Residential Interior Design As Complex Composition: A Case Study of A High School Senior's Composing Process

Written Communication
Volume 23 Number 3
July 2006 295-330
© 2006 Sage Publications
Residential Interior Design 10.1177/0741088306290172
http://wcx.sagepub.com
as Complex Composition hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com
A Case Study of a High School

Senior’s Composing Process
Peter Smagorinsky
Michelle Zoss
University of Georgia, Athens
Patty M. Reed
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge
This research analyzed the composing processes of one high school student as
she designed the interiors of homes for a course in interior design. Data
included field notes, an interview with the teacher, artifacts from the class, and
the focal student’s concurrent and retrospective protocols in relation to her
design of home interiors. The analysis revealed that the object of activity in
this setting included aspects of the motive (including the teacher’s constructed
environment and attendant expectations, the teacher’s governing logic and
common sense with respect to interior design, and the broader field of interior
design as interpreted and implemented in the class) and both fixed and emer-
gent goals. The student’s object-related problem-solving involved a hierarchy
of problem-solving decisions and employed a variety of tools in solving these
problems, particularly those derived from culture, reliant on knowledge from
a discipline or field, and following from images such as narratives.
Keywords: multimedia composing; home economics; multimedia design;

protocol analysis; semiotics; situated cognition
M ore than 100 television programs broadcast in the United States have
centered on the interior design of homes (see Table 1). The preva-
lence of these programs on all manner of networks—including entire net-
works dedicated to home improvement and abundant programming in both
English and Spanish, from the United States and abroad—suggests the
importance of interior design to a wide range of the public. Yet in U.S. high
schools, interior design is among those marginalized subjects in the cur-
riculum housed in vocational education or home economics, areas that are
outside the core of academic courses that colleges and universities require
295
296 Written Communication
of incoming students. As such, they are typically viewed as intellectually

unstimulating, designed for students who are not destined for the rarified
world of college, and fitting only for those who are oriented to “handed-
ness” rather than “headedness” (Goodlad, 1984, p. 142).
This relatively low stature obtains in spite of the fact that home eco-
nomics has been offered in U.S. universities since as far back as 1869
(Bliss, 1953). As Rossiter (1982) argues, however, home economics facul-
ties in higher education are accorded low status relative to faculty in other
disciplines. Berlage (1998) finds home economics to be a complex applied
social science that, while reinforcing traditional women’s roles, addition-
ally provides a scientific basis for domestic work. Yet the belief that courses
offered within home economics—with the multiple problems of being his-
torically a woman’s domain (Waring, 1999), being an applied science rather
than a theoretical field (Straussman, 2003), having a vocational or domes-
tic rather than academic emphasis (Eckert, 1989), and relying on nonverbal
rather than written texts for representing ideas (Gardner, 1999)—as
intellectually unchallenging persists, its public popularity and demand
notwithstanding.
In this study, we investigate the composing processes of one 11th grader,
Dee, as she designed the interior of various homes for a high school class
in interior design. (All names of people and places are pseudonyms; see
Figure 1 for Dee’s major course project). We situate this study within a line
of inquiry through which we have argued for a broadened notion of com-
position that includes not only writing but art, drama, dance, designs of
houses and horse ranches, and other semiotic sign systems through which
meaning and representation are available (O’Donnell-Allen & Smagorinsky,
1999; Smagorinsky, 1995a, 1997a, 2001a; Smagorinsky, Cook, & Reed,
2005; Smagorinsky & Coppock, 1994, 1995a, 1995b; Smagorinsky &
O’Donnell-Allen, 1998a, 1998b, 2000; Smagorinsky, Pettis, & Reed, 2004;
Smagorinsky, Zoss, & O’Donnell-Allen, 2005).
Through this work we have found that although nonverbal modes of rep-
resentation and communication are viewed by many educators and policy-
makers as less intellectually important than verbal (particularly written)
Authors’ Note: This research was supported by a grant to the first author from the Spencer
Foundation. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily repre-
sent the views of the foundation. Special thanks are due to Dee and Rachel for their generous
contribution of time to this project. Thanks to Chris Haas and the external reviewers of Written
Communication for their generous critical feedback to earlier drafts of this article. Direct cor-
respondence to Peter Smagorinsky at the University of Georgia, Department of Language
Education, 125 Aderhold Hall, Athens, GA 30602; e-mail smago@uga.edu
Smagorinsky et al. / Residential Interior Design as Complex Composition 297
Table 1
Interior Design Programs on Television
Network Programs
ABC (including ABC Family) Bachelor Pad, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: How’d They Do
That?, Knock First
A&E Find & Design, House Beautiful, Sell This House
BBC Big Strong Boys, Changing Rooms, Design Inspiration,
Design Rules, DIY SOS, Home Front, Homes, House
Calls, House Doctor, House Invaders, Housecall in the
Country, Life Laundry, Period Style, Real Rooms, Room
Rivals, Trading Up
Bravo Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Queer Eye for the
Straight Girl
Club Casa Abriendo Puertas, Casa Ideal, De la Mano de Herminia,
Las Decoradores, De Compras, Hogar y Harmonia,
Detalles, En Casa de Lucy, House and Home, La Casa
de Rebeca, Pitando la Casa con Debbie Travis, Our
House
Comedy Central Straight Plan for the Gay Man
Discovery Channel (including Bob Vila’s Home Again, The Christopher Lowell Show,
Discovery Kids, TLC, Christopher Lowell’s Wall to Wall, Clean Sweep,
Health, and Home and Design Rivals, Designer Guys, Home Matters, Home
Leisure Channel) Savvy, How-2 Crew, In a Fix, Interior Motives, It’s
Christopher Lowell!, Lynette Jennings Design, Make
Room for Baby, Makeover Mamas, Monster House,
neat, Picture This, Surprise by Design, Tommy Walsh’s
DIY Survival, Town Haul, Trading Spaces, Trading
Spaces: Boys vs. Girls, Trading Spaces: Family, While
You Were Out
Do-It-Yourself Channel Bare Walls, Bathroom Remodeling, DIY Decorating and
Design, DIY Home Repair & Remodeling, Flooring
Wall to Wall, Kitchen Renovations, Weekend
Decorating, Weekend Remodeling
Fine Living American Home, Before and After Decorating, Breathing
Room, Dwell, Room Service, Sheila Bridges: Designer
Living, World by Design
Home and Garden TV American Home, Awesome Interiors, Bed & Bath Design,
Building Character, Country at Home, Country Style,
Curb Appeal, Date with Design, Debbie Travis’
Facelift, Debbie Travis’ Painted House, Decorating
Cents, Decorating with Style, Design Basics, Design on
a Dime, Design Remix, Designed to Sell, Designer
Finals, Designers’ Challenge, Designing for the Sexes,
Divine Design, Dream House, Generation Renovation,
(continued)
Table 1 (continued)
Network Programs
Home Time, Home to Go, Interiors by Design, Kitchen

Design, Kitchen Trends, Kitty Bartholomew: You’re
Home, Mission: Organization, New Spaces, Our Place,
Room by Room, Room to Improve, Sensible Chic,
Smart Design, Smart Solutions, This Small Space,
Treasure Makers, Weekend Warriors
Lifetime Merge
MTV Crib Crashers, Cribs
Oxygen Facelift, Painted House
PBS Ask This Old House, Find!, HandyMa’am With Beverly
DeJulio, This Old House, This Old House Hour
Style Network Area, Clean House, Guess Who’s Coming to Decorate,
Homes with Style, Shabby Chic
TBS Superstation House Rules, Movie & A Makeover
Turner South Southern Home By Design
Women’s Entertainment Mix It Up, Everyday Elegance
USA House Wars
VH1 Rock the House
modes, they (a) often are viewed within particular disciplines as more
appropriate than written expression to represent ideas, (b) typically involve
general processes similar to those identified and celebrated in studies of
writing (e.g., they are social and collaborative; they involve planning,
drafting, revising, and other extended processes; they enable the discovery
of meaning through the process of articulation; etc.), (c) can provide the
potential for expressions of meaning that are not available through writing,
and (d) potentially stimulate symbolic and abstract thinking at what Bloom
(1956) would consider complex levels of cognition.
To understand Dee’s socially situated process of composition in design-
ing home interiors, we focus on the following questions:
1. What was the object of Dee’s activity in terms of the motive of the set-
ting and her goals within the setting?
2. What object-related problem-solving did Dee engage in as she designed
the interior of a home, and how did her organization of problem-solving
decisions contribute to her completion of the task?
Based on these considerations, we interrogate the low status of both

home economics and nonverbal forms of composition in school. To under-
take this inquiry, we adopt a Vygotskian perspective that emphasizes the
Figure 1
Dee’s Interior Design
volitional, goal-directed, tool-mediated action in social context that people

engage in as they produce cultural texts (Wertsch, 1991) in the form of
orchestrated configurations of signs. We next outline the major tenets of our
understanding of a Vygotskian perspective as it informs our work.
Theoretical Framework
A Vygotskian perspective is appropriate for our analysis because we
share his fundamental concern with understanding how any individual’s
sense of suitable behavior—including the choice of tool for achieving an
end and sign system for representing an idea—derives from experience in
cultural practice in social settings (Cole, 1996). We construe a setting as
that with which one stands in relation. A setting may include people, phys-
ical spaces, social groups, technologies, and whatever else comprises the
mediational environment, both physical and social, for human activity.
A classroom may comprise one bounded setting, albeit one with fluid borders
as its participants invoke and import mediational means from other settings
with which they have experience. Any setting is thus “nested” within broader
settings (Cazden, 1988, p. 198), overlaps with other settings—a classroom
within a school, a school within a district and its policies, teaching and
learning within various educational traditions, and so on—and overlaps
concentrically with the settings that its participants have experienced.
Cultural practice refers to the shared, socially organized sets of activities
that embody the direction, goals, and values of a group and provide people
with scripts for participating in social action. Each cultural setting provides
its participants with unique problems to solve (Tulviste, 1991). In schools,
abstract problem-solving in the core classes (e.g., working on a mathemat-
ics problem through a symbol system such as a formula) is valued over the
sorts of practical problem-solving activity (e.g., repairing an engine,
preparing a meal) required in vocational and home economics classes, even
when practical work requires mathematical application such as balancing
food ingredients properly, computing the revolutions per minute of machin-
ery parts, measuring and cutting component parts of clothing so that they
are in proportion, and otherwise employing mathematics to address con-
crete problems.
Problem-solving action may be directed toward two types of ends, both
of which contribute to what many Vygotskian theorists call the object or
presumed endpoint of activity within the setting: motive and goal. The
motive of a social setting refers to the broad teleological ends toward which
social action is directed (Leont’ev, 1981; Wertsch, 1985), which in a school
might include preparing students for college, raising test scores, educating
for good character, training students for the workforce, raising literacy
rates, and otherwise socializing and educating students for participation in
the world beyond school. Because schools include various stakeholders and
interest groups, there may be multiple motives at work simultaneously, not
all of which are consistent with each other. Schools often address these
seemingly divergent ends by creating separate curricula for students
believed to be working toward different social futures: courses focusing on
abstract knowledge for the presumed college-bound, work-oriented practi-
cal courses for those assumed to lack the intellectual or material resources
needed for higher education.
The other purpose toward which problem-solving activity is directed is
the more personal set of goals that individuals or groups have within this
broader setting, which may or may not work in concert with the overall
motive. Although one’s goals may conceivably be at odds with the broader
motive of a setting, more typically they are related to a cultural group’s
identification of and progress toward a shared destination. Indeed, the
broader motive of a culture typically suggests the goals that people develop
to guide their activity within a setting. For the purposes of our research, we
focus on Dee’s activity in addressing her goal of completing interior
designs. Presumably, her participation in this activity also is embedded in
broader action toward the motive of both the school and classroom settings
(i.e., to produce successful students, however defined).
To work toward goals, people employ cultural tools. The logocentric
emphasis of society and schools privileges the tool of speech that Vygotsky
(1987) found so important to human development. Yet, as many have
argued, people both in and out of school have access to a broader set of cul-
tural tools than language alone to mediate their thinking (Wertsch, 1991).
In this expanded view, a psychological tool may include anything that
mediates human action, including an artistic or graphic medium (e.g., a
paintbrush, pencil, or computer program), a broader community of practice
(e.g., a discipline or field of study), a set of procedures or scripts (e.g., the
speech genres that govern particular kinds of talk), different types of
images (e.g., a narrative of typical action), and countless other alternatives.
With this potential in mind, Gardner (1983) has critiqued schools’ orienta-
tion to language and logic, especially at the expense of creative cognition
through the arts; Witte (1992) has argued that writing is but one of many
semiotic systems through which people may fruitfully express themselves;
and the contributors to Flood, Heath, and Lapp’s (1997/2005) volumes col-
lectively argue that the emerging global economy is producing communi-
cation technologies that make schools’ limited reliance on writing obsolete.
A semiotic framework necessitates attention to the sign, described by Eco
(1985) as a “relation or referring back, where . . . something stands to some-
body for something else in some respect or capacity” (p. 176). What the sign,
or configuration of signs (i.e., a text) stands for depends on how readers are
enculturated to reading them; although a range of people might agree that a
particular configuration of stars and bars comprises the 1860s Confederate
battle flag, some might read it as an emblem of a proud heritage, whereas oth-
ers might read it as a statement of bigotry and oppression. As this example
illustrates, signs include “the full range of semiotic modes in use in a partic-
ular society” (Kress, 2000, p. 183), leading a host of literacy researchers to
question education’s exclusive emphasis on the written word as the sine qua
non of suitable academic performance. Reading any sort of text requires res-
onance with the codes employed to produce it, such that the degree to which
composer and reader are “in or out of tune with each other” (Nystrand, 1986,
p. 74; emphasis in original) is central to any judgment about a text’s quality.
Our study is designed to understand how, in the setting of this classroom,
Dee developed goals and used tools to solve problems in relation to the task
of designing home interiors for given hypothetical clients. Our study

inquires into the degree to which such work is evident in this student’s
experiences in the setting of this classroom, set in a discipline in which
many assume that little of value is accomplished except perhaps the acqui-
sition of mundane life skills.
Context of the Investigation
City and School

Data collection took place in a college town in the southwestern United
States populated by about 95,000 people. The city’s public school system
served over 12,500 students, one fourth of whom qualified for free or
reduced lunch. The school system’s student population was 81.4%
European American, 6.6% Native American, 6% African American, 2.6%
Asian American, and 1.7% Latino/a American. Central High School was a
2-year senior high school enrolling about 1,800 students. Over 50% of
graduates attended 4-year colleges, 26% attended 2-year colleges, and
fewer than 5% entered technical schools or the armed services. Advanced
placement courses and testing were offered in 11 areas, and students annu-
ally scored above the state and national averages on the SAT and the ACT.
Participant
Dee was a white female who was in the 11th grade during the semester
of data collection. From 5th through 9th grades, Dee had taken art classes
after school and on weekends in a community art center. She had taken
classes in painting and drawing, saying of these courses, “It was really fun.
I would get away from everything else and just paint.”
At the time of the research, she was also enrolled in English, philosophy,
world history, geography, and algebra II, with a stated preference for geog-
raphy and interior design. In contrast, she said, “Math is not my thing.”
Interior design was the first home economics class she had taken since 6th
grade. The course appealed to her; she said, “I figured that I would like it
because it is art and I have always liked to just—you should see my room
[at home]. I mean, such as the wall and interior design things. . . . I am just
interested in that kind of stuff.” Following graduation, she hoped to attend
a technology-oriented university and major in photography with a possible
second major in interior design.
The Class
Data collection took place in the interior design class taught by Rachel
Chambers, a white female veteran teacher whose itinerant career included
appointments at many schools. In Dee’s year of enrollment, Rachel had
been at Central High School for 6 years; she left for a new school in a dif-
ferent state 1 year later and could not be located for a member check by the
time we began the data analysis. She described her class as follows:
This class is really designed for students who have a sense of design, [have]
a sense of color, and enjoy pleasing things around them. And it’s not based
on just academia in a textbook, but it’s based on common sense, being able
to move things around in space, even if it’s just in your mind, which is very
difficult to teach . . . I see a wide variety of students, intellectual-wise. We’ve
got [inaudible] students who are at the lower end of the scale, we’ve got kids
who are at the upper end of the scale and a lot of kids in between . . . I’m just
hoping that more people see these kinds of classes being very constructive,
and not only just coming in, sitting through a class and getting a grade, but
forming some of your own ideas in how the world is to you.
To achieve her instructional goals, Rachel used a textbook, Ruth F.

Sherwood’s (1990) Homes: Today and Tomorrow, along with film strips,
videos, trips to homes in the community, and ventures out to local mer-
chants to look at materials and price them within their allotted budgets.
Each day included at least one activity designed to break down the design
process into tasks and help students integrate their understandings from
the textbook and materials she provided such as blueprints, design layouts
in magazines, and other manipulatives. The activities were typically
accompanied by handouts that helped students to take notes and organize
information for their own purposes. For example, one day students were
learning about door styles. Rachel had the students find eight different
door styles in magazines she provided, cut them out, and paste them onto
a handout. The aggregated handouts helped students create personal refer-
ence books for design ideas. She also provided study guides that helped
students learn appropriate symbols and vocabulary for discussing and rep-
resenting design ideas.
Although home economics was viewed by many as a low-status disci-
pline and because the students were presumed to need the school to act in
loco parentis, Rachel said, “Our administrators [comprised of both men and
women] put a real high rank on home economics and other areas. They feel
like it’s an integral part of the whole.” She said that the combination of high
divorce rates and an increasingly frenetic societal pace permitted less and
less contact time between students and their parents, leading to a decline in
what she called life skills of the sort taught in home economics classes. “We
are not teaching these in our homes,” she said, “so we teach them in our
schools.” The home economics faculty thus felt ambivalent about the over-
all value of their own work, which Rachel characterized as both low status
and a valued part of a whole education.
We view Rachel’s class, situated within the discipline of home econom-
ics, as having a gendered motive. All of the home economics faculty
members were women, and the class in which Dee was enrolled included
21 girls and 4 boys. We assume that in a discipline and setting so heavily
dominated by women, the motive would be gendered in terms of the pur-
pose of the work, the processes of doing that work, and the ends toward
which this work might be dedicated. This gendering of the discipline was
most evident in Rachel’s emphasis on the development of relationships in
the field of interior design (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1997).
Rachel modeled a relational stance by getting to know her students as
well as possible so that she could understand their perspectives in terms of
their personal goals for their designs. Her assessment of students’ designs
was laborious: “It takes me about an hour and a half to grade some of their
projects, because it is so subjective,” she said. This evaluation included an
effort to take on the students’ perspectives; she said,
If I were this student, how would I be feeling about this work? And I get to
know them very well . . . I have to know something about their likes and dis-
likes to be able to help them understand why it’s maybe right or wrong for me.
Furthermore, she strongly encouraged her students to collaborate with a

variety of people in their execution of their designs. Rachel herself worked
collaboratively with her students, circulating while they were working and
consulting with students about problems they were having with their
designs. She also urged students to help each other on both their course pro-
jects and exams. Rachel said,
[My students] learn from each other a lot more than they learn from me. And
they’ll sit together in groups and they’ll be critical of each other’s work and
they’ll say, “Why did you do that?” And then they’re explaining why. It’s
a learning process. It’s not a matter of “Don’t talk to your neighbor.” This is
a class where even on tests they get to converse, because the conversing is a
learning process.
Rachel’s efforts to connect and collaborate with her colleagues extended

to the ways in which she encouraged her students to work together. For
instance, the work that students did for the interior design class could poten-
tially be part of a larger project. Students could design an entire house for
another teacher in an architectural design class (see Smagorinsky et al., 2005)
and design the interior for Rachel’s class; the written portions of the projects
could be typed in the school’s business department. Furthermore, she encour-
aged students to go outside the school itself to make connections with local
businesses or apply the principles from the class to their own homes.
During her retrospective protocol, Dee revealed her congruence with this
value when talking about the most vexing aspect of interior design for her:
doing calculations properly. She said, “[I’m] an invalid in that part of my
life” and “totally lost” when it came to doing mathematics for spatial con-
figurations. When asked if this shortcoming might inhibit her aspirations to
be an interior designer, she replied, “I figure that if I have a really good cal-
culator, and I’ll have a few friends, I’ll say that I [have] these numbers, and
would you do them for me, please? I’ll decorate their room [in return].”
Rather than viewing design as an isolated pursuit, Dee had learned to see it
as a joint activity, conducted cooperatively with clients and colleagues with
whom she could exchange services and favors.
This ability to connect with, relate to, and see the perspective of clients
is a key relational skill in designing a living space for another person or set
of people. The designer’s efforts need to fit the needs of the client; further-
more, the designer needs to be able to work collaboratively with the clients
themselves. This attention to the needs of others contributes to what we
considered the gendered complexion of interior design, one that Rachel
overtly promoted and that Dee understood to be central to her success in the
class and hypothetically the field.
The Task
The assignments toward which Dee’s activity was directed were to
design the interior of apartments for specified types of hypothetical clients
(e.g., two college students). These projects required students to incorporate
knowledge from throughout the semester in their design of the homes. The
students were provided a floor plan for an apartment set in an actual com-
plex located in the city. Within this basic design each student selected and
placed furniture, oriented the dwelling relative to the sun and local geogra-
phy, chose wall and floor treatments, located the utilities and the electrical
system that powered them, and otherwise planned the apartment’s interior
design. Rachel included constraints that would influence other design deci-
sions. For instance, on one assignment, she specified that Dee’s hypotheti-
cal clients, two female college students, had already selected a pink floral
fabric for a bedspread (an accoutrement that Dee found distasteful), around
which Dee needed to make other design decisions.
Method
Data Collection
Observations were made by third author Patty Reed, who visited
Rachel’s class each time it met from early February to early May, encom-
passing most of the duration of the semester-long course. Field notes from
these observations helped to provide an account of the instructional context
in which Dee produced her designs; they were not subjected to a formal
analysis.
Rachel provided an extended interview for the first author that probed
for the content, curriculum, and goals of the interior design class. This
interview included questions about what she expected students to know and
do, how she helped them know and do these tasks, and other questions
designed to inquire into the instructional context—the goals, practices, and
tools emphasized in the course—in which Dee and her classmates produced
their interior designs. Like the field notes, this interview was not coded; its
primary role was to help us construct the instructional context of Dee’s
compositions, often corroborating or enriching the field observations.
Dee provided six protocols in which she revealed her composing
process. Five were think-aloud protocols (Ericsson & Simon, 1993) pro-
vided for Patty—that is, they consisted of transcripts made from Dee’s
articulating her thoughts for a tape recorder while working on her design
plans. Rather than relying on the controlled laboratory conditions described
by information processing theorists for the collection of think-aloud proto-
col data (e.g., Newell & Simon, 1972), Dee provided her protocols in situ
(see Smagorinsky, 1997b, 1998, 2001b)—that is, as she worked during
class. During these protocols, Dee would sometimes converse with Rachel
or other students about her work, and Patty would at times prompt her to
continue uttering her thoughts. These five protocols were of varying length,
consisting of 2,490, 2,869, 1,842, 1,823, and 2,042 words. The counts are
somewhat inflated in that they include the researcher’s prompts, conversa-
tions between Dee and Rachel during which Rachel provided critique and
guidance, discussions of work with other students during the process of

composition, and occasional digressions during which Patty and Dee built
a rapport by talking about Dee’s plans for the prom, her preference for
country music, her recent ear piercing, and other personal matters. Each
protocol was constrained in duration by Rachel’s allocation of time during
class and the closure provided by the school bell.
For the retrospective protocol (Ericsson & Simon, 1993; Greene &
Higgins, 1994), Dee provided an interview (2,165 words) with Peter based
on the series of drafts and final design plans she produced during the
semester. Questions were prompted by various aspects of her drawing and
ranged to related topics such as how she learned to produce drafts or parts
of the drawings, what had happened during her class, how she thought as
she worked, and other queries designed to get Dee to explain her process of
composition as it was situated within the context of Rachel’s class.
Data Analysis
The concurrent and retrospective protocols were transcribed and then
collaboratively coded by the first and second authors. Our approach there-
fore did not employ the classic approach to reliability (i.e., one researcher
coding the whole corpus of data and a second researcher, following train-
ing, coding a sample of the corpus, often 10% to 20%, at an agreement level
of at least 80%). Rather, we discussed each segment and code as we
worked. We thus acknowledge that our data analysis, like any, produced a
socially constructed interpretation rather than any absolute or definitive
account of the protocols (see Smagorinsky, 1995b; Swanson-Owens &
Newell, 1994).
For coding purposes, we determined a segment to consist of any unit of
text that we agreed was concentrated on a discernable or relatively discrete
design decision: working on a color scheme, orienting the overall design in
relation to the path of the sun, positioning an appliance, and so on.
Although the finished coding system appears neat and tidy, the process of
coding was considerably messier, more recursive, and more heavily nego-
tiated than appearances would suggest. We began with a prototypical cod-
ing scheme developed in prior related studies (Smagorinsky et al., 2005;
Smagorinsky et al., 2004) that provided us with general categories based on
Vygotskian principles: setting, problem, and tool. Within this general
framework, we looked for specific codable thinking particular to Dee’s
design task. Our initial coding identified a wide array of categories that we
collapsed and refined over the course of the research to make for a more
manageable system. At first, for instance, we developed separate coding

categories for color schemes and conventional arrangements of design ele-
ments. Ultimately, we collapsed these along with other categories into the
encompassing code of design conventions.
The ultimate coding system embodied principles from our theoretical
framework, modified in relation to the content of the protocols and our
research questions. Our goal with the research was to understand how,
within the context of the interior design class, Dee composed her text (i.e.,
her drafts and completed interior designs). We identified three general types
of codes to help us understand her composing process: the setting that
served as the social context in which Dee learned to use the tool, the prob-
lem to be solved through and attendant to text production, and the tool
employed to solve goal-oriented problems. (See Table 2 for the codes and
frequencies for each major category we outline next, along with examples
of each code.) We next describe each of these general categories and their
various subcategories in greater detail, listing specific frequencies of each
untabulated referent within each category parenthetically.
Setting
We coded Dee’s protocols for the setting of her cultural practice to iden-
tify social networks, particularly as they provided her with both formal and
informal knowledge about how to compose her text.
Formal. Formal knowledge described the kind of academic instruction

Dee received from teachers, including both her interior design teacher
(Rachel) (51 instances) and her art teachers (4).
Informal. Dee’s informal knowledge (i.e., that learned incidentally

through everyday activity rather than through formal instruction) included
Dee’s current lifestyle and the knowledge this lifestyle afforded (11) and
her transactions with or observation of peers during class (1).
Problem
Coding the protocols for the kinds of problems Dee was attempting to
solve was central to our analysis. We identified eight categories for prob-
lems that Dee attempted to solve in producing interior designs. To create
the category names, we used either language employed in Vygotskian
analyses, descriptors that we agreed were appropriate, or terms found on
Table 2
Codes, Definitions, Examples, and Frequencies
Code Definition Example Frequency
Setting
Formal Academic setting “There is a worksheet on the 55
common blueprints and
there are architectural
symbols and plumbing
symbols and electrical
symbols. Like what kind
walls and stuff like that.”
Informal Knowledge from “At my house, we have things 12
experience rather back there—plants—it’s
than instruction just more room.”
Problem
Affordances/ Elements that allow or “I’m going to put [lights] in 37
constraints limit new action all four corners because
the skylight is just right
there in the middle.”
Furniture Movable objects in a “Okay, now to start on the 22
living area living room and do my
furniture arrangement. I
don’t know where I am
going to put my tables. I
am going to put my TV on
the south wall, and north is
that way. I need something
that I could pull off and
say it’s an entertainment
center. Good, good.”
Human aspects Attention to how a “If somebody was backing 25
client will experience out of that table and
the living area backing out of the
peninsula, they’d run into
each other and so much for
their work through. That’s
kind of too trafficy so I’m
going to try to make this
one not as trafficy.”
Infrastructure Permanent or “I’m trying to figure how 11 96
unmovable aspects of feet can be separated
the living area between three supporting
beams.”
(continued)
Table 2 (continued)
Living space Rooms or designated “They are going to be fixed 70

areas within the windows except for the ones
living area in the bedroom, those are
going to be double hung with
ranch window in between
them.”
Spatial relations Distances and “ I am still working on the light 122
proportions between in the living room in there.
or among objects I am just going to get them
hooked up to switches and
I will hook them up to the
same switch. It is going to
look very crowded when I
finish.”
Task Designated work to be “We’re supposed to get 48
completed everything done like
orientation—like which
direction it’s going to face.”
Visual acuity Issue related to the “There’s outlets and there’s 26
appearance of the a sink. Looks like one
design big blob.”
Tool
Concrete Material used in “[We drew] on the velum 16
production of design paper. [A friend] told me that
in drafting they have one
[page] for the layout,
the spread of the house,
where the rooms are.
Another [page] for the
electrical.”
Representational Symbol used in “There is a worksheet on 58
production of design the common blueprints
and there are architectural
symbols and plumbing
symbols and electrical symbols.
Like what kind walls and
stuff like that.”
Schematic: Knowledge of particular “It is not a U kitchen, it is 60
Culture information or a corner kitchen.”
practices used within
(continued)
Table 2 (continued)
given groups of
people with common
goals and means
Schematic: Field Knowledge of “Now I am drawing my 45
particular kitchen triangle. The max
information or is 21 feet. Three squares
practices used within equals one foot. I am
a professional or measuring my kitchen
academic discipline triangle and I was going to
count my squares but it
does not work that way. So
I am going to get a ruler.
Now we have something to
measure with. I think a
fourth is equal to—oh, I’ll
get it in a minute. Okay,
the kitchen triangle is
supposed to be 21 feet,
right?”
Schematic: Image Mental map or narrative “A large [sink], one tends to 46
invoked to visualize put more dishes in there.
how a living space So maybe someone will do
will be used their dishes more often
[with a smaller sink].”
the websites of Interior Design programs at universities. The categories,

and codes within them, are as follows.
Affordances/constraints. Affordances and constraints are the non-

negotiables of the built environment. The size of a wall, for instance, would
suggest how many electrical outlets were appropriate; or the placement of
a built-in feature would determine what could and could not be placed
around it, depending on how the space would be used. Affordances and
constraints included enhancement (a beneficial circumstance—e.g., the way
a skylight admits enough light so that artificial lighting is unnecessary; 1),
functional pragmatism (choices based on what is needed and not more—
e.g., limiting the size of walking lanes in a room so that they are distinct from
open spaces; 18), materials (the substances that furniture, wall treatments,
etc. were constructed from; 5), obstacles (permanent or designed features

that must be designed around; 11), and orientation (the domicile as situated
with respect to the path of the sun; 2).
Furniture. Furniture described any moveable objects that played a role in

activity in the home. Furniture included accessories (supplements to larger
pieces—e.g., pillows; 2), bar (7), bed (1), bench (1), entertainment center (1),
musical instrument (2), pool table (4), sofa (1), table (1), and television (2).
Human aspects. Human aspects described facets of design that took the
client and his or her needs into account. These included care for comfort/
needs (attention to the client’s comfort in occupying the home; 17) and
professionalism (direct attention to the hypothetical client’s needs as a
customer; 8).
Infrastructure. Infrastructure codes described the basic framework or

permanent installations for the design. These included cabinets (8), coun-
ters (5), doors (15), ducts (1), electricity (8), ceiling fan (1), fixtures (3),
floor treatments (3), large appliances (14), plumbing (7), skylight (3), stairs
(1), storage (7), support beam (1), utilities (1), wall treatments (5), walls
(2), and windows (11).
Living space. Living spaces described the rooms that were included in
Dee’s designs. These included the bathroom (12), bedroom (4), deck (1), din-
ing room (3), entry (2), kitchen (27), living room (19), and whole space (2).
Spatial relations. Spatial relations referred to the ways in which Dee con-
figured space to accommodate people’s negotiation of the premises. Spatial
relations codes included dimensions (the lengths, widths, and other mea-
surements of spaces and objects; 25), layout (the overall positioning of fur-
niture and infrastructure in given areas; 14), proximity/logistics (the
distances between and relative positioning of furniture and infrastructure in
given areas; 39), scale (the size ratio of a real object and its referent on Dee’s
drawing; 14), spatial efficiency (the economy of space and movement within
a living space; 16), symmetry (balance between corresponding areas; 4), and
traffic flow/circulation (movement of people within given spaces; 10).
Task. Task codes described Dee’s decisions in relation to the task pro-
vided by Rachel. These included drawing detail (her graphic fidelity to the
objects she drew; 14), problem-solving hierarchy (the order in which Dee
determined that problems must be solved to complete her design; 25), and
revision (changes made to her drawing; 9).
Visual acuity. Visual acuity codes referred to the visual attributes that
result in a sharp and clear image and design. These codes include color
(11), lighting (5), line (3), pattern (4), and texture (3).
Tool
We identified three types of tools in Dee’s design work: concrete, repre-
sentational, and schematic. Of these three, schematic tools figured most
prominently in our analysis.
Concrete. Concrete tools are tangible instruments used directly in pro-

duction. In producing her design, Dee used a calculator (1) and drafting
tools (e.g., graph paper, vellum paper, ruler; 15).
Representational. Representational tools, like concrete tools, are mater-

ial (assuming that spoken words are in a sense material). However, a repre-
sentational tool is symbolic—that is, it refers to something other than itself.
For Dee, representational tools included the assignment (39), a blueprint
(1), drafting symbols (14), neologisms (i.e., words she invented such as tile-
ish for a floor treatment; 2), and specialized vocabulary (i.e., words specific
to interior design such as U-kitchen; 2).
Schematic. Schematic tools are more abstract than concrete or represen-

tational tools. They serve as broad mental codifications of experience or
knowledge. Not only are schematic tools intangible; it is possible that one
is not even aware of their mediating role in activity. A genre of activity, for
instance, is not tangible and possibly can influence cognitive development
in ways not recognized by participants. We found three subcategories of
schematic tools: cultural mediators, fields, and images.
1. Cultural mediators: We identified three categories as broad cultural

mediators: aesthetics (Dee’s beliefs about what is beautiful or pleasing in
the design; 23), design conventions such as color schemes or structural
arrangements such as the kitchen triangle (relative locations of the refrig-
erator, sink, and stove; 33), and logic (a specific term used by Dee to
justify her decisions; 4).
2. Fields: Dee drew on a variety of disciplines or fields to produce her
drawing, including climate/geography (2), earth science (1), electrical
engineering (1), geometry (16), graphic design/drawing (2), and mathe-

matics (23).
3. Image: Schematic tools included two types of images based on Dee’s
personal experiences. One was a mental image or mental pattern of a
design decision that we categorized as mental maps (22). We coded a
second type of image as narrative (24); these were the stories (however
brief) that Dee produced to imagine how she would live in the designed
space or how someone would move about the premises and thus how the
interior should be designed.
Example of Coded Text

We next provide a sample from Dee’s retrospective protocol to illustrate
how we coded her transcripts:
In my house, the refrigerator—you walk into the kitchen and someone opens
up the fridge, you get your head knocked off—someone opens up the fridge
or someone opens up the [freezer door] and I hate crawling under that thing
every day so I put it up against the wall so I didn’t have to. I really didn’t put
it [there]. Like, the handle—it’s going to go out that way and not that way
because if you put it out that way, it goes into the window and will cut off
someone.
We treated this segment as a unit of codable text because all decisions con-
cerned with a single overriding concern: how to locate the refrigerator
within the design plan and orient the handle so that the door would not
impede one’s passage through a traffic lane. Within this overall concern,
we identified seven problems. One was the affordance or constraint of the
obstacle that the door would create if hung improperly. Dee was also aware
of the human aspects: care for comfort or needs problem that she needed
to resolve in terms of keeping the open door from blocking traffic. She had
to design the layout with attention to two aspects of the infrastructure: the
large appliance of the refrigerator and the window. All of these decisions
came in the context of designing the living space of the kitchen. Finally,
Dee needed to solve problems related to spatial relations: the proximity
and logistics of the refrigerator relative to the traffic lane that passed in
front of it and the traffic flow and circulation of people walking around in
the kitchen. The setting in which she learned about these problems and
how to resolve them came in the informal arena of her lifestyle in her
parents’ home. To address these various problems, she drew on the
schematic tool of her narrative about having to duck under the door in her
parents’ kitchen.
Results
Our results fall into three major categories: the role of the field of inte-
rior design as a mediating tool in Dee’s designs, the analytic dimension of
designing the interiors of homes, and the design processes that Dee
employed to compose her representational texts.
Field of Interior Design

Rachel’s class was situated within the broader field of interior design.
Like any design field, interior design includes a variety of approaches
(postmodern, Victorian, Cape Cod, southwestern, minimalist, country living,
etc.). The southwestern location of the city appeared to suggest particular
types of designs for its residents’ homes; we found no postmodern architec-
ture in the city’s neighborhoods, for instance, and the one new development
featuring Tudor-style homes appeared to our sensibilities to be decidedly
out of place amidst the brick stylings popular for their durability in this
region that is prone to severe storms and tornados. We next outline what we
saw as the broader mediating role of the field of interior design in Dee’s
work, particularly in her employment of design conventions and her use of
what she and Rachel called logic or common sense.
Design Conventions
Rachel emphasized the importance of particular concepts that any
designer needed to take into account, what she called basics and what we
considered to be design conventions: “line design, color, proportion, a sense
of rhythm and balance in a room,” which the class then applied to various
design problems. These basics included such standard design features as
the kitchen triangle, which positions the refrigerator, sink, and stove as the
critical three points in the kitchen to which everything should be arranged
in relation. Carter (1998) describes this construct as follows:
The sink, refrigerator and the cooktop represent the most used centers of
activity in the average kitchen. The efficiency of a worker in the kitchen is
drastically reduced if these activity centers are spread far apart. . . . All
kitchens contain invisible throughways. These are the connecting routes
between other rooms and doorways. A collision on these high-speed high-
ways involving a kitchen worker walking with a hot pot of water and an
express child or teenager can be disastrous. For this reason, no single leg of
the work triangle should cross these invisible pathways. (Carter, 1998)
The kitchen triangle, then, embodies a number of design problems

that we variously coded as functional pragmatism and several categories
within spatial relations: dimensions, layout, proximity/logistics, spatial
efficiency, symmetry, and traffic flow/circulation. This attention, along
with the mathematical computations required to position the large appli-
ances involved in the triangle, are evident in the following excerpt from a
concurrent protocol. Dee had begun working on her kitchen triangle when
Rachel stopped by to check on her progress. Rachel’s and Dee’s references
to “the max” describe the maximum cumulative length of the three sides
of the triangle.
Rachel: Don’t forget when you do your kitchen and bath tables, you need to put
the kitchen triangle in and measure it.
Dee: Okay.
Rachel: Just make a note of the dimension down here because you are going to
do a description later.
Dee: Okay. 21.
Rachel: 21 was max.
After making some decisions about lighting, Dee returned to this problem:
Dee: Now I am drawing my kitchen triangle. The max is 21 feet. Three squares
equals one foot. I am measuring my kitchen triangle and I was going to count
my squares but it does not work that way. So I am going to get a ruler. Now
we have something to measure with. I think a fourth is equal to—oh, I’ll get
it in a minute. Okay, the kitchen triangle is supposed to be 21 feet, right. . . .
Rachel: Just go back and measure the line and measure all three sides together.
Dee: Okay, thanks. Okay, that’s 16 feet and that’s not bad.
With the kitchen triangle located—the primary decision in what we

coded as a problem-solving hierarchy—Dee could move to the next level of
design around this fundamental location of critical, related appliances.
Although concerned at many levels with appearance, interior design also
emphasizes the functionality of a living space. In following design conven-
tions such as the kitchen triangle, Dee employed a set of procedures for
insuring that key areas of a dwelling allowed for predictable usages that
could serve typical inhabitants well: those whose kitchen usage followed
the cultural practices of most members of Western societies.
Governing Logic or Common Sense

Dee’s design proceeded within the framework of what Rachel consid-
ered to be commonsensical, axiomatic, and logical. Rachel said, “I use the
word common sense a lot in this class. Now, I don’t know how you can
develop that either. But I always say, come on, use some common sense.”
In previous related work at this same school site (Smagorinsky et al., 2005),
we have argued that common sense is a cultural construction rather than an
absolute, universal value of what makes sense in the world. Dee’s thinking
about interior design was thus mediated by a cultural construction about
what makes for sensible design.
Both Rachel and Dee referred to this value throughout the research.
During one of her concurrent protocols, Dee said,
I am going to put three [electrical outlets] over by the sink, not the sink, but
three over in the bathroom. Just logical places to put them. Like in the
bedroom, I might have like one on every wall because I know in my bedroom,
you have to stretch a cord really far in order to get to the nearest one. I don’t
want these people to go through that sort of inconvenience . . . I’m putting the
ones in the bathroom. I’ll put two in there. I think that’s about it. You don’t
really need more than just two. Then in the bedroom, I’ll only put like one on
every wall, like in the center of every wall. If I knew where my bed was going
to be I would arrange it to where they would be at the bed tables, but I can’t
do that because I don’t know what that’s going to be. I just put in the logical
place.
We infer that the logical place Dee sought was one that served the prag-
matic purposes she determined for the room without creating unnecessary
features such as too many outlets for the activity she envisioned. She helped
to arrive at this logical arrangement by generating a narrative of how a dis-
commodious installation would interfere with telephone usage.
Dee’s notion of common sense or logic included the design principle of
what we coded as functional pragmatism (i.e., a choice based on what is
needed and not more). Rachel’s sense of governing logic encouraged students
to use space, appliances, and other features prudently within their goals for
their room’s functions. This code appeared consistently in Dee’s protocols,
suggesting that she had internalized and understood the importance of sizing
her dimensions according to the needs of people in relation to their built envi-
ronments. Often, these codes appeared when determining the traffic lanes
within rooms, as in the following excerpt from a concurrent protocol:
Dee: I’m trying to figure out like walking spaces and stuff like that. That’s
perfect.
Patty: Walking space in the living room?
Dee: Yeah, three feet is enough, you know, to be comfortable. You would not
want any less than that.
Decisions such as this one illustrate the attention Dee needed to pay to
providing for needs within available space, a spatial consideration in con-
figuring virtually any structure for habitation. As these excerpts illustrate,
Dee continually employed the field of mathematics to determine the place-
ments of elements in relation to one another. Not only did she have to cal-
culate dimensions and distances; she also needed to envision through the
image of the narrative how people would use the premises for important
aspects of domestic life: cooking, cleaning, storing, communicating, and
moving comfortably through traffic lanes without committing unnecessary
space to them. This sort of applied use of mathematics, as we have noted,
was not valued enough within the institution for interior design to count as
a core mathematics course. Rather, her extended nonverbal text, which
involved the synthesis of a range of types of knowledge from both acade-
mic and experiential sources and the representation of information through
cultural symbols, was regarded as appropriate to a discipline that largely
enrolled the school’s lowest status students, those not bound for college.
Analytic Dimension
During her interview, Rachel said, “Home ec has always been like my
cohorts say, basket weaving,” a term of denigration suggesting that her dis-
cipline, like others that rely on nonverbal text design and production,
requires little of the intellect. She made this observation, we inferred, with
some sense of ambivalence: She was aware that many people in schools and
society feel that Home Economics is a fluffy field, yet at the same time
described in detail the difficult analytic work required for effective designs.
She noted that “I’ve taught kindergarten, first and second grade, and other
areas other than home economics, so I know how other people perceive
home ec, but I hope that the intellectual, so to speak, is not necessarily
thrown out the window.” She said of her course,
I try to hit all the facets. Whether it be manipulating materials, the written
word, watching videos, or field trips, moving our own physical furniture
around in a classroom, using three-dimensional furniture that we have, you
know, making models, all kinds of things. We do go over some real basics
about how styles, and it’s not just about interiors, but if you don’t know any-
thing about exteriors, you probably don’t know about interiors. So, we start
off with an exterior view of the house, and really pick it apart and tell why
these features are important, and why it’s pleasing to their eye.
She described what this cognitive work might entail, including the incor-
poration of disciplines from across the curriculum in the effective design of
a living space:
We even go through a cost analysis at the end. What would this house cost you
if you were to build it in [this city]? How much would a lot cost you if you
wanted to build it in [one subdivision] versus [another]? And they have to go
investigate those things. It’s not up to me to do that. They may estimate their
house to be costing out at $50 a square foot, but that’s without furnishings, and
then they have to think about, you know, what we’re going to put in this house,
how am I going to furnish this house, when to landscape it, and how do I make
this a physical dwelling that I’m going to be pleased with, not just a room.
Dee’s protocols illustrated this cognitive complexity in her interior designs

in a variety of areas. For instance, one of the apartments that she designed
came with the fixed element of a skylight in the center of the living room.
“Normally,” said Dee during a concurrent protocol, “I like to have a fan in
here, you know, but I guess I won’t. I mean, there’s enough doorways and
stuff. There’s doorways outside, there’s windows to the outside and that
will create some circulation.” Her attention to air circulation required that
she understand not only the comfort provided by moving air but how to
achieve this effect in the absence of a ceiling fan.
The skylight in this example illustrates the ways in which Dee and other
students needed to design around given elements, not only “distasteful” choices
of the client such as the pink bedspread but fixed elements in the design. At
times, these given elements did not allow for an easy alternative design. While
configuring a kitchen, for instance, Dee found that the location of the freezer
would inevitably prove troublesome for people walking into the kitchen:
The door swing is not wide enough. I could make it that tall . . . That’s wide
enough. What really annoys me though is that they put the fridge right there.
I mean it’s just going to open up and I know somebody will come out of the
door and immediately turn left to get into the fridge and then they’re going
to run right into the freezer. That’s why I always keep our fridges in the cor-
ners and stuff so nobody will run into them.
Such decisions, informed here by her brief narrative of a person round-

ing a corner into an obstacle, typically involved the configuration of space
to account for traffic flow and related problems, drawing on what Gardner
(1983) calls spatial intelligence. Dee often employed what she believed was
her limited ability in geometry, as illustrated by her design of kitchen tri-
angles and the measurements it required. Dee also appeared to use a more
intuitive sense of geometry to locate elements in relation to one another. For
instance, while designing a kitchen, she needed to locate a cabinet in rela-
tion to the refrigerator, but realized while working out a mental map of the
design that her original idea would not work:
I am going to put like a cabinet in the corner right here and put like one of
those lazy Susans in there. If I can without taking away . . . space. I don’t
think I can. It has to be real short. If I make the cabinet where I want to put
it, then it is right in the fridge so I guess I will turn the fridge around.
This decision came not through a computation but by envisioning, with the
aid of graph paper, a mental map of what the elements would look like and
how they would function in practice.
Dee drew on both mental maps and narratives to inform her design. As
we have illustrated, she frequently used narratives to help her configure
space for a good traffic flow. During one of her a concurrent protocols, she
was designing an L-shaped area in the kitchen with a peninsula and said,
You can get tangled up. If somebody was backing out of that table and back-
ing out of the peninsula, they’d run into each other and so much for their walk
through. That’s kind of too traffic-y so I’m going to try to make this one not
as traffic-y.
Such brief narratives occurred frequently throughout her design process,

helping her to simulate how the home would be used and thus produce what
she understood to be a logical design.
Dee also used her knowledge of different materials to make other deci-
sions about how to configure space. She attended to the path of an opening
door on many occasions, not just appliance doors but those opening
between rooms. Hanging doors so that they do not block pathways makes
negotiating the premises much easier and more convenient. By employing
different designs, she used doors for a variety of purposes in conserving

valuable space. During one concurrent protocol she said,
Dee: I’m putting a case door right there because you really don’t need one. I’m
going to put one of those pocket doors right there because those are pretty nice.
Patty: Why are you using that door?
Dee: The pocket door?
Patty: Uh huh.
Dee: Well, I mean it’s real easy. It doesn’t get in the way. I mean you could like
have a cabinet. . . close right there. I mean it doesn’t get in the way. I mean
any door, if I had one door open that way and one door open that way, that
person’s just going to sway right through there. That’s going to harm him.
By choosing a pocket door—one that slides into the wall rather than open-
ing into the space of the room—she resolved a problem common to home-
owners: how to provide separation between rooms without occupying room
space and blocking traffic lanes when the doors are open. Furthermore, she
produced a text that used appropriate symbols to represent in cryptic fashion
the host of ideas that she expressed verbally for the concurrent protocol.
Her design thus embodied a great deal of thought and decision-making—the
use of design symbols for appropriate elements, narratives about functionality,
measurements and calculations to create proper dimensions, knowledge of
materials and different sorts of accoutrements, and much else—through the
elegant text of the interior design drawing. We infer that the relatively hid-
den nature of her cognitive work in producing this drawing contributes to
the belief in school institutions that such texts lack the complexity of writ-
ten texts. Yet a written text would undoubtedly have proven too verbose and
would unnecessarily complicate the efforts of a knowledgeable reader—
one in tune with the conventions employed—to be of value in the com-
merce among designer, client, and builder for whom the nonverbal text
sufficiently represented the ideas appropriately.
Design Processes
Goal Formation
Dee worked toward both predetermined and emergent goals during her
designs. Predetermined goals were often set by the assignment: to design a
domicile for a given client with particular nonnegotiable elements in place.
At the beginning of one day’s concurrent protocol, for instance, when asked
what she hoped to accomplish for the day, she said,
We’re supposed to get everything done like orientation—like which directions

it’s going to face. Kitchen. I’ve got to finish up my kitchen. I’ve got to figure
out what kind of doors. I’m going to put like faucets, and tomorrow we’re
going to do furniture arrangement unless I can put it in today, and I doubt I can.
In trying to meet these goals, Dee often generated new goals during the
course of her design process. For instance, while designing the living room of
one apartment, Dee wanted to include both a pool table and a bar. The bar
needed to be designed so that it did not interfere with the pool players’ bodily
positioning and cue stick manipulation while using the table. Dee needed to
arrange the elements so that her hypothetical clients would be able to access
the bar and play pool at the same time without colliding with each other; in
essence, she needed to resolve a problem of spatial relations similar to that
involved in arranging a kitchen triangle. During a concurrent protocol, Dee said,
I am going to put, like, a little miniature fridge back [behind the bar] and stuff
like that. So I am going to move the pool table . . . I might put it right there.
Yeah, I am going to do it that way. That gives them a walking space and
shooting space. . . . Oh, I just realized something. Somebody walks through
it, they will walk right through a game—not good. . . . If someone walks
through there, someone is going to stick a pool stick right in their face, and
that would not be nice. Maybe I can just make my bar shorter. A place to put
the pool sticks and stuff. Right there.
This development of a goal while working illustrates the way in which,

within the broad guideline of Rachel’s commonsensical emphasis on func-
tional pragmatism, Dee made a number of emergent decisions that helped
her to identify and clarify her goals for the project. Rather, then, than hav-
ing all of her goals clearly in place prior to designing, Dee worked within a
broad set of principles that became clarified for her as she made each new
decision, adjusting and sharpening her prior goals in terms of new configu-
rations and new understandings of the consequences of those configurations.
These new goals were often shaped by her use of imagaic tools, particularly
narratives. In working out a new spatial arrangement, she would often invoke
a narrative—a refrigerator door blocking a key traffic area, a pool player hit-
ting a passerby with a cue stick—that would help her to envision the room’s
functional uses such as traffic flows. Her kitchen design in one apartment, for
instance, included the following decision during a concurrent protocol:
If I put anything in there, it goes into the walk-in space, and I hate that
because I don’t want to walk into the kitchen at 2 in the morning. I’m tired
and I’m hungry and I just go in a straight line.
Her own nocturnal foraging experiences led her to design her hypothetical
client’s kitchen to allow for unfettered somnambulism, a value that she
inscribed in her design.
This decision came about during the process of design in response to a
problem that followed from prior decisions, and thus required her to iden-
tify and solve this problem to move ahead with her design. Dee thus com-
bined formal principles learned from Rachel (e.g., the logic of spatial
efficiency) with images generated from her experiences in the world, the
sort of interplay between scientific (formal and academic) and spontaneous
(originating in everyday experience) conceptual fields so important to
Vygotsky’s (1987) notion of concept development.
Problem-Solving Hierarchy
Rachel taught her students to employ a problem-solving hierarchy in
doing their designs—that is, deciding what they should design first was
prerequisite to other decisions, then identifying a second priority, and so on.
Rachel provided the students with handouts that helped them identify their
most important, least negotiable decisions so that they could proceed with
minimal wholesale revising in producing their designs. Rachel’s approach
was evident during a concurrent protocol when Dee was designing a bed-
room and realized that her walk-in closet was too large, intruding into the
room’s traffic lanes. She asked Rachel to look at her design, and Rachel
began by looking at Dee’s overall plans:
Rachel: You are ahead of yourself. Where is your check sheet? So you are done
with your walls, exterior and interior. That’s right, and you are doing your
door swings next. You have a couple of your doorways here, but this is not
wide enough, 1, 2, 3, 4. That is a little overfit for that door. Look on the back-
side of your check sheet. There’s some standards written in here. Front door
is about 3 feet wide, all your other doors will be about 2 and 1/2 feet wide.
Most of your windows will be about 9 squares.
Dee: There is one window there and one there.
Rachel: And there is one over here in this bedroom. But there is none across this
back. So that tells you that these areas where there is lots of moisture will
need exhaust fans. Especially when they are that close to a closet because a
lot of these only have cased openings into the closet or that is not a division,
maybe a louver door but sometimes no more than that. So you have lots of
steam buildup here. What does it do to closets?
Rachel’s approach to Dee’s dilemma was to make sure that she was fol-
lowing the recommended problem-solving hierarchy. Once she was certain
that Dee had made the primary decisions first, she began to consider other
prerequisite decisions that Dee needed to make with respect to her door
sizes and swings, such as determining the necessity of exhaust fans because
of the high moisture levels in this part of the house. The duct work required
for these fans would set the terms for the next decisions that Dee would
need to make to situate her doors properly. All of these decisions needed to
come prior to Dee’s efforts to resize the walk-in closet. Later during this
conference, Rachel said,
Rachel: So we are going to have to take out this wall and move it back in. So you
didn’t mess up very bad. Just a little bit. Make that a question mark there. So
you are going to fix that wall, go back and put doorways and windows in and
then we will talk about your other things. Now what is your next thing?
Dee: Uh, doors, windows, orientation.
Here Rachel scaffolded Dee’s sequence of problem-solving, asking her to

identify the next series of steps she should take in designing this interior.
We found Dee employing a problem-solving hierarchy on subsequent
occasions 24 times during her design process, suggesting that she had
learned it at the conceptual level. During a concurrent protocol, she said, for
instance, “I always start with the kitchen first. Easiest one probably.” Her
approach following this global decision was not always systematic or ratio-
nal; at one point during a concurrent protocol, she said, “I bounce all over
the place. I went from doing doors, now I’m doing my hearth. Oh dear.”
Yet she also gave evidence of adopting Rachel’s approach of solving
problems in order of most essential and permanent to most flexible. During
a concurrent protocol, she and Patty had the following exchange:
Dee: Right now I am just doing the walls and stuff.

Patty: Do you have to draw double lines to show that that is a solid wall or some-
thing?
Dee: Yeah, there is an inch, there is like a square that is 3 inches or so to give
way for insulation and plaster and stuff like that. There are not many windows
in here. I don’t like that.
Patty: You like windows too, don’t you?
Dee: I love windows. I might have to change that. Now, I will have to figure out
where doors and stuff go. I wonder what the measurements are on it.
Patty: So the doors and everything have to be the exact size of the floor plan
that’s been given to you?
Dee: At least I am trying to do it that way. It is kind of hard but, at least this will
give me an idea of how much space there is.
This excerpt illustrates Dee’s incorporation of a problem-solving hierarchy into

her design. For this room, windows—ordinarily a higher-order decision—were
less of a concern because the room she was given included few windows,
an arrangement that Dee disliked and hoped to change. Given this design,
however, she next moved to situating the doors, whose placement would
determine how she could arrange other design elements.
Discussion
Student: It’s time for the bell.
Dee: Really?
We found this sort of exchange at the end of several of Dee’s protocol ses-
sions: Dee was so engrossed in her work that she was surprised to learn that it
was time to quit for the day. We considered these data to be suggestive of what
Csikszentmihalyi (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1984) calls a flow experi-
ence, one in which ability and challenge are well-balanced and the learner
becomes so engrossed as to become unconscious of the passage of time.
Other data collected across this school’s curriculum suggest that the
object of activity in Rachel’s classroom was different from that found in
many of the school’s academic core classes, possibly accounting for the
presence of such flow experiences in the otherwise “flat” (Goodlad, 1984,
p. 108) environment of school. The English Department, for instance, was for
the most part committed to a cultural heritage model that emphasized the
teacher-directed study of canonical works of American and British litera-
ture. History classes observed were taught through lectures and tests on
textbook material. In contrast, Rachel said,
I have students that do not excel in [their other] classes, but do excel in this
class. And I’m very aware that the reason that they may excel in this class ver-
sus another class may be their level of interest. Or their level of self-motivation.
The common presumption is that a home economics class allows for suc-
cess because it is easy and undemanding. Our study of Dee’s process of com-
position suggests that such a judgment is facile and uninformed. Rather, we see
Dee’s tasks in this interior design class as complex and challenging. She had to
learn formal knowledge from Rachel and her various instructional texts about
not only terms but the constructs that they implied. She needed to resist her
predisposition to bounce around the design process and follow a systematic
problem-solving hierarchy appropriate to designing home interiors. She had to

synthesize knowledge and procedures from across the school curriculum, par-
ticularly understandings from mathematics and geometry, to achieve an appro-
priate sense of proportion and to design for an unencumbered flow of traffic.
She benefited from incorporating knowledge from personal experience with
formal knowledge from the classroom in making design decisions.
Within a general set of guidelines and constraints, she had to design a
home interior that functioned with a great degree of economy: passageways
needed to be wide enough but not too wide, outlets needed to provide
enough electricity to power all devices without cluttering walls unneces-
sarily, doors and windows needed to open without blocking traffic areas,
kitchens needed layouts that allowed for traffic while preserving functional
routes among the three primary appliances, and so on. This activity needed
to be responsible to general goals and, more broadly, to conventions gov-
erning most approaches to interior design; it also needed to account for
givens in both the structure and in a hypothetical client’s tastes. At the same
time, the task was open-ended at the outset, allowing for infinite interpre-
tation and execution; and it required Dee to be able to recognize when
something was wrong with a design and subsequently to revise her goals
and strategies during the process of composition.
In many ways, the design work evidenced by Dee in Rachel’s class is out
of the mainstream of education in U.S. classrooms. Unlike much teaching
and academic performance in core academic classes, or the sorts of perfor-
mances required on high-stakes measurements of achievement, her design
work incorporated an array of types of knowledge through a collaborative,
well-scaffolded process. The work was flexible and open-ended within the
parameters of the general design task. Her design took place in an area of
the curriculum often dismissed as involving women’s work—a derogatory
term as we understand it—and involved continual applied mathematics and
a highly analytic approach in the context of a relational approach. Her
whole range of activities was both domestic and yet out there in the world
because the students had to make excursions to examine fabrics and other
materials in local stores. Dee’s designs required an extended process of
composition informed by feedback from peers and her teacher and were
shared with audiences (particularly peers) beyond her teacher. Such quali-
ties are often among those lauded by composition researchers and theorists
as central to a strong writing program.
The graphic symbol system enabled additional communication that would
be relatively cumbersome if entirely written. The design symbols, for instance,
conveyed considerable information to a well-schooled reader of the graphic
text, relating not only the placement but also the style of windows, furniture,
and other elements. The spatial configuration of the elements in relation to one
another was both informed by movement (e.g., the narratives that Dee drew on
to inscribe particular types of activity within the dwellings) and in turn sug-
gested optimal paths of movement about the premises. The drawing also sug-
gested the physics of the homes, even if they could not be depicted—the issue
of air circulation, for example, which was not represented in Dee’s drawing
but inferable from the locations of doors and windows in relation to the lay-
out’s orientation. An interior design text, then, through a relatively spare
medium, can present a tremendous amount of complex, dynamic information
to a reader conversant with the codes of the symbol system.
In previous work (e.g., Smagorinsky, 1995a), we have argued that the
notion of writing across the curriculum ought to be reconceived as com-
posing across the curriculum to account for the limits of writing and the
appropriateness and potential of other symbol systems in some disciplines.
What counts, we believe, is not so much that all texts should be written but
that teachers should enable students to engage in a process of composition:
one that allows learners to engage in extended activity that requires the
synthesis of knowledge that they embody in culturally-valued and useful
texts through appropriate sign systems. We see Dee’s design work substan-
tiating this argument by documenting her experiences during her semester
in Rachel’s class. We find it ironic that such performances tend to be under-
valued in the educational realm, in spite of what we have demonstrated to
be their complex demands. Meanwhile, national news stories, administrators’
and teachers’ reputations and salaries, local real estate values, and other pre-
cipitous consequences follow from students’ performances on the multiple-
choice items that make up standardized tests and the five-paragraph essays
that comprise the writing assessments in many states (Hillocks, 2002). Like
the sorts of complex authentic assessments described by Darling-Hammond,
Ancess, and Falk (1995), interior designs appear to be too involved, sophis-
ticated, and laborious for the national palate when it comes to evaluating the
performances of students in school. Based on Dee’s experiences, we would
argue that the nation is the poorer for this preference.
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Peter Smagorinsky is a professor of English education in the College of Education at the

University of Georgia. This study is part of a research program in which he has studied a range
of situated secondary school composing processes, including architectural design, ranch
design, and art and writing in English classes. He can be contacted at the University of
Georgia, Department of Language and Literacy Education, 125 Aderhold, Athens, GA 30602,
or by e-mail at smago@uga.edu.
Michelle Zoss is a doctoral candidate in English education at the University of Georgia. She
is a former high school teacher of art and English and is studying the integration of visual arts
and literacy practices in a middle school classroom for her dissertation. She can be contacted
at the University of Georgia, Department of Language and Literacy Education, 125 Aderhold,
Athens, GA 30602, or by e-mail at zoss@uga.edu.
Patty M. Reed is an instructor in the Department of English at Louisiana State University,

where she teaches courses in English education and 1st-year writing. She can be contacted at
Louisiana State University, Department of English, 43B Allen Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70801,
or by e-mail at preed2@lsu.edu.

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Written Communication

A Case Study of a High School

Keywords: multimedia composing; home economics; multimedia design;

of incoming students. As such, they are typically viewed as intellectually

Home Time, Home to Go, Interiors by Design, Kitchen

Based on these considerations, we interrogate the low status of both

volitional, goal-directed, tool-mediated action in social context that people

of designing home interiors for given hypothetical clients. Our study

Context of the Investigation

City and School

To achieve her instructional goals, Rachel used a textbook, Ruth F.

Furthermore, she strongly encouraged her students to collaborate with a

Rachel’s efforts to connect and collaborate with her colleagues extended

guidance, discussions of work with other students during the process of

manageable system. At first, for instance, we developed separate coding

Formal. Formal knowledge described the kind of academic instruction

Informal. Dee’s informal knowledge (i.e., that learned incidentally

Living space Rooms or designated “They are going to be fixed 70

the websites of Interior Design programs at universities. The categories,

Affordances/constraints. Affordances and constraints are the non-

etc. were constructed from; 5), obstacles (permanent or designed features

Furniture. Furniture described any moveable objects that played a role in

Infrastructure. Infrastructure codes described the basic framework or

Concrete. Concrete tools are tangible instruments used directly in pro-

Representational. Representational tools, like concrete tools, are mater-

Schematic. Schematic tools are more abstract than concrete or represen-

1. Cultural mediators: We identified three categories as broad cultural

engineering (1), geometry (16), graphic design/drawing (2), and mathe-

Example of Coded Text

Field of Interior Design

The kitchen triangle, then, embodies a number of design problems

With the kitchen triangle located—the primary decision in what we

Governing Logic or Common Sense

Dee’s protocols illustrated this cognitive complexity in her interior designs

Such decisions, informed here by her brief narrative of a person round-

Such brief narratives occurred frequently throughout her design process,

different designs, she used doors for a variety of purposes in conserving

We’re supposed to get everything done like orientation—like which directions

This development of a goal while working illustrates the way in which,

Here Rachel scaffolded Dee’s sequence of problem-solving, asking her to

Dee: Right now I am just doing the walls and stuff.

This excerpt illustrates Dee’s incorporation of a problem-solving hierarchy into

problem-solving hierarchy appropriate to designing home interiors. She had to

Peter Smagorinsky is a professor of English education in the College of Education at the

Patty M. Reed is an instructor in the Department of English at Louisiana State University,

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