent, and the teacher usually im-
beddedthe content ina historical context which added further
to the real-life application of the creative skills and content.
Similar to Barab and Landa (1997), multiple data sources
suchas interviews, artifacts, observations, and pre-post inter-
views were collected in order to capture an understanding of
person-in-situ.
In two other projects, Barab and Hay (2001) and Barab,
Squire, and Dueber (2000) used the Internet to connect stu-
dents and real-world practitioners working in authentic con-
texts. Barab and Hay’s (2001) Scientific Apprenticeship
Camp project was designed to match 24 inner-city middle
school learners with scientists. Participants worked in groups
of four as they conducted scientific research and developed a
scientific presentation under the expert mentorship of a prac-
ticingscientist.Studentsvisitedthescientist’slaboratory,col-
laborated over the Internet, and eventually presented their
findingstofamilyandfriends,interestedpublic,andothersci-
entists. Barab, Squire, and Deuber’s (2000) Technology Par-
ticipation project used emerging technologies to create an
authentic learning context where 28 preservice teachers at a
university and 7 practicing K-12 teachers collaborated in the
conduct of real-world tasks. This partnership provided the
foundationforsupportingalearningcommunityofpreservice
and practicing teachers that situated both in collaborative
practicesthatwereauthenticandvaluabletoallinvolved.Both
projects immersed students in contexts of collaboration with
real-worldpractitionerssothatstudentscouldbecomeknowl-
edgeablyskillful with respectspecific practices in the context
inwhich those practiceswere used. Weadministered pre- and
post-assessment tests, carried out semistructured interviews,
examinedthe nature of the dialogue in the online discussions,
and developed rubrics to evaluate presentations and final
products. Although we did not carry out pre–post interviews,
theseweresupplementedbymorein-situobservationsandthe
use of portfolio analysis to capture person-in-situation.
In summary, in the interactive and participatory contexts
being advocated here, ongoing participation, rather than the
development of hypothesized mental representations evi-
denced on post-assessment measures, becomes the focus of
instruction and assessment. Talent exists as part of student
practices and is distributed across those resources (including
people) with which the student interacts (Brown et al., 1989;
Young, 1993). Talent development is not an isolated activity
that is context-independent and externally arranged; instead,
talent development (participation) is recontextualized as a
participatory process involving practice, and meaning is
contextualized as part of an ecological system (Barab et al.,
1999). Accordingly, both talent and talent development are
treated as contextualized acts. To be redundant yet succinct,
the focus is on contextualized participation and not simply
knowledgeacquisition. It is through supportingand research-
ing participation in context that we can best foster and recog-
nize talent.
Researching Person-In-Situ
In the wake of the cognitive revolution in the early 1970s, a
history of methodological practices emerged that began with
the individual mind as the unit of analysis. Given this unit,
controlled experiments, clinical interviews, and other tech-
niques designed to eliminate extraneous variables or to en-
able the sort of intense microanalysis needed to produce in-
formation processing models and simulations were given
methodological preeminence (Barab & Kirshner, 2001). The
SAS (2001, pp. 162–163), focusing on aptitude suggested
that traditional paradigms and research methods neglected
the importance of affect (or feeling) and conation (or will) as
well as the role of context. In capturing a more dynamic and
contextualized unit, researchers have employed a variety of
methods from anthropology, cultural-historical psychology,
educational psychology, and cognitive science (see, for ex-
ample, Barab, Hay, & Yamagata-Lynch, 2001; Chaiklin &
Lave, 1993; Cobb, Stephan, McClain, & Gravemeijer, 2001;
Cole, 1996; Greeno, 1998; Hall, 1996; Jordan & Henderson,
1995; Lidz, 1987; Roth, 2001; Royer, Cicero, & Carlo, 1993;
Siegler & Crowley, 1991; SAS, 2001) with a focus on de-
scribing the nexus of individual(s), environment, and
sociocultural context.
In our work, we have used various methods to capture per-
sons-in-situations, ranging from the building of path diagrams
from computerized log files (Barab, Fajen, Kulikowich, &
Young, 1996), to building networks of activity based on video
analysis (Barab, Hay, & Yamagata-Lynch, 2001), to building
thick descriptions over time based on multiple interviews, re-
sponses to questionnaires, portfolio analysis, and participant ob-
servations (Barab, Barnett, & Squire, in press; Plucker &
Gorman,1995,1999).Throughout our different projects, wehave
1. Consistently examined performance in rich contexts,
trying to understand the role of environmental tools
and context in mediating the production of talent.
2. Focused on trajectories over time instead of simply
taking isolated snapshots or examining only post per-
formance.
3. Used multiple methods for data collection and analy-
sis, realizing that capturing talent requires looking in
multiple places with multiple lenses and then coordi-
nating these findings to develop a holistic account of
person-in-situ.
SMART CONTEXTS 177
Although an extended discussion on research methods is
beyond the scope of this article and is taken up elsewhere5,
we have highlighted three key challenges that emerge when
the researcher adopts person-in-situ as his or her unit of
analysis. The development of these methods remains one of
the core challenges for situativity theorists and, more spe-
cifically, for those arguing for an ecological perspective of
ability and talent development.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Inthis article we haveargued that abilityand talent should not
beviewedas constructs possessedbyindividuals but, instead,
as sets of relations that are actualized through dynamic
transactions. In providing a theoretical grounding for this
conceptualization, we have noted the deficiencies of tradi-
tional perspectives and briefly discussed more recent per-
spectives including those from ecological psychology, situ-
ated cognition, distributed cognition, activity theory, and
legitimate peripheral participation. We have argued that in-
steadof advocating for the systematic and didactic separation
of individual from environment, an ecological or relational
model points to the importance of fully contextualized expe-
rience through which individuals, environments, and the
sociocultural structures and relations transact. In this line of
thinking,the placeto look for talent is not in the head or in the
environment, but in the variables of the “flow itself.” Talent,
or evidence of being knowledgeably skillful, is thus consid-
ered present when individuals, frequently using multiple re-
sources and always interacting as part of the sociocultural
world,demonstrate their propensity for forming particular re-
lations.
Given this relational perspective, classrooms should not
be considered merely as the sites where talent development
takes place, but should actually be conceptualized as the con-
text for a specific cultural milieu through which students de-
velop understandings of what constitutes a talented
interaction—an interaction that is partly defined and vali-
dated in terms of the day-to-day practices and rituals of the
school culture. As a result, educators need to select the daily
rituals and activities carefully so that students learn skills and
participatein practices that are consistent with those environ-
mental and sociocultural structures and processes outside of
schools. As Dewey (1938) continuously argued, educators
need to support transactions and experiences that will live
fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences.
This recommendation mirrors the philosophy behind
Renzulli and Reis’s (1985) Schoolwide Enrichment Model.
Whenusing this model, schools areencouraged to create a re-
source-rich environment in which students can pursue their
interestsand eventually create aproduct by modelingthe ritu-
als and practices of practicing professionals in the domain of
interest. Renzulli (1994) has recently taken this model a step
further, encouraging schools to use his contextual approach
as a comprehensive school reform (CSR) model, which we
view as a step in the correct direction. However, several
dozen CSR models are being used in American schools (e.g.,
NorthwestRegional Educational Laboratory, 1999) with thin
and mixed evaluations of effectiveness. The degree to which
CSR models promote excellence and talent development
amongall students, and not justamong specific groups of stu-
dents,has yet to be determined. Many ofthe models appear to
be aimed at increasing the achievement of average or
underperforming students, with the assumption that high
achievers will benefit similarly from the reforms. Do these
CSR models promote talent development more effectively,
and do they involve more students than traditional models?
Answering this question will provide critical information for
reforming education.
Drawing primarily on the learner-as-processor metaphor,
there has emerged a long history of assessment practices fo-
cusingonthe individual (or, moreaccurately,the structures in
the individual’s head) as the unit of analysis. These practices
cameabout in the context of traditional conceptions of ability
(see Snow, 1997; Van Tassel-Baska, 1998) and a positivist
epistemology in which clinical interviews, controlled experi-
ments,and other techniques intended to minimize extraneous
variables were given methodological preeminence (Brown,
1992; Schoenfeld, 1992). Many of us were enculturated into
the practices associated with educational research within the
confines of these traditions. This line of thinking led many of
us to describe individuals, and not their contextualized func-
tioning as part of the world, as gifted, talented, or able. How-
ever, for researchers adopting a relational perspective with
respect to what it means to know and learn, these classical
methods are inadequate and even unethical (Barab &
Kirshner,2001). Adopting an ecological perspective not only
has implications for supporting talent development and for
characterizing the site of intelligence, but also for assessment
and evaluation more generally. Educators are just beginning
to explore innovative means of assessment that are sensitive
to individual–environment relations and that account for
contextualized particulars while allowing for cross-contex-
tual comparisons (Hickey & Zuiker, in press; SAS, 2001).
However, having measures of ability and talent that respect
local context, experiences, strengths, and interests are essen-
tial if we are to have ethically valid interpretations of what
constitutes talented transactions and who is considered able
to engage in these types of transactions.
In this article, we have analyzed the problems caused by
viewing talent development through the lenses of traditional
conceptualizations of ability, intelligence, and talent. We
briefly reviewed the potential contributions of a new concep-
178 BARAB AND PLUCKER
5See the special issue on “Rethinking Methodology in the Learning Sci-
ences”forsomeexamplesandfurtherdiscussionofthemethodologicalchal-
lenges (Barab & Kirshner, 2001). Also, see SAS (2001) for discussions di-
rectly related to talent development.
tualization of ability and talent development, with an empha-
sisondesign challenges faced byeducatorswho seek to foster
emerging excellence. We look forward to participating in the
continuing dialogue as educators explore the creation of new
environments to support the development of ability and tal-
ent, new techniques to observe the talent development that is
occurring, and new insights that develop as we explore these
issues collaboratively. Most importantly, we hope that our
discussion can prompt educators, researchers, and policy
makers to more equitably apply the labels of gifted or tal-
ented, realizing the value of the perspective that nobody has
talent, yet everybody can engage talented transactions.
Through these discussions, educators can come to character-
ize entire contexts as gifted, and to develop educational inno-
vations that support learners in functioning as part of, and
creating, such contexts.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Special thanks to Lyn Corno, Jim MaKinster, and the anony-
mous reviewers for their valuable contributions to our think-
ing and to the evolution of this manuscript.
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