ABSTRACT
Issues facing Alaskan schools in 1983 that are increasingly relevant to schools throughout the United States are increased cultural and linguistic diversity in the schools, the growing presence of educational technology, movements toward decentralization and local control, and financial pressures. The next three chapters describe what happened in the Alaska QUILL project from three perspectives: how alternate realizations of purpose reflected characteristics of teachers, students, and communities; how properties of the revision process emerged in classrooms through the year; and how an electronic network fostered an evolving community of QUILL teachers. These events can be viewed as arising from an interaction of a technology (QUILL) and a social context (the Alaskan classrooms). Thus, we describe the creation of the QUILL innovation by teachers and students, building on their interpretation of ideas in the minds of the developers. The description of a QUILL classroom was “in the air” during training sessions; it was implied in the software and QUILL Teacher’s Guide; it was discussed in oral and written conversations throughout the year. But only in the QUILL classrooms did it become real.
