Pedagogy, Culture & Society

ISSN: 1468-1366 (Print) 1747-5104 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpcs20

The meaning of things. Didactic objects and the

implementation of educational theory

Herbert Kalthoff, Jutta Wiesemann, Jochen Lange & Tobias Roehl

To cite this article: Herbert Kalthoff, Jutta Wiesemann, Jochen Lange & Tobias Roehl (2019):
The meaning of things. Didactic objects and the implementation of educational theory, Pedagogy,
Culture & Society, DOI: 10.1080/14681366.2019.1634124

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2019.1634124

Published online: 27 Jun 2019.

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PEDAGOGY, CULTURE & SOCIETY
https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2019.1634124

The meaning of things. Didactic objects and the implementation

of educational theory
Herbert Kalthoffa, Jutta Wiesemannb, Jochen Lange c
and Tobias Roehl d

a
Department of Sociology, Johannes Gutenberg Universitaet Mainz, Mainz, Germany; bDepartment of
Educational Science and Psychology, University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany; cDepartment of Educational
Science, University of Education Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany; dDepartment of Social Sciences, University of
Siegen, Siegen, Germany

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
For the everyday education of students in schools, objects are made Materiality; didactic objects;
available to teachers that illustrate subject matter and make it com- manufacturing knowledge;
prehensible. These objects are created to make something visible, so education sector; translation
that it can be presented, worked on, and understood. This article starts
from the assumption that didactic objects are not neutral media: In the
course of their manufacturing, educational theory as well as everyday
knowledge about the ‘nature’ and particularity of students, teachers,
and classroom lessons are technically inscribed into them. This article
explicates work with didactic objects empirically and shows how this
inscription of theoretical perspectives takes place in companies within
the education sector. It becomes apparent how specifically designed
objects retroact performatively within classroom lessons on those who
use them to display and work on school knowledge.

Introduction
Schools have a whole arsenal of artifacts which are used to display subject matter of
classroom lessons (e.g. the equator on a world map), to visualize it (e.g. a mathematical
formula on the chalkboard), to demonstrate it (e.g. an alternating current circuit), or to
illustrate it (e.g. an anatomical model). It seems as though teaching and learning cannot be
done without these artifacts to display, illustrate and otherwise make subjects available.
Classroom lessons and learning processes couldn’t be facilitated in a school cleared of these
artifacts. Educational research might deal with the relative importance of everyday and
specifically produced artifacts in a number of ways. Firstly, when analyzing learning pro-
cesses in schools it can ignore these objects and take them for granted (as is often done);
secondly, educational research can investigate how objects are used in lessons
(Greiffenhagen 2014; Lynch and Macbeth 1998), thirdly, it can investigate their historical
genesis (Lawn and Grosvenor 2005); fourthly, it can examine how and through which
assumptions those artifacts are manufactured in the education sector.
In this paper we follow this last perspective, investigating the manufacture of educational
artefacts which we will term didactic objects. Following a sociology of knowledge approach

CONTACT Herbert Kalthoff herbert.kalthoff@uni-mainz.de Department of Sociology, Johannes Gutenberg

Universitaet Mainz, Mainz, Germany
© 2019 Pedagogy, Culture & Society
2 H. KALTHOFF ET AL.

Figure 1. Educational science kit.

Figure 2. Virtual classroom.

we are interested in epistemic practices in the education sector, their performance and
materiality. We are especially interested in the question of how didactic-normative theories
or everyday assumptions about school lessons are inscribed into these objects suggesting
 PEDAGOGY, CULTURE & SOCIETY 3

a particular social use in class. In this way, we will investigate how these theories or
assumptions are inscribed into the artifact’s materiality. The concept of translation is central
to the transformation of didactic theories or assumptions into objects. In Actor Network
Theory [ANT], translation means to gather, align and thus transform a number of diverse
human and non-human actors in an agential network (Latour 1999: 24ff.; Callon 1986). In
a similar vein, the broader and more general discussion about translation and its social
impact firstly argues that neither the ‘original’ nor the translating language remain pristine
or unaffected; secondly, a translation can substitute the ‘original’ (e.g. Dizdar 2006, 2012).
Inour research we follow these ideas showing the very practice of translating theories or
assumptions about school lessons, their dynamic and participants into a material substance
or a digital sign and what this entails.
To do this, we examined companies that invent, test, and manufacture didactic objects
for schools. We did this with the assumption that the manufacturing’s various phases will
allow us to observe just how the practical and theoretical knowledge of the manufacturing
actors enters their work with the didactic object. By looking at the development process one
can observe how technological and material concerns (technical features, fabric qualities,
strength, size etc.) rest on implicit, everyday assumptions about school lessons, teachers and
students. Choosing a material or technical component is thus also an educational choice.
Consequently, one must observe how these (knowledge) practices conceptualize humans
(e.g. teacher, students) and situations (e.g. classroom lessons) (Berg 1998). In this sense, we
were concerned with researching the implementation of educational theories that can be
observed in the practices of the actors. Furthermore, we assume that those specifically
designed didactic objects in some way anticipate the lesson they were developed and
produced for. They do not determine the processes of teaching and learning in class, but
frame them by enabling the illustration, display and visualization of things.
Methodically, we have left schools and classroom lessons behind to observe knowl-
edge practices in economic organizations in the education sector. Theoretically, we
assume that we can observe the creation of teaching and learning in class in
a completely different place and thus practices of framing beyond the situational
accomplishment of schools and classroom lessons. The process of teaching and learning
in schools is not exclusively performed in schools, it also happens beyond schools in
a variety of completely different organizations (such as educational administrations and
textbook publishing houses).1 In this article, we explain knowledge practices of the
process of manufacturing of didactic artifacts with two contrasting cases: a ‘science
kit’ used in elementary schools and a ‘Virtual Classroom’ used in secondary schools.
Even though various authors pointed out the relevance of artifacts for the compre-
hension and analysis of social acts and behaviors early on (such as Simmel 1908/1992,
1909/1957), the social sciences managed to forgo the analysis of objects for a long time.
The rehabilitation of artifacts and their analysis essentially goes back to the empirical
research and conceptual work of science and technology studies (such as Knorr-Cetina
1997; Latour 1999). Building on this, more and more educational research takes up
insights from actor network theory, but also from phenomenology or practice theories
and from ethnomethodology or symbolic interactionism in order to deal with the social
meaning and the educational performativity of material objects (e.g. Sørensen 2009;
Adams and Thompson 2011; Fenwick and Edwards 2010).
4 H. KALTHOFF ET AL.

A glance at the literature reveals that educational research focuses on the social use of
artifacts in schools and the resulting learning processes (see for e.g. Asbrand, Martens, and
Petersen 2013). Several authors examine the relation between space and objects and how
these networks shape everyday interactions in classroom lessons (McGregor 2004), or they
treat objects as educational media. For example, they outline the advantages of easy
handling and visualization of static media (Sauter 1985) or view new media as powerful
educational tools that convey subjects better (Mayer 2009; Burnett 2011). They tend also to
question the established model of classroom and the roles taken within them (Selwyn 2003).
Educational software, for example, shifts the teacher-student interaction from a dyadic
interaction to a ‘three-way interaction’ (Birmingham, Davies, and Greiffenhagen 2002).
However, it has to be stated that neither educational research nor classroom research
have so far examined the production of didactic objects (compare Lange 2018), but have
rather understood and presumed them to be closed entities. The understanding of didactic
objects as neutral entities barely adding anything to events within classrooms is dominant.2
This is not the case for the diverse examinations of, for example, questions of innovation,
product design, and path dependencies. Rather than a linear cascade model of innovation,
those works assume non-linear and reversible processes of innovation and technology
development (Braun-Thuermann 2005), which let expectations of the artifact’s use influence
the product’s manufacture relatively early on (Weyer et al. 1997). Furthermore, promising
narratives are used to market and promote the product (Van Lente and Rip 1998). These
narratives frame the product in such a way that it becomes something desirable for devel-
opers, customers and other parties potentially interested in its development. When develop-
ing software, developers and other actors orientate themselves towards a model (such as the
professions) on the one hand, but on the other hand rely on tried and tested local procedures
for problem resolutions (Schulz-Schaeffer 1996). After all, design research suggests that
manufacturers and developers inscribe, not only practical functions into objects, but also
take aesthetic and moral political aspects into account (Verbeek 2011).
In this article, we follow the research outlined above and reconstruct the theoretical
induction of didactic objects. To do this we follow a sociology of knowledge approach
interested in the practice with objects (e.g. Knorr Cetina 2001), which is informed by Science
and Technology Studies (e.g. MacKenzie and Wajcman 1985; Bijker and Law 1994), theory of
culture approaches and media theories (e.g. Daston 2004; Kraemer 2015; Kalthoff and Roehl
2011; Kalthoff, Cress, and Roehl 2016). Referring to this broader approach from the sociology
of knowledge, we do not restrict our conceptual deliberations to the technical functioning
of artifacts, but rather ask about their production and social meaning. The assumption of the
constructedness and non-neutrality of objects is connected to a situational shift: from the
circumstance of use in which objects rather take on the status of technical things to
a circumstance of production in which objects are epistemic things which pose questions
(see Rheinberger 1997). Therefore, the social use and production of objects are interdepen-
dent and closely interconnected (cf. Weber 1978, 7). We analyze the employees’ practice and
knowledge during product development and production as well as the procedures and
labour organization in those companies.
The empirical material documented in this paper stems from ethnographic fieldwork.
We conducted participant observations in two different companies in the educational
sector over the years 2014–2016. One researcher spent several months following the
practices within a publishing house specializing in analogue didactic objects; the other
 PEDAGOGY, CULTURE & SOCIETY 5

researcher performed his observation over several weeks in a company producing digital
didactic objects. Both researchers took part in, among other things, meetings, material
tests, trials, and marketing activities. They observed and recorded discussions about the
characteristics of materials, about the form (‘Gestalt’) didactic objects should take, and
about the question of how to inscribe educational aims into an object. In addition to their
direct observations both researchers performed ‘ethnographic interviews’ (Spradley 1979)
and collected documents (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw 1995). After their main observation
period both researchers went back to their respective fields several times conducting
additional direct observations and interviews. Concerning the analytical treatment of our
empirical data, we combined a grounded theory approach of open coding (Strauss and
Corbin 1990) with a theoretically informed perspective about the materiality of classroom
lessons and social life in general. In the following sections we analyze two different objects.
Firstly, we analyze how an analog object (the ‘science kit’) came into being through the
collective agreement of its developers. Secondly, we investigate how a private company
produced a digital object (the ‘Virtual Classroom’) with the help of teachers and students,
thus changing the development process itself. Finally, by comparing these findings, we
conclude by explicating the different educational imaginaries materially implemented in
these objects as well as their development processes.

Education in a box: the science kit

An educational science kit (Figure 1) is a set of diverse materials that are specifically sorted
into a box to allow the user to assemble them into experiments with the help of instructions.
Such kits contain, for example, test tubes, tea lights, glass lenses, magnets, etc. Companies
often offer a variety of kits within one product line; typically these are sorted into topic areas
(such as electric power, lights and shadow, floating and sinking). The objects included are not
randomly assembled. Instead, every object has a specific function within an experiment.
When purchasing a kit, schools receive a pool of previously planned and configured experi-
ments which are arranged and conducted by the students. In this way, teachers are thought
to be relieved of the need to conceptualize the experiment, provide the materials for it, or to
plan ways to introduce it. The kit disburdens in two different ways: firstly, through the objects
themselves, which intend a chain of actions to ensure the experiments’ success, and
secondly, through the instructions provided. As a format, the researched science kit has
been a well-functioning, international bestseller for one teaching material manufacturer –
a publishing house. The creator and pedagogic mentor has supervised the conception of the
scientifically themed kits for elementary schools since their first production 50 years ago.

Developing as a form of negotiation and controversy

When developing a new science kit, the manufacturer forms a group of permanent and
temporary members who have a variety of professional qualifications including teachers,
physicists, chemists, engineers, professors of teaching methodology, and practitioners from
represented fields (e.g. firemen). In the observed case, the publishing house was repre-
sented by its chief executive officer (CEO). During the development progress, additional
actors were called as needed: illustrators who turned photographs of students conducting
experiments into anonymized line drawings; editors who revised manuscripts. By creating
6 H. KALTHOFF ET AL.

a group that organized heterogeneous perspectives, the company launched a process that
concluded with a didactic object for science instruction that was ready for production. At
first, in the case observed, irreconcilable controversies about the didactic and professional
significance of experiments and their practical implementation into the scientific education
led to a discontinuation of the joint ‘work on the object’. A new team of developers had to
be assembled. The organization of contradictory perspectives ran the risk of no shared
understanding about the functionality and didactics of the didactic object developing.
However, we observed that the concept of multi-professional development was barely
realized. Instead, it became apparent that the developers not only widened their expertise,
but that this was also expected from the other participants. The participants followed
a communicative rule that demanded that every statement be assessed by everyone.
When a participant asked for clarification or modification everyone had to be able to
make sense of it – not just the original speaker. The decision-making process was thus
distributed and networked without rigid boundaries of formal qualification.
When, at the beginning of the development process, a pool of possible experiments
for the science kit case was assembled on the basis of an analysis of the national
syllabus, the ensuing detailed work on the object was characterized by this commu-
nicative understanding and observation. The implementation and the emergence and
materialization of a common educational theory arose through debates among the
actors. The negotiations took place in a series of regular, round-table meetings. At
some meetings trial results were made available, leading to discussion and modifica-
tions. These modifications were either to the manual or to the experimental structure.
While the editorial work was concerned with child-oriented language, anticipated
requests from teachers, or the quality of figures, modifications to the experimental
setting related to the material ontology of things and the work on the object. Ideas
and experiences e.g. of what children are capable of regarding their motor skills or what
demotivates and motivates them were translated into the material.

Matching material ontology and students

The question of whether an experiment, the material, or the instructions were child-
oriented, was raised over and over again in the development team. An example is
provided by the negotiations concerning the material ontology of so-called ‘rainbow
glasses.’ These were designed to enable children to visualize the composition and
decomposition of light. The discussion reveals the complexity of chains of arguments
that preceded decisions:

For economic reasons, the CEO favors an affordable model made of cardboard. The glasses are
made out of a multispectral foil. The elementary teacher envisaged a frame made from hard
plastic and thicker glasses out of plastic. He rejects the cardboard glasses because, supposedly,
they are not suitable for daily use. Certainly, more glasses could be shipped in one case if they
were made out of cardboard, but that would be counterproductive: The material remains
delicate and because more glasses were to be delivered, children would be less careful.
Children would treat glasses more cautiously if they appeared to be more valuable.

The argument goes as follows: Cardboard glasses are too delicate for children’s hands and
their use also depends on the number provided; rare goods suggest a higher value and
 PEDAGOGY, CULTURE & SOCIETY 7

result in special prudence. That is to say that developers tried to influence the future use of
the glasses through the choice of material. Here, it becomes apparent that experience was
consulted to assign special attributes to materials and discuss matching them to students’
hands. The participants tried to answer two questions: What happens to the material when
students get their hands on it? And what does the material do with the students who hold it
in their hands? Furthermore, it is revealed how the considerations regarding those questions
are connected with notions of how elementary school students are and what they do.
Through this social ontology of humans and their forms of practice, the team members
reduced the complexity of their case and reached decisions regarding the construction of
the experiments’ components and the experiment itself.
In the following example, feedback from a teacher who has tested the use of a science kit
in her class is included in negotiations concerning which material to use for a product. The
object is a clear surface that is to be dabbled with water. As before, the elementary school
teacher in the development group pleads for a high-quality material, although this time
with a different argument:

On this occasion, here is the feedback for everyone to hear: The teachers have asked for real glass
panes. They know they are fragile, but they want the children to learn how to handle it [. . .].

A robust material is to be substituted with the delicate material not despite, but because of its
fragility. The material demands careful handling. The students are supposed to feel the heavier
weight, the slippery smoothness, and the danger of breaking the glass. Those material
characteristics will effect use: they cause a greater attentiveness that becomes an integrated
learning objective of the experiment. However, one material does not only hold one char-
acteristic (such as fragility), but several. This became apparent in the negotiation concerning
a periscope in which children insert small mirrors made of plastic. However, those mirrors did
not withstand the test runs in schools: they were easily scratched, and, according to the
teacher, mirrors made of glass would be better. A modification of the object supposedly made
it more resistant for its use by students. The hardness of the glass was the decisive argument
when comparing it to perspex. Therefore, the glass’ characteristic had changed from fragility
to sturdiness when placed in students’ hands. Contrasting the previous examples, glass and
plastic have switched their features. The glass mirror is now seen as sturdier than perspex. It
becomes apparent that, through their designers, objects participate in action, how they shape
action, and how they are supposed to create performative effects. But it also becomes
apparent that those material ontologies have assigned characteristics that can vary depend-
ing on their purpose and context. Ontologies are ascribed to the material depending on its
intended use, learning aim, learning path, and learning risk.

Matching material ontologies and learning objectives

For the team of developers, durability, sturdiness, and safety were not the only considerations
that emerged during the interrelation between motoric skills and the objects’ functionality.
They also had to consider the detail of how experiments have to be set up to ensure that the
desired learning objective is achieved. In this regard, the development team discussed the
experiment’s requirements for students. An excerpt from the fieldnotes:
8 H. KALTHOFF ET AL.

The experiment has to work right away, even for clumsy children (the elementary school teacher
reports about the results he observed in his elementary school class). One girl told me: ‘I didn’t
really like that.’ – ‘But why didn’t you like it?,’ – ‘Well, it didn’t work.’ – ‘Tell me, WHAT did not
work?’ Well, it was about dexterity. They had to move a magnet onto a trolley. And, well, that
requires a certain amount of dexterity which many children did not have and concerning the
learning objective, the turnout is wrong [. . .] and if we add the spinning top now: It is supposed to
work as well as possible.” The other developer agrees, points at the large spinning top and says:
“Well, the four-year-olds were able to manage that pretty well [. . .] We should be expecting the
motor functions of a four-year-old in elementary school.”

This sequence consists of three parts: the introduction with the phrasing of the maxim (‘work
right away’), the middle part with the narration (shortened), a not well-exercised realization of
the maxim, and the conclusion with the application of the maxim to the specific case (‘work as
well as possible’). The maxim is set in relation to the target group (elementary school
students), which itself is distinguished from nursery-school children. Things that younger
children are able to do can certainly be expected from the older ones. The practice of
a substitutional representation becomes apparent (see above): A student who did not do
well with the experiment’s conduct stands for the general difficulty of the experiment which
has to be modified or taken into account. Through the detailed narration, the elementary
school teacher points out that the realization of the maxim (the experiment has to work for all
children) is neither self-evident nor resolvable through formal differentiation. However, once
again, didactic experts state this formal differentiation as a starting point of the development.
Consequently, the requirement is for the developers to choose materials which will enable
a phenomenon to be visualized in such a way as to potentially enable all elementary school
students to manage the experiment. The experiments ought to be secure and to function
safely. Doubts and dissatisfaction with the experiments or particular components were also
expressed by other people, as can be seen in the following scene from the trade fair ‘didacta’:

The teacher refers to the “thin wires”, the “tiny screws”, and the “fiddly connections”. [. . .] She says:
“What you want to happen, does not happen because it is not correctly connected”. She asks why
they cannot use simple plug-in connectors and why the team does not put to use bigger
components – “especially for elementary schools”. The developer nods sympathetically – compu-
ter screens have widely replaced handicrafts and self-assembly kits. Thus, unquestionably, today’s
generation of elementary school students has difficulty to use the old connections [. . .] – but for
that very reason they left the “box” [the kit] as it is: “So that the children can practice and learn.”

The trade fair for education goods (‘didacta’) is a place where products are marketed, where
the science kit and its developers encounter users and critics. For the teacher (above), the
issue was about a simplification to the physicality of the experiment; an adjustment of the
materials to better suit the students’ motor skills. The developer turned the argument around:
small-sized materials were part of the learning that would take place. The orientation to the
students’ and also teachers’ skills was no longer a simplification and reduction, but an increase
in complexity and raised requirements by confronting the students with the culture of ‘old
materials.’ It becomes apparent that the phrase ‘child-suitability’ (child-friendliness) is an
‘empty signifier’ (Laclau 1996, 44) with which actors act very arbitrarily and describe very
different things. Developers make and legitimate their decisions with this empty phrase. This
provides the company’s justification for its use of old materials and the didactic learning
theory it implies. The decision not to get rid of those things that had become awkward for
children today was reinforced by economic factors and then justified with a learning objective.
 PEDAGOGY, CULTURE & SOCIETY 9

Interim conclusion
So far we have analyzed how the developers’ educational theories were formed by their
discursive exchanges. The developers communicated about successful learning, including the
associated aims, needs, risks and conditions. For the selection and design of materials,
questions were raised and answers negotiated. At the same time, however, considerations
and anticipated scenarios determined the ontology of the material (fragile, robust). The
ontology did not simply exist as independent facts and selection criteria. Neither did the
characteristics, abilities, needs and behaviors of students exist in advance of the considera-
tions. They were not independent referents which only needed to be taken into account.
Instead, they were generated differently as anticipated constructs. Thus, didactic-normative
theories and everyday assumptions were not simply unidirectionally inscribed into the
material. Rather, the theories and assumptions were constituted iteratively and in relation
to materials and arguments which had been raised with different intentions by the
developers.

Education on screen – the virtual classroom

The Virtual Classroom is a digital learning platform through which objects and topics of
educational lessons are presented in a stereoscopic, three-dimensional format (Figure 2).
The software works on a standard computer connected to a 3D-screen. In order to see
the content stereoscopically the users wear 3D-glasses. Furthermore, users move and
manipulate the displayed objects with a motion-enabled controller.3 In this way, the
Virtual Classroom transforms the socio-material constellation of classroom lessons. It
provides the lesson with new technologies but makes its users (teachers and students)
dependent on technical accessories because they are only able to see with special
glasses and can only carry out their actions on the screen with the controller. Their
capability to see and act is therefore linked to the artifact’s availability and functioning.
The manufacturers’ central goal is to produce an intensive visual and immersive experi-
ence. The aim is to make visible things, such as magnetic fields, that otherwise be invisible to
the human eye or something that would be too dangerous (such as nuclear radiation). In
doing that, the manufacturer does not strive for a realistic representation of objects, but
a generalized abstraction – a virtual ideal on which a few designated manipulations can be
performed. Therefore, the manufacturer’s philosophy is to make the depiction of natural laws
simple and unambiguous. The questions therefore are, how can the manufacturer can
succeed? And which practical problems emerge during the development and production
processes.
Simulations of topics or situations are nothing new and are not limited to educational
objects. There are simulations for the transport of complex and dangerous substances
(e.g. radioactive waste), for the training of qualified personnel (e.g. in fire departments),
or for the industrial production of new products (e.g. vehicles). The company we
researched builds on these developments, but faces the problem that classroom educa-
tion is a ‘different world’ (CEO) with its own specific and heterogeneous requirements.
From a purely technical point of view, the tool developed needs to be reliable, sturdy
and functional. But, faced with frugal school authorities the company also needs to build
an economically affordable product.4 While the company has technical expertise, it lacks
10 H. KALTHOFF ET AL.

academic and pedagogic knowledge. The company therefore developed various strate-
gies to bypass these problems such as decentralizing development, and adapting to the
educational sector’s idiosyncrasies.

Decentralizing the development

The company faced its lack of pedagogic expertise with an open development process
connecting various actors from in- and outside the company making their specific knowl-
edge available for the organization. This is the principle of an extended organization in
action, from users (teachers and students), to (potential) school use, and on to investors and
buyers who see the development of software as beneficial from an economic and educa-
tional policy perspective. It also extends to educational researchers who function as eva-
luators and are expected to identify the software’s pedagogic value (e.g. Remmele, Weiers,
and Martens 2015). Teachers and developers negotiated the design of the learning modules
in regular meetings. There, the developers engaged with the professional and pedagogic
expertise of the teachers, and, teachers in turn were confronted with the problem that not
all content could be visualized as they would like. As one teacher said:

Well, the normal procedure is somewhat like a game of ping pong. [. . .] And then we always had
a meeting with the programmers, where we went through everything with the programmers
and where they said: ‘Uh, that’s a no go’ or ‘Yeah, okay, we have to look at this and that’. [. . .]
Then, after those joined conversations, the developers programmed, and we got the first
version back and reviewed it. [. . .] Well, as I said before, it was always like this: we started
testing, then they were back on it and then we got it back and that happened two or three
times, back and forth, until we had a first version and we said, okay, let’s use it in school lessons.

The teacher describes, how – from an initial meeting between schools and companies in
which the CEOs and programmers as well as teachers and students discussed suitable content
for school lessons and their feasibility as digital 3D-media – first versions of products circulated
between companies and schools. The teacher also comments on teachers who look through
and test those first versions and then return them to the company with a list of revisions until
a version of the product that teachers want to utilize and test in their lessons has been created.
This cooperation is based on a precise division of labour. While teachers (and also students)
are responsible for the content and ideas for the visualization, programmers realize and also
modify these content and visualizations – versions that are then retested.5 The object to be
produced is portable and circulates between companies and schools, while both manufactur-
ing groups – apart from a few meetings – are immobilized. Additionally, the programming
code remains sealed for the teachers; they have no access to those details. For the develop-
ment of educational content into digital codes and graphics by the IT staff, the storyboard
created by teachers proved to be of central importance (Figure 3).
The storyboard divides didactic content into units that can be coded by the programmers:
‘learning objective’, ‘views’, ‘interactions’, ‘instructions’, and ‘task/solution’. In this way it
formulates the academic topic and its digital depiction, how users can interact with the
topic, what can be learned and how students should arrive at the solution. With this list,
teachers select academic knowledge and divide it into clearly separated units and steps. The
order of the list (Staeheli 2012) thus builds on teachers’ curricular work on the topic reducing it
to its essentials; curricular content is given its prescribed shape through the storyboard. This
 PEDAGOGY, CULTURE & SOCIETY 11

Figure 3. Reconstruction of a storyboard: the particle model and its applications (Chemistry).

follows the traditional didactic idea of clearly defined knowledge that is built up in a linear
fashion and handled by the students themselves, albeit adhering to a prescribed plan of
action. The participants therefore also refer to the interplay of the students’ actions and the
desired scrolling when talking about ‘interaction’, but not classroom interaction. Here, it
became apparent that a relatively simple scheme was employed to decide how the didactic
object and the students who operate it are framed. Thus, this is a translation process
(phenomenon → curriculum → storyboard → software) that reconstructs and reduces the
phenomenon’s visualization to its steps again and again. Working with the storyboard also
shaped the teachers’ contributions. In reference to this, a teacher said:

Well, this was basically something that we, as teachers, had to learn. It was something that,
so to speak, came from the company [. . .] that such a storyboard is needed. But in the end, it
was also a necessity for us, so we could or had to structure our ideas better and more
simply, it was compulsory. And then you quickly realize what is possible. Or if we are in an
area where it’s too much. Or where we have the opportunity to get a small version as a first
step and to then build on it. Well, personally, I thought it wasn’t that bad, especially because
it forced us to approach it with more structure.

Here, the teacher describes the storyboard’s effective framing as an understanding about
what is, or is not possible. Accordingly, the list demands a systematic structure. But the
storyboard also configures the programmers’ work. Through the development environment
they use, they are bound by the code’s limitations. Therefore, the programmers evaluate the
storyboard prepared by the teachers with regard to its technical feasibility predefined by the
code. Conversely, teachers evaluate the first version of the module in relation to its pedagogic
suitability. Within the outlined circular process of the development of the learning module,
both sides collaborate to exchange their knowledge and expectations. This meant that their
own expectations were adapted to the perspectives of the other side. This becomes apparent,
for example, when looking at the development of a biology module about the function of the
heart and the circulatory system. At first, the teachers involved in the development gave the
programmers school books about the topic to let them know what a graphic depiction of the
12 H. KALTHOFF ET AL.

heart is required to look like – from the teachers’ perspective it has to accurately depict the
object and abstract from it at the same time. Through the teachers’ reading assignment the
programmers were, in a sense, made to ‘sit at the school desk again’ and accordingly stated:
‘Man, I feel like I am back in school’. In a first conversation, teachers and programmers then
discussed how the circulatory system and the heart are depicted and agreed on a simplified
portrayal of the heart as a pump. In a second meeting, the teachers demanded the biological
details be taken into account (e.g. the correct position of the veins, arteries, and ventricles). At
the same time, the teachers had to lower their expectations for a too detailed depiction. Due
to the technical constraints of the programming code, this could only be achieved through an
enormous (and therefore uneconomic) expenditure of time.

Shifts and adaptations

The transorganizational cooperation we observed allowed the production of learning
software but also faced the challenge raised when coordinating different perspectives
and economic interests (MacKenzie and Wajcman 1985). First of all, the learning soft-
ware needed to be established as a competitive product on the educational market,
which called for a reduction of production and acquisition costs (e.g. by using simpler
hardware). Furthermore, the two areas to which the actors brought their viewpoints and
in which they developed agreement can be identified:
Firstly, with the didactic object the shape of the lesson is open for discussion. In the
initial stages of development the Virtual Classroom was (at least implicitly) designed to
be a tool for ‘chalk and talk’ teaching within the classroom. The CEO imagined the
technology supporting the lessons as a whole and in all school periods. It was only
during the initial school-based pilot that it became apparent that teachers employed the
didactic object selectively, meaning that they usually used it in single lessons as one
station among other learning stations or for small-group work. The company’s initial
dream of introducing a universal didactic object to the market and revolutionizing
school lessons socio-technologically has proved to be deceptive. This realization lead
to the company developing a more realistic narrative of coexistence for various didactic
objects. Consequently, a greater plurality of technical arrangements emerged around
the Virtual Classroom’s software: small or big screens, as a part of furniture or as
a computer workstation, for virtual reality systems or as online versions for the students
to use at home. The Virtual Classroom can, for example, now be used as part of small-
group teaching without any problems; either as part of a mobile piece of furniture or as
part of a computer room with individual installations on each PC.
Secondly, there were questions concerning functionality, simplicity, and stability. For
the developers, the hard- and software’s respective functionality and efficiency were
superseded ergonomic questions. With respect to their fear of the collapse of the
classroom situation, teachers want and demand technology that is reliable and as simple
to use as possible; the lessons’ rigid pace and a potentially restless class do not allow for
longer distractions. Consequently, the didactic object’s reliability, stability, and simplicity,
as well as its simple (and thereby rapid) operation were paramount for teachers. Two of
the teachers who participated in the development said:

It has to be simple and safe to operate, reliability is therefore important.

 PEDAGOGY, CULTURE & SOCIETY 13

Yes, of course it is really important that it’s functioning, yeah, because otherwise you’re
standing in front of 30 students and it’s not working and [. . .] then you have to sponta-
neously reschedule everything. So, that is a really important issue, well, that you can rely on
it actually working relatively steadily. And, um, something that’s always important is that it
isn’t too complicated, so that it is as intuitively to operate as possible, because otherwise we
have to waste too much time on getting acquainted with it.

Both teachers mention the development requirements of designing an instrument

which functions reliably, persistently, and failure-free within the ongoing events of the
lesson and is also intuitively operable; they have neither the time nor the staff on hand
to solve any kind of technical issues.
Expert tools were replaced by easy-to-operate interfaces which adhered to common
conventions such as the principle of skeuomorphism (design cues taken from the
physical world) (Basalla 1988) and thereby followed familiar design principles including
folders, green ticks for confirmations, conventional reading directions and placements,
as well as ‘play’ icons popularized by audio playback devices. The hardware also
followed this principle of technical simplification: developers chose game console con-
trollers (‘Wiimote’) which they assumed students and teachers would be familiar with.
Two participants said:

And we had to limit the complexity. That was one measure. In the end, we had to make the
software work with a single touch of a button. [. . .] And it really was a challenge, making
everything work so that a teacher [. . .] pushes a button and everything boots, does every-
thing it is supposed to, that everything is calibrated. (CEO)

It has to be really simple so that a 55-year-old teacher of religious education can operate it
too. (pilot school principle)

The simplicity and aesthetics of a ‘one-button-solution’ (principal) helps the product’s

marketability and a double stabilization: that of the lesson, and that of the technology.

Interim conclusion
The Virtual Classroom underwent several changes to meet the requirements of class-
room teaching and learning. Initially envisioned as an integral part of a fully teacher-
centered approach, the technology was modified to meet the requirements of other
educational formats. Furthermore, components were selected and arranged in a way
that stabilized the technology. In doing this, fears of an artifact that was too complex or
unstable for use in class were dispelled. By directly including teachers and other relevant
actors, the development process was open enough to accommodate changes quickly
and constantly. Despite these technological shifts and changes, the implicit idea of
teaching and learning implemented in the technology and its development process
(as illustrated, for example, by the storyboards) is still one that relegates students to
a rather constrained role. They are the operators of a technology that relies mainly on
the visual sense and follows a prescribed linear progression of topics. Opportunities to
explore a topic with all senses in a self-chosen, non-linear fashion were limited.
14 H. KALTHOFF ET AL.

Summary and conclusion

In this paper, we have presented two companies and the manufacturing procedures they
used for educational goods. We depicted and analyzed their strategies and the production
of their respective didactic objects. The findings suggest that both companies operate with
very specific notions on who and what students, teachers, and the lessons themselves are.
Among the developers, this imagined ontology was not a consensual established grandeur
but a contested phenomenon that, through its many facets, was repeatedly articulated,
remembered, and discussed. With this understanding about the students and teachers who
would be using their objects and new understandings of how lesson proceed – the actors
create knowledge that they share with each other and repeatedly convey.
In both developmental divisions, the work on the object referred to different concepts for
the school settings and their human actors. Those concepts were referred to and specified in
meetings to adapt them to the concrete development process and thereby to the didactic
medium. At first, specific tasks in lessons were ascribed to objects: in the case of the science
kit, a vivid and accurate presentation of a physical phenomenon; in the case of the Virtual
Classroom, an exemplary, abstracting, and medially entertaining depiction of natural laws.
Furthermore, the users of the apparatus produced were conceptualized in different ways.
On the one hand, you have the image of students who have questions concerning the
realistically depicted life world that they develop while handling everyday things (even
though those are selected and configured). On the other hand, the development teams see
students as picture- and game-oriented beings, eager to learn and inquisitive when intro-
duced to mathematical models in a digital and entertaining way.
In the case of the science kit, employing former teachers, experts on teaching methodol-
ogy, etc., guaranteed the respective phenomenon’s suitability; the curriculum stands as
a guarantor for the selection of content in line with the market. Additionally, the reference to
the tradition of the science kit which has proven itself in lessons is important; the company
has established and positioned itself on the educational market with it. In contrast, in the
case of the Virtual Classroom, it is the teachers and students who bring their expertise as
education practitioners and express their concrete experiences with the prototype.
Furthermore, experimental studies from the field of learning research are responsible for
the medium’s educational scientific suitability. It is striking that a significantly greater effort
was made in order to secure the digital and therefore ‘new’ medium pedagogically. Firstly,
instead of relying on former teachers, active users were trusted as co-developers, they stood
for the medium’s immediate practical relevance. Secondly, external observers from the field
of science legitimized the medium through an objective standard (experimental methods).
In this case, the company was therefore closer to and more personally engaged with the
concrete use of the object, but also externalized and objectified their judgment through the
institution of science. The developers of the science kit trusted a significantly more diffuse
knowledge about the market and the expertise of governmental texts. The difference
between an established educational medium and a medium that has yet to be established
during the attempt to assert it on the market for educational products becomes apparent.
Furthermore, both cases, the science kit on the one hand and the learning software
on the other, embody different theories of how learning should be done in schools. In
the case of the science kit, the company conceptualized students as acquiring natural
scientific school knowledge through the experiment by discovery and taking action. In
 PEDAGOGY, CULTURE & SOCIETY 15

the case of the Virtual Classroom, the company promised that new and more effective
learning processes were made possible and would settle in through the technical
modernization of schools and lessons. What is striking here, is that the new didactic
object activated a form of lessons envisioning the student’s learning as viewing and
reducing his or her activity to operating a technology. The sense of ‘seeing’ is therefore
given central importance; other experiences – touching, trying out for oneself, assem-
bling something independently, experimenting with substances etc. – are excluded.
Ironically, precisely this independent learning through actions was implemented and
systematically intended in the ‘old’ analogue object, the science kit. The paradigm of the
concrete student-oriented acting in elementary schools versus the abstract actions of
the ‘chalk and talk’ learning setting in secondary education and senior classes is an
insufficient explanation for those contrasting learning theories. It is a ruse of the
medium that an ‘old’ learning theory returns to the school lessons through new
technology. Teachers who do not sign up to the company’s vision, and therefore the
learning software, an omnirelevant learning status, but employ it anyway thwart this
ruse selectively. They thereby re-frame it and reassign it with a limited social sense.
Lastly, the development and production process is characterized by a specific tem-
poral dimension: the developing, testing, conceptualizing, and decision-making occur at
the end of the process, meaning that it is directed from the introduced final product to
the future situations of lessons. Consequently, developers co-design future school
lessons on the basis of their acquired knowledge and their notions of school lessons
which are themselves vague and contested. In their current practice, then they design
and produce a didactic object that is supposed to function in its future handling as it
was designed to.6 When the didactic object is employed in school lessons, the phenom-
enon is expected to be revealed and to become apparent as it was designed to. In
selecting and deciding upon materials, their properties and their envisioned effects,
future lessons are drafted and designed. With these material translations the material
sense of didactic objects is enacted. It is developed and tested through the design work
on the material, it is contained in the objects, and it suggests options for action as the
practice showing itself to be reasonable and evolving when used by the actors. For
social research on the materiality of social practices this means that it can be assumed
that objects co-constitute human actors by implying a way of use (the object’s ‘what for’
implies ‘how’ it is to be used), function as a carrier of meaning for their user or owner,
and are also endowed with a symbolic significance by them. In this gradual interplay of
manufacture and social, use materials are endowed with meaning.

Notes
1. This is connected to the Latour’s notion of network (Latour 2005; see Nespor 1997 for
a network view on educational practice) linking different actors across time and place.
2. In a broad sense, materiality in a classroom comprises not only didactic objects or media
but other artifacts too, for instance classroom furniture such as the school desk. For
a historical account of the invention of this classroom artifact with its implemented idea
of disciplining pupils cf. Hamilton (2009).
3. The content of the learning software are in accordance with subject-specific topics (e.g. ‘The
Ear’ or ‘Electric Fields’) and combine 3D-objects, texts, and tasks. Currently, the focus lies on
16 H. KALTHOFF ET AL.

mathematics and natural science classes and single modules (e.g. ‘The Statue of David’)
expand this content-related focus.
4. The school’s relative unwillingness to innovate has to be considered as well. Reasons for
that are, for example, financial restrictions, long bureaucratic decision cycles, and the
market power of a few oligopolists (Foray and Raffo 2014, 1714).
5. For an account of teachers’ design activity in educational technology cf. Kali, Goodyear, and
Markauskaite (2011).
6. Here, this can also be described as an epistemic practice, which at the same time makes
(didactic) knowledge available and circulates it by creating an object (Ammon 2013).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) [KA 1235/9-1; WI 3862/3-1].

ORCID
Jochen Lange http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5587-7323
Tobias Roehl http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1363-6633

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