Theoretical Framing of a Digital Education Experiment

Abstract

An educational experiment as a method was originally theorised as the study of a theoretical problem in practice in a context of a collaboration between researchers and teachers. But when teachers and researchers are not able to be physically together because of government guidelines restricting access, suspending research in schools and centres, or by reducing movement of a population through ‘lock down’, then how can an educational experiment be undertaken? The richness of the concrete research methods that follow are theorised through bringing together a system of concepts that enable a digital educational experiment to proceed under conditions of crisis, contradiction, and drama. Named as a digital educational experiment, the theorised model draws on Vygotsky’s original core conception of development, Hedegaard’s writings on an educational experiment, and the new methods presented in Sect. 2.1. It builds on the concepts of motives and demands in relation to digital environments and interactions, where time, space, and physicality are virtually defined and enabled.

1 Introduction

…it should be taken into account that even the most brilliant scientist or thinker cannot be fully aware of his [or her] own consciousness and development of his (or her) own thinking. It requires special research of the dynamic logic of development of the investigation of a scientist or a thinker that reveals its contradictions and dramatic tensions as well as the transitions, shifts, and transformations that are provoked in different stages of his (or her) life course (Dafermos, 2018, p. 7).

The focus of Section One is on the digitally enabled collaboration between teachers and researchers under conditions of crisis, contradiction, and drama, where new levels of researcher consciousness emerge. This chapter gives a more nuanced account of the content introduced in Chap. 1 where a theorision of a cultural-historical digital methodology in times of change, innovation, and resilience in the early years was presented.

The problem that this chapter addresses is how to theorise the new research methods that emerged in response to crisis, contradiction, and drama, as was experienced by researchers who sought to maintain their research collaboration in a time when research was being suspended due to the Global Pandemic. In line with Dafermos (2018), a major disruption to undertaking research changed the research conditions of the educational experiments, and as will be shown in this first section of the book, new demands were made on researchers which positively supported the development of innovation through digital means.

An educational experiment was never developed with a digital collaboration in mind. Consequently, the researchers who present their methods in the chapters that follow, show new ways of digitally collaborating in an educational experiment.

This chapter begins by discussing what is an educational experiment and what were the new demands placed on researchers and teachers during a Global Pandemic. This is followed by introducing the motivating characteristics and the system of concepts that enable a digital educational experiment to proceed. Finally, a model of a digital educational experiment is presented that draws on Vygotsky’s original core conceptions of crisis and development, and Hedegaard’s concept of an educational experiment.

In line with the orientation of this book, the Vygotskian concept of crisis is used to theorise the system of concepts that make up the new methods shown in Sect. 2.1, giving methodological coherence and authenticity to what resulted in research practice, and what can be taken forward into future research.

2 What Is an Educational Experiment?

The chapters in Sections 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 draw on the method of an educational experiment. An educational experiment is a planned intervention. It was originally developed by Mariane Hedegaard (2008) as a dialectical–interactive method where an intervention into practice is made. The dialectical–interactive method has its roots in cultural-historical theory. “Dialectics offers an advanced theoretical framework for the conceptualization not only of the movement, change, and development of the social world but also the logic of thinking that reflects it” (Dafermos, 2018, p. 7). Therefore, an educational experiment cannot be a simple pre and post implementation of an intervention.

Hedegaard (2008) describes two phases that are foundational for setting up an educational experiment. In the first phase she says the researcher is close to the social practices that she wishes to study. But the researcher only has a general idea of how to plan the intervention into practice. In this first phase the researcher observes, records, and interprets the social practices and brings forward some preliminary theoretical conceptions. Hedegaard (2008) has said, “Through interpretation of these protocol records some conceptions about the object of research can be formed and the researcher can systematise the knowledge and formulate models of relations” (p. 182).

In the second phase the researcher uses the results of the first phase to design the educational experiment. During the first phase the researcher formulated the conceptual relations within the problem area, and these are drawn upon to design the intervention into everyday practice. Hedegaard (2008) explains the methodological aspects of the second phase as being “characterised by the researcher’s intentional transformation of practices in the problem area to bring out the central relations” (p. 182).

The concept of central relations is derived from the theorisation of Davydov (1972/1990) who showed how empirical knowledge was generated in research as building blocks of new understandings. He theorised that empirical knowledge in this form, did not bring forward the central relations between the blocks of knowledge—that is, it does not show their relations. Whilst interventions are common in the sciences, the focus is causal and not relational, and thereby the pre and post implementation of the intervention does not seek to determine what might be the central relations or core relational knowledge. Different questions are asked when a cultural-historical methodology is used to conceptualise the methods of the research. How are units of empirical knowledge connected? Are there relations between them? Could a model of relations be determined during the process of development? To answer these kinds of questions and to capture the core relations in social practice, Davydov (1972/1990) proposed that researchers build studies of social practices as relational units. He named this method as a model of theoretical–dialectical knowledge formation. Davydov (1972/1990) called this way of researching in schools as an educational teaching experiment. Hedegaard (2008) has been inspired by Davydov, but she brings into this theorisation an interactive dimension between the collaborators, which she names as a dialectical-interactive method. In so doing, Hedegaard (2008) reformulated the educational teaching experiment of Davydov (1972/1990) into an educational experiment into social practices.

Hedegaard (2008) argues that “The educational experiment is a multifaceted planned preparation of teaching which has, as its goal, the creation of optimal conditions for the learning and development of the participating children” (p. 185). She said, “In this type of research it is very important to have clear models of how teaching content should contribute to children’s learning and motive development” (p. 185). Foundational to her research is the double move (Hedegaard & Chaiklin, 2005), with the problem of how to bring out the subject matter or discipline content to be learned, at the same time as ensuring that the content becomes personally meaningful to the children. This multifaceted planned preparation of teaching demands that researchers and teachers become collaborators in the educational experiment.

3 New Demands on Teachers and Researchers

In an educational experiment as formulated by Hedegaard (2008), great importance is placed on the collaboration between the researchers and teachers. Both researchers and teachers have as core the joint project with the goals for the intervention. Hedegaard (2008) has said, “What makes the educational experiment different from action research is, first, the cooperation that exists between two or more professionals … and, second, the theoretical conceptions that frame the intervention” (p. 200).

In the educational experiments conducted by Mariane Hedegaard, the cooperation between the researchers and the teachers was undertaken in person in a range of practice settings such as classrooms (Hedegaard, 2002), an afterschool program (Hedegaard & Chaiklin, 2005), and in a context that regularly brought kindergarten teachers and primary school teachers together in one room with the researcher (Hedegaard, 2017). The former focused on how to create motivating conditions for learning school discipline concepts, whilst the latter was oriented to the theoretical problem of the transition from play to learning across the institutional settings of kindergarten and school.

But when it is no longer possible to physically bring researchers and teachers together for planning and implementing an educational experiment, new conditions for collaboration are needed. The Global Pandemic created in Australia a new kind of societal context, in which Departments of Education suspended all field research in public schools and early childhood settings and stopped flights in and out of Australia, which significantly disrupting national and international data collection processes. This new societal condition created new demands on the researchers that needed to be resolved. New forms of conducting an educational experiment were needed, and in this Sect. 4 concrete methods of how the drama, tension, and crises gave new possibilities are introduced, analysed and theorised. The new digital research methods that resulted from the changed societal conditions gave new ways for researchers and teachers to collaborate. For example in Chap. 3, new ways were found, where PhD researchers Yuejiu Wang and Yuwen Ma formed a research partnership so that they could undertake an educational experiment with their collaborating teachers in China. Border restrictions in Australia prevented Yuejiu from entering Australia and Yuwen from leaving Australia. All flights in and out of Australia were suspended. As is described in Chap. 3, Yuejiu and Yuwen begin communications with a kindergarten in China as Phase 1 of the educational experiment. Yuejiu meets in person with the teachers. Yuwen zooms in to be with the teachers and Yuejiu, as they begin planning the implementation of an intervention. In line with Hedegaard (2008), Yuejiu and Yuwen spend time in the centre observing, recording and interpreting the practices of the teachers. The theoretical problem they are seeking to solve, is how to make their programs more playful so that children’s learning of STEM can give more agency and degrees of freedom to the children.

To achieve active multi-modal collaboration Yuwen zooms into the classrooms as a research Fairy. She joins in the intervention into social practice in an active role of a researcher inquiring into the children and teachers’ practices. To bring the children close to the digital device that is placed in the classroom, Yuejiu organises a magic carpet and a magic rope to create motivating conditions for the children to talk to the Research Fairy. The new interactions between the researchers across countries and through the digital means, make visible to the teachers the children’s thinking in relation to the intervention into social practice. A new level of consciousness about the social intervention into practice as a new form of dialectical-interactive collaboration expands the original model of Hedegaard (2008) into the second phase of the educational experiment.

Dealing with the problem of not being able to enter the research site was also a new demand placed on PhD student researcher Monique Parkes. She describes in Chap. 4 how she created in miniature form a research diorama of the intervention that was taking place in the centre. Inside of the diorama was placed a digital device which Monique used to zoom into the diorama. She was dressed up as a character from the story book the children and teachers were focused on as part of the intervention. The miniature form of the intervention into social practice created a completely new method of dialectical-interaction not part of the original conception of Hedegaard (2008), but conceptually closer to that of Davydov (1972/1990) where a core model is theorised from the practices. In condensed form, the intervention inside of the diorama gave teachers and researchers a mirroring process, and also a core model of practices for dialogue and analysis.

Liang Li describes in Chap. 5 her collaborations with teachers using WeChat. Liang creates conditions for localised, individualised, and immediate dialogue of the planned intervention. The teachers send video clips of their practices, photographs of contexts, and text messages inviting dialogue with Liang on the planning associated with the intervention (Phase 1). Together they conceptualise the theoretical problem and the new practice, which are then made visible through WeChat as an intervention into social practice (Phase 2). A virtual dialectical-interactive method expands on the original work of Hedegaard (2008).

The final chapter in Sect. 2.1 examines how digital tools can capture practices of the intervention through a GoPro. Xianyu Meng as part of her PhD studies formed a digital collaboration between her intervention practices in China and her supervisors in Australia to work on a theorical problem. Phase One of the Educational Experiment was not necessary because the researcher was also the teacher. But to achieve a level of consciousness (Vygotsky, 1997), Xianyu captured her practices of the intervention which she then used as a common source of inquiry between Xianyu as a teacher-researcher and her supervisors. Different to action research, the collaboration focused on analysing the observation protocols which gave new insights of how to undertake a remote intervention in collaboration with her supervisors and herself as the teacher-researcher. A new method of collaboration was formulated which expanded the original dialectical-interactive method designed by Hedegaard (2008).

When the four types of problem-resolution processes of the dialectical-interactive method are brought together, they can be represented as shown in Fig. 2.1 as a problem-solution dynamic.

Fig. 2.1

Problem-solution dynamic

The methods in Fig. 2.1 are shown as problems and solutions which build on the concepts of motives and demands in relation to digital environments and interactions, where time, space, and physicality are virtually defined and enabled. Dafermos (2018) has suggested that in research where the goal is the production of knowledge, this process is not timeless and spaceless. It happens in a concrete setting, where there is “a complex intertwining of temporal and spatial relationships” (p 5). Yet the new dialectical-interactive methods discussed in this chapter suggest that a virtual dimension needed to be considered in this cultural-historical theorisation of an educational experiment.

The Global Pandemic meant that researchers had to imagine new ways of overcoming the problem of being unable to physically be with teachers, and this crisis created new ways of conceptualising interactions between teachers and researchers in an educational experiment as described by Hedegaard (2008). The intertwining of temporal and spatial relationships occurred across countries through zoom as a Research Fairy (Chap. 3), through the appearance of the researcher inside a diorama (Chap. 4), as a WeChat dialogue in words and images (Chap. 5), and as GoPro footage of practices of the researcher-educator in a dual role and remotely with her supervisors (Chap. 6).

4 Methodological Characteristics of Digital Collaboration in an Educational Experiment

To understand how crisis is central to the development of a digital educational experiment, we must first consider the 3 ways in which the concept of crisis acts as a motivating force. Crisis as an everyday concept was explained by Dafermos (2022) as part of the tragedy that made up Vygotsky’s life course and which deepened his attention on theorising a scientific concept of Crisis. This concept of crisis is personally felt, at the same time as being institutionally experienced, and societally determined. Figure 2.2 shows these relations.

Fig. 2.2

The relations between societal, institutional, and personal crises

In the context of the Global Pandemic, the restrictions and therefore the resultant dramas will be experienced differently by each researcher. For instance, Vygotsky (1994) wrote, “The crux of the matter is that whatever the situation, its influence depends not only on the nature of the situation itself, but also on the extent of the child’s [researcher’s] understanding and awareness of the situation” (p. 343). Researchers represented in Sect. 2.1 were all at different points of their research trajectory—some at the beginning of conceptualising an educational experiment (Chap. 4), during the process of setting up data collection (Chap. 3) or after data collection (Chap. 6). But it is important to also note that the PhD students (Chaps. 3, 4, and 6) and experienced researchers (Chap. 5) still experienced the crisis.

A level of personal consciousness as a researcher emerges because “we are always dealing with an indivisible unity of personal and situational characteristics, and which are represented in the emotional experience” (Vygotsky, 1994, p. 342; original emphasis). The emotionality of the experience has also been expressed in how researchers of the chapters that follow dealt with the challenges and formed new levels of conceptual consciousness. For instance, in Chap. 4 Parkes talks about the need for continuing her research, and the new insights gained when she said, “Propelled by the conditions of a crisis, new methodologies were needed to continue research… [from] thinking about digital technologies and young children beyond the divisive binary of digital and non-digital” (our emphasis). Similarly, in Chap. 6 Xianyu shows through her dialogue with her supervisors that she comes to think differently about her results:

At the beginning, the Educator-researcher explained how the participating children were unable to get into their play roles like in the playworlds organized elsewhere, “Shanshan [pseudonym] was unaware of what’s going on, but … My playworld is totally chaotic, it’s hopeless.

Marie: “Chaos doesn’t mean hopeless.” The theoretical understanding of “chaos” shared interpsychologically inspired the educator-researcher to look at the children’s life and their original institutional practice to understand children’s initial reactions to playworld”.

A new perspective on the same situation gives insights into the development of the researcher. The crisis that was experienced was productively resolved. In Chap. 3, Yuwen and Yuejiu show how the resolution of their crisis brought innovation through designing new methods

the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic are regarded as crises which promote the research innovation process. … As a research fairy, the researcher brought magic and new dramatised problems to the Conceptual PlayWorlds sessions.

What was common to all novice and mature researchers was the concepts from cultural-historical theory, alongside of a collective context of studying these concepts in relation to researching children and teachers’ development using an educational experiment (Hedegaard, 2008). Mature forms of concepts and the methodology of a dialectical-interactive method were always available to the research community, and in line with Vygotsky (1994), the developed form of an educational experiment “acts[ed] as a model for that which should be achieved at the end of the developmental period” (p. 348). Vygotsky (1994) argued that “Something which is only supposed to take shape at the very end of development, somehow influences the very first steps in this development” (p. 348). But when societal conditions change, and mature forms of a research practice cannot be undertaken, this disrupts the developmental trajectory of the researcher. Though this crisis of the Global Pandemic, both researchers and teachers became more conscious of the concepts they were working with, so that they could develop methods to support their planned intervention, so that it was in keeping with the theoretical integrity of an educational experiment.

We must also consider that the scientific concept of Crisis was used in association with the general cultural age periods, where Crisis explained how children moved from one motive orientation to another. We have deliberately capitalised the term to signal its theoretical status. There is also crisis which captures the dramatic day to day moments or tensions or contractions that orient children towards a new motive. They represent small steps that collectively can lead to an overall change in a child’s motive orientation. We suggest that by writing the term without a capital, this marks a smaller zig zag and iterative or spiral progression in development. We argue that crisis and not Crisis was foundational to how the researchers experienced the new societal and institutional conditions (Fig. 2.3). In many respects, we can theorise that the Global Pandemic as a societal crisis was like the life course trajectory of Vygotsky, and this not only focused the researchers attentions on the problem of designing an educational experiment, but it also created the dynamic conditions in a condensed form of how to bring into the educational experiment digital tools for supporting the foundations of the dialectical-interactive method in which a collaboration around a theoretical problem and not just a problem of practice is core.

Fig. 2.3

Methodological characteristics deployed by collaborators in a digital educational experiment

Researcher consciousness of what mattered in an educational experiment emerged and supported a new self-awareness of the professional and dynamic role of collaboration in a dialectical-interactive method by the researchers. It was through the resolution of the crisis points experienced, that innovative methods emerged as catharsis of positively being able to continue to undertake research during a Global Pandemic. Dafermos (2022) has said “The concept of ‘crisis’ is crucial for understanding not only psychological development but more broadly human development in the wider context of social, cultural history… It is difficult to understand personality development without a broader vision of society and its internal contractions” (p. 9). Adding to this, we have also noted how the dialectical relations between the ideal and real form of an educational experiment would under normal circumstances describe the process of development over time of researchers, because “mastering certain forms of activity and consciousness which have been perfected by humanity during the process of historical development, … [and this] provides the foundation for this interaction between the ideal and rudimentary form” of development (Vygotsky, 1994, p 252). However, when the ideal form is disrupted by a Global Pandemic, it becomes an historical moment in the course of human development. It becomes possible to see how new ways of being and researching emerge in an accelerated and critical form at those points in history (Vygotsky, 1997).

5 Characteristics of the New Digital Methods Embodied in an Educational Experiment

When the new research methods shown in Chaps. 3, 4, 5 and 6 are considered, there appears to be a set of common characteristics of the new digital methods embodied in an educational experiment.

First, crisis appeared to act as a positive developmental force in setting up and developing the educational experiment. That is, the Global Pandemic created societal and institutional conditions that allowed for the invention of new research practices and different ways of developing a collaboration. Vygotsky (1998) in his writings on the concept of crisis in psychology during his time, brought out a whole new system of dialectical concepts for undertaking research into human development. As noted by Dafermos (2018):

The elaboration of the concept of crisis was one of the essential innovations of Vygotsky’s theory of cultural development. It should be noted that Vygotsky focused not only on the profound negative aspects of the crises, but mainly on qualitatively new potentialities that are created for child development (p. 178).

In the digitally enabled educational experiment, development of new dialectical-interactive methods resulted giving qualitatively new ways that researchers and teachers could work on the problems of (1) social practice; (2) theoretical problem of the intervention; and (3) how to collaborate under the new research restrictions. Researchers and teachers co-existed remotely in continuous dramatic situations of how to plan and implement an educational experiment. This is consistent with how crisis is conceptualised by Dafermos (2018):

Crisis can be conceptualized as critical situation of the dramatic coexistence of conflicting possibilities of development. A crisis can be examined as a Pandora’s box of risks and dangers (Dafermos (2018, p. 178).

The teachers and the educators seeking to work out how to collaborate in an educational experiment through digital means experienced a dramatic co-existence of problem situation with the added complexity of using digital tools to solve how to collaborate. This was also a Pandora’s box because no way of working digitally in an educational experiment had been previously conceptualised. The authors of the chapters that follow give detail of their Pandora’s box (Fig. 2.1). Like Dafermos (2018), Ilyenkov (2009:185) has discussed the drama of Pandora’s box as a resolution of a contraction, and in so doing shows how something new can emerge:

Contradiction is the concrete unity of mutually exclusive opposites is the real nucleus of dialectics, its central category (Ilyenkov, 2009: 185).

But the resolutions of the contradictions (Fig. 2.1) and the drama of new ideas were for the researchers and teachers not straight forward. In keeping with how Dafermos (2018) has argued that the development of cultural-historical theory emerged, “A dialectical approach brings to light the logic of the development of Vygotsky’s theory in terms of a drama of ideas and discloses zigzags, returns and loops in the process of its building, rather than a linear accumulation of new knowledge” (p. 7). It can be argued that crisis appeared to act as a positive developmental force for teachers and researchers in the chapters that follow, as researchers set up and developed their collaborations in the educational experiment through digital means.

Second, the new digital methods for collaboration between researchers and teachers emerged through a resolution of specific crises. Dafermos (2022) has argued that it is not possible to understand the works of Vygotsky without the concept of crisis. He draws a parallel with the scientific concept of crisis and the differing historical moments of Vygotsky’s personal crises:

Vygotsky during his life course had experienced various crises: He experienced discrimination and pogrom against the Jewish population at an early age and the death of his family members. He suffered not only from progressive form of tuberculosis but also from unfair criticism of his theory and the split in his school. Growing through multiple crises, Vygotsky’s sense of the complexity and contradictory nature of social and personal life was deepened (Dafermos, 2022, p. 5).

What Dafermos (2022) draws attention to is the significance of the relation between the personal crises and the development of the scientific concept of crisis that emerged in Vygotsky’s theory of human development. In line with this logic, the societal crisis of the Global Pandemic created personal crises for the researchers, and because they each could not physically be in a research site in collaboration with participants, this also deepened their understandings of cultural-historical theory and developed a personal motive to undertake research in new ways. Moreover, the crisis created dynamic and dramatic conditions for productive research. As Dafermos (2022) has suggested, “Vygotsky’s life and development of his theory can be understood as an optimistic tragedy” (p. 5). The digital means of collaboration also became an optimistic tragedy as researchers investigated what digital tools could be harnessed to support collaboration, such as using a zoom app on a digital device (Chaps. 3 and 4). In my respects, the researchers experienced self-development through resolution of their own person crisis.

Third, we need to draw on other concepts from cultural-historical theory, such as, the dialectical relations between idea and real form, to support a better understanding of the nature of the emerging remote educational experiment, and the new ways of conceptualising what collaboration meant in this form of an educational experiment. Researchers used the digital technology for remotely bringing into the research site the researcher. As is shown in Chap. 4 by Monique Parkes, a diorama acted as the ideal form of the planned intervention. The researcher was able to enact Phase 1 of the educational experiment by zooming into the diorama on the device and to interact with the teachers and the children, followed by Phase 2 where the researcher became a character from the stage set of the diorama, thereby bringing into relations the real form of development of the children and the teachers associated with the intervention. The relations between the ideal and real form of an educational experiment was enacted remotely through the cultural device of a diorama.

Fourth, the collaborations between teachers and researchers were amplified through the digital educational experiment. In Chap. 5 Liang Li used WeChat as a tool for collaboration, but also WeChat to digitally capture the observation protocols of practices for discussion between researchers and teachers. The synchronous nature of capturing and immediately discussing the new social practices, gave real time developmental opportunities for continuing the intervention. The digital capture could be jointly worked on by the teachers and researchers, and this appeared to amplify the developmental production (rather than replication) of the new social practices that were part of the intervention. The GoPro camera that captured all of the practices of the teacher-researcher, as is shown in Chap. 6 by Xianyu Ma, gave a moment-to-moment capturing of the educational experiment in action. The digital material as a visible treasure trove of social practices, became the joint project of the teacher-researcher and her supervisors as they brought concepts to their analysis of the observational protocols. The collaborations between teacher-researcher and supervisors were amplified because the digital observational protocols could be shared using VPN platform and collectively discussed in relation to the theoretical problem and the planned intervention.

Fifth, the new digital methods that were developed by the researchers were able to generate theoretical knowledge of the virtual spaces and collaborations. That is, the dynamic conditions of what it meant to undertake cultural-historical research had to be captured in a condensed form by the researchers if they wanted to bring into the educational experiment digital tools for supporting the foundations of the dialectical-interactive method. The digitally enabled diorama (Chap. 4) is an excellent example of this because the miniature form of the planned intervention located within the centre mirrored the processes and new practices for generating theoretical knowledge. The GoPro and VPN platform (Chap. 6) and WeChat (Chap. 5) gave a virtual space for the joint analysis of digital observational protocols where theoretical knowledge of the new practices through the planned intervention were made possible. Additionally, the multimodal context of a remote Research Fairy and local Magic Carpet and Rope (Chap. 3) generated theoretical knowledge of the virtual spaces and new forms of collaborations made possible through multimodal contexts.

Taken together, the chapters that follow show how each of the characteristics of a digital dialectical-interactive collaboration generated a new consciousness of the researchers. Vygotsky (1994) wrote that emotional experience of the person is “a unity of environmental and personal features” (p. 343) and that humans will experiences the same environment differently based on their own social situation of development. Whilst Vygotsky wrote in relation to children, we can also take this theoretical premise in relation to the development of the researchers who were also in different periods of their own development as researchers.

A set of methodological characteristics that emerged can be summarised dialectically as:

Researcher development and Digital Educational Experiment.

Researcher development:

• Crisis as a positive developmental force in research

• Researcher self-development through resolution of crises

• New consciousness of the researcher

Digital Educational Experiment:

• The dialectical relations between ideal and real form of an educational experiment was enacted remotely through a cultural device

• Digital amplification of an educational experiment

• Theoretical knowledge development in virtual spaces

In line with Vygotsky (1998) who spoke about development as not a product, but rather as a process, we can conceptualise how the crisis of the Global Pandemic enacted a research context that supported researcher development, as well as the development of new cultural tools in support of an educational experiment. Therefore, when these methodological characteristics are brought together as shown in Fig. 2.3, they help explain both researcher development and the development of the new methods and their associated practices for remotely supporting a planned intervention into social practice as a digital educational experiment.

Our model, named as a digital educational experiment, draws on Vygotsky’s original core concept of development and his concept of crisis, Hedegaard’s conception of an educational experiment, and the methodological characteristics that emerged through becoming and being researchers during a Global Pandemic. Whilst the historical moments that have generated the new demands and crisis conditions were unique, they too are symbolic of broader historical crisis periods which were in the past the crisis in psychology (Vygotsky, 1997), and in the future as new crises emerge. It is not the specific crisis, but rather it is the historical and symbolic crisis that is the productive force for the development of new methods and their theorisation as methodologies that has been the focus of this chapter.

6 Conclusion

One of the defining features of an educational experiment with its planned intervention and collaboration between teachers and researchers is the creation of developmental conditions for children in a condensed form. Rather than to wait for everyday life to bring forward dramatic moments that create developmental conditions, the planned intervention amplifies the developmental possibilities to bring into a condensed form those characteristics that can be studied. As Vygotsky and Luria (1994) have noted in their experimental-genetic method, “we are able to offer the subject tasks geared to different phases of development and to provoke in reduced form these processes of mastering tasks which allow us to trace, in the experiment, consecutive stages of psychological development” (p. 160). An experimental-genetic method was realised through the digital educational experiment theorised in this chapter.

Hedegaard’s (2008) characteristics of a dialectical-interactive method is elaborated in light of the new societal context of the Global Pandemic, and the resultant new research practices associated with the emergence of our digital educational experiment. This chapter explained how the digital tools and associated new research practices (Chaps. 3, 4, 5 and 6) acted as auxiliary devices for supporting new ways of collaborating between researchers and teachers in an educational experiment. Six characteristics of the educational experiment emerged under the conditions of a crisis, and when in relations with each other, new methods emerged that were theorised in unity as a digital educational experiment.