My research examines the reciprocal process through which individual students learn within complex social contexts, contexts that they in turn help to define through their ongoing activity. In particular, my research aims to advance the field’s understanding of how individuals in social contexts represent their ideas externally — both in the form of inscriptions, such as drawings or computational models, and in the form of speech and gesture. While I believe that representations play a role in all learning and development, my research tends to focus on two related areas of study — the way that young students learn about complex science concepts and the potential of computational tools to support educational activities.

A recent example of this work was the study of BeeSign, a computer simulation and curriculum that I developed to examine how kindergarten and first grade students can learn about the nectar gathering behavior of honeybee hives while developing and employing new representational practices. I am also currently involved in the designing the Semiotic Pivots and Activity Spaces for Elementary Science (SPASES) project. The SPASES project aims to use new sensing technologies—such as computer vision and Nintendo Wii controllers—to help transform young children’s physical actions during pretend play into a set of symbolic representations and parameters in a physics simulation.

For additional information, please see my website at http://www.joshuadanish.com.

Ph.D. Psychological Studies in Education, 2009, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA

M.A. Psychological Studies in Education, 2005, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA

B. S. Computer Science, 1997, Johns Hopkins University, Baltmore, MD

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• Danish, J. A., & Enyedy, N. (2007). Negotiated Representational Mediators: How Young Children Decide What to Include in Their Science Representations. Science Education, 91(1), 1-35.
• Danish, J. A., & Enyedy, N. (2006). Unpacking the Mediation of Invented Representations. In S. Barab, K. Hay & D. Hickey (Eds.), Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Learning sciences (pp. 113-119). Bloomington, IN: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
• Enyedy, N., Mukhopadhyay, S., & Danish, J. A. (2006). Emergent tensions between statistics education and culturally relevant pedagogies. In A. Rossman & B. Chance (Eds.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS). Salvador Brazil: IASE.
• Danish, J. A. (Spring, 2006). A Work of Goodness: When a Simple Vote Reveals Children’s Representational Ideas and the Classroom That Helped Produce Them. CONNECTIONS The quarterly newsletter of the UCLA University Elementary School, 1, 9-12.

• Danish, J. A. (2009). BeeSign: a Design Experiment to Teach Kindergarten and First Grade Students About Honeybees From a Complex Systems Perspective. Paper to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.,
• Enyedy, N., Danish, J. A., Fields, D., Kao, L., Hart, M., & Mukhopadhyay, S. (2009). Negotiating the "Relevant" in Culturally Relevant Mathematics: The Community Mapping Project. Paper to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.