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ABSTRACT:One of the primary challenges facing designers today is how to design curricular innovations that are appealing and useful to teachers and at the same time bring about transformative practices. While we as a learning sciences community are relatively adept at facilitating innovative case examples, we need more empirical work that examines how curricular innovations become implemented across multiple classrooms. In this paper we examine a series of four teachers implementing our technology-rich, project-based curriculum. We then analyze and discuss each of the four cases across two themes by (a) examining how the project-level question was contextualized to meet local needs and (b) examining the cultural context that surrounded the implementation of the curriculum. Our interpretations suggest that contextualizing the curriculum is ultimately a local phenomenon that arises as a result of a number of factors, including students' needs, students' goals, teachers' goals, local constraints, and teacher's pedagogical values. These cases illuminate the importance of school and classroom cultures in the learning process. Ultimately, curriculum designers need to acknowledge that their designs are not self-sufficient entities; instead, during implementation, they become assimilated as part of the cultural systems in which they are

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In this manuscript we describe our introductory astronomy course for undergraduate students in which students use three-dimensional (3-D) modeling tools to model the solar system and, in the process, develop rich understandings of astronomical phenomena. Consistent with our participatory pedagogical framework, it was our intention to establish a context that supported students in carrying out scienti®c inquiry using virtual models they developed. The progression of our thinking and the course curriculum has been grounded in a series of ``design experiments,'' in which we develop entire courses, do research, and cycle what we are learning into the next iteration of the course. In this manuscript, we use ®eld notes, portions of case studies, interview data, artifact analysis, and excerpts from previous manuscripts to situate the reader in the actual happenings of the course. Focusing primarily on the dynamics of the earth ± moon ± sun system, we illustrate the modeling process and how learning evolved in this context. In general, we found that 3-D modeling can be used effectively in regular undergraduate university courses as a tool through which students can develop rich understandings of various astronomical phenomena. Additionally, we found the design experiment approach to be a useful strategy for supporting course design that was both theoretically and empirically grounded.

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