Microgenetic Learning Analysis: A Distinction without a Difference Commentary on Parnafes and diSessa

Parnafes and diSessa [this issue] present a useful description of the process of doing microgenetic analysis of qualitative data and report interesting findings about how students’ reasoning changes as they gain relevant experience. We are pleased that microgenetic approaches are being applied to educational issues and agree with the authors that new knowledge can be gained by closely examining changes in students’ thinking over time. Conceptual change is a topic that has been mostly overlooked in the microgenetic literature [for exceptions, see Amsterlaw & Wellman, 2006; Opfer & Siegler, 2004; Schoenfeld, Smith, & Arcavi, 1993]; yet it is an area where close observation of changing behavior is likely to yield large theoretical gains. In our view, however, the microgenetic learning analysis (MLA) described by Parnafes and diSessa is indistinguishable from microgenetic analysis more generally. The authors state that ‘it is not obvious, at first blush, that MLA is anything other than the use of general microgenetic methods applied to an area (conceptual learning) that has been somewhat neglected in the microgenetic literature’ (p. 10). We agree, and after reading and thinking about the article, we continue to believe that MLA is simply microgenetic analysis applied to conceptual change. Below, we provide the definition of microgenetic analysis that we have been using for more than 20 years [Siegler & Crowley, 1991] and discuss why we concluded that MLA is simply a form of microgenetic analysis.