This page provides an overview of the LBD Study and an ongoing list of works related to LBD. That list of works includes links to posters, papers, and journal articles. Please enjoy exploring!

LBD Overview (modified from Keifert & Team Poof, in press)

The Learning, Being, and Doing in Families (LBD) study partnered with families as co-researchers. The LBD Study was designed to provide counter-examples to narratives of learning loss popular in the media (Goldstein, 2020; Callimachi, 2021) through research partnerships with children and families to shape anti-deficit narratives about intergenerational learning, being, and doing (Vossoughi & Booker, 2020; González et al., 2006) in COVID-Competent families. The focus on COVID-Competent families emerged from needs in the Fall of 2021/Spring of 2022 as vaccine rollout demonstrated a societal relaxation of COVID-19 precautions, leading to the marginalization of COVID-Competent people. The range of ways that LBD research teams (the families and researchers, D Teo Keifert and Andria Ellis) participate(d) in the world as COVID-Competent community members shifted during the LBD Study, and as we authored together and each of us navigated our own needs (e.g., schooling/work expectations, disabilities, chronic illness, immunocompromised status) in a shifting landscape (e.g., where and when masking occurs, the introduction of air filters in public spaces, vaccine usage, wastewater data). While these shifts are not a focus of the research study, it is important to recognize that LBD partnerships developed in the context of COVID-19 and COVID-Competent commitments.

Existing research partnerships in the Learning Sciences (LS), often support families as research collaborators. The present study was rooted in traditions of design research, a meta-methodology where researchers iteratively draw on multiple methods in order to develop theories of learning as well and refine learning activities (Easterday et al., 2017). Co-design methodologies such as participatory design research (PDR) (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016) and community-based design research (CBDR) have expanded design research methodologies in important ways by shifting the focus to “community-based transformative agency. . . Opening the desire, possibilities, and hope to make broad scale change” (Bang et al., 2016: p. 33). These approaches engage university- and community-based researchers while critically reflecting on and changing the powered dynamics of who makes decisions in research teams. In PDR and CBDR, those decisions ensure that co-designers impact the resulting designs in ways that serve their communities.

Like co-design methodologies, co-research methodologies, an emergent branch of participatory research rooted in PDR/CBDR, also disrupt traditional power dynamics between the “researcher” and “researched,” allowing all co-researchers access to the privileges and responsibilities of research. In co-research methodologies, efforts are focused on studying how people engage with existing practices (i.e., basic research) rather than (re)designing practices for the purposes of shifting relations toward desired futures. Co-research creates “generative possibilities for participants’ learning in their own [lives]” about their own practices, “as well as their novel and generative contributions as co-researchers” (Pierson & Keifert, 2024: p. 1895).

LBD took place in a critical site for learning: families. Families are a fundamental setting for early learning (e.g., Keifert, 2021; Rogoff, 2003). Moreover, families are a critical site for intergenerational learning (González et al., 2006), although intergenerational learning also occurs outside of family contexts (Newman & Hatton-Yeo, 2008). We recognize intergenerational learning as multidirectional (Ho, 2010), including learning together (Keifert, 2020). We were particularly interested in documenting, interpreting, and sharing understandings of existing practices for family-based learning as well as studying processes for co-developing emergent practices for intergenerational learning within research teams of children, caregivers, and uni members. In that was, LBD was a design-based research study where children, parents, and uni-based team members collaborated in the development of co-research methodology.

We came to call our method co-observation as it was based on earlier traditions of “fly-on-the-wall” video-observation (e.g., Keifert & Stevens, 2019; Keifert, 2020) enhanced through positioning children and parents as co-researchers to more ethically and ecologically capture existing practice rather than modify children’s practices through intervention. Co-observation centers families’ existing storying practices such as documenting, reflecting, and theorizing (see Ochs et al., 1992). In co-observation, children and caregivers are positioned as co-researchers observing their own practices and as teachers helping uni-based team members learn about those practices. LBD co-observation is a syncretic method (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016)—merging these everyday storying practices with multiple traditional research approaches. Specifically, LBD draws on traditions of video-based research such as (critical) interaction analysis (Jordan & Henderson, 1995; DeLiema et al., 2023; Philips & Gupta, 2020; Daniel et al., 2023). As such, all virtual visits were video recorded, with these video data serving as the primary method of documentation (discussed further below). Families were involved in research agenda-setting, data production and collection, and data interpretation. By partnering with children to “tell their story on their terms” (Gutiérrez et al., 2019: p. 9), LBD supported ethically valid research—attending to the distribution of research materials, resources, and activities—to produce ecologically valid representations of learning embedded in participants’ understanding of their family culture.

Works Originating from LBD

  • Journal Articles
    • Keifert, D.T. & Team Poof (in press). Centering a Young Child to Lead a Co-Observation Relational Learning Ecology. Research on Children and Social Interaction.
  • ISLS Irvine 2026 Arts & Performance pieces
  • ICLS 2025
    • Keifert, D.T., & Daddy Poppins. (2025 June). Potions: Caring in Showing with an Asynchronous Partner [Poster] Proceedings of the 19th International Conference of the Learning Sciences – ICLS 2025. Helsinki, Finland: International Society of the Learning Sciences. pp. 2617-2619 [peer reviewed] https://doi.org/10.22318/icls2025.897218
    • Keifert, D.T., Gentry, A., Little Poof, & Big Book. (2025 June). Routine Care to Build Trust in Co-Research with Young Children [Long Paper] Proceedings of the 19th International Conference of the Learning Sciences – ICLS 2025. Helsinki, Finland: International Society of the Learning Sciences. pp. 101-109 [peer reviewed] https://doi.org/10.22318/icls2025.103399 
  • ICLS 2024
    • Gentry, A., Keifert, D.T., & Sloane, M.  (2024, June). How Interpretation + Contextualization of Stories Created Possibilities for Collaborative Inquiry with Young Children in Families. [Short Paper] Proceedings of the 18th International Conference of the Learning Sciences – ICLS 2024. Buffalo, NY: International Society of the Learning Sciences. pp. 1035-1038 [peer reviewed] https://repository.isls.org//handle/1/10612
    • Keifert, D.T., & Gentry, A. (2024, June). Caring for each other and family-partners through care-filled scheduling. In C. Love & T. Jen (co-chairs). Caring Relations Across Interaction Analysis Labs. [Symposium] Proceedings of the 18th International Conference of the Learning Sciences – ICLS 2024. Buffalo, NY: International Society of the Learning Sciences. pp. 1926-1933 [peer reviewed] https://repository.isls.org//handle/1/10839
    • Gentry, A., Keifert, D.T., Poppins, D., Poof, L., Book, B., Bunny, Carrot, & Flamingo (2024, June). Co-analysis via co-observation in family-uni partnerships. In D.T. Keifert & A. Pierson (co-chairs) Co-Research in Video Analysis: Shifts Towards Ethical Validity. [Symposium] Proceedings of the 18th International Conference of the Learning Sciences – ICLS 2024. Buffalo, NY: International Society of the Learning Sciences. pp. 1894-1901 [peer reviewed] https://repository.isls.org//handle/1/10834

References

Bang, M., Faber, L., Gurneau, J., Marin, A., & Soto, C. (2016). Community-based design research: Learning across generations and strategic transformations of institutional relations toward axiological innovations. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 23(1), 28-41. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2015.1087572

Bang, M., & Vossoughi, S. (2016). Participatory design research and educational justice: Studying learning and relations within social change making. Cognition and Instruction, 34(3), 173–193. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370008.2016.1181879

Callimachi, R. (2021). “I used to like school’: An 11-year old’s struggle with pandemic learning. The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/05/us/remote-learning-education-pandemic.html

Daniel, B., Pierson, A.E., & Keifert, D.T. (2023). Ideological sensemaking in an elementary science professional development community. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 32(4-5), 573–621. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2023.2247395

DeLiema, D., Hufnagle, A., Vimal Rao, V.N., Baker, J., Valerie, J., & Kim, J. (2023) Methodological innovations at the intersection of video-based educational research traditions: Reflections on relevance, data selection, and phenomena of interest. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 46(1), 19–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2021.2011196

Easterday, M.W., Rees Lewis, D.G., & Gerber, E.M. (2017). The logic of design research. Learning: Research and Practice, 4(2), 131–160. https://doi.org/10.1080/23735082.2017.1286367

Goldstein, D. (2020, June). Research shows students falling months behind during virus disruptions. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/us/coronavirus-education-lost-learning.html

González, N., Moll, L.C., & Amanti, C. (Eds.). (2006). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410613462

Gutiérrez, K.D., Becker, B.L.C., Espinoza, M.L., Cortes, K.L., Cortez, A., Lizárraga, J.R., Rivero, E., Villegas, K., & Yin, P. (2019). Youth as historical actors in the production of possible futures. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 26(120), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2019.1652327

Gutiérrez, K.D., & Jurow, A.S. (2016). Social design experiments: Toward equity by design. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 25(4), 565–598. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2016.1204548</bib

Ho, C.Y. (2010). Intergenerational learning (between generation X & Y) in learning families: A narrative inquiry. International Education Studies, 3(4), 59–72.

Jordan, B., & Henderson, A. (1995). Interaction analysis: Foundations and practice. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 4(1), 39–103. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327809jls0401_2

Keifert, D., & Stevens, R. (2019). Inquiry as a members’ phenomenon: Young children as competent inquirers. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 28(2), 240–278. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2018.1528448

Keifert, D.T. (2020). Broadening conceptualizations of learning: Fix-it-foxing as a practice for learning from and learning with. In M. Gresalfi & I.S. Horn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 14th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (pp. 865–866). Nashville, TN: International Society of the Learning Sciences. (Sessions cancelled, appears in print proceedings). https://doi.org/10.22318/icls2020.865

Keifert, D.T. (2021). Family culture as context for learning through inquiry. Cognition and instruction, 39(3), 242–274. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370008.2021.1913162

Keifert, D.T., & Pierson, A. (co-chairs) (2024, June). Co-Research in Video Analysis: Shifts Towards Ethical Validity. [Symposium] Proceedings of the 18th International Conference of the Learning Sciences – ICLS 2024. Buffalo, NY: International Society of the Learning Sciences. pp. 1894-1901 [peer reviewed] https://repository.isls.org//handle/1/10834

Newman, S., & Hatton-Yeo, A. (2008). Intergenerational learning and the contributions of older people. Ageing horizons, 8(10), 31–39.

Ochs, E. (1979). Transcription as theory. Developmental Pragmatics, 10(1), 43–72.

Philip, T.M., & Gupta, A. (2020). Emerging perspectives on the co-construction of power and learning in the learning sciences, mathematics education, and science education. Review of research in education, 44(1), 195–217. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X20903309

Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. Oxford University Press.

Vossoughi, S., & Booker, A. (2020). A dialogue on historicities, futurities, and educational imagination in these times. [Presentation]. Speculative Education, Online Conference.