Professor Joan Bliss

Visiting fellow at Sussex University
Email: joan.bliss@btinternet.com
Telephone and fax number:
+44 (0)1273 483557
Address for correspondence:
Bramber Barn, South Farm Close,
Rodmell, East Sussex, BN7 3HW

Research Projects

My personal research about human thinking and reasoning focused initially on a theory I developed of the growth of young children's ideas about force and motion. I have now extended it to the task of describing physical reasoning, that is, reasoning about the real world. An underlying hypothesis concerning physical reasoning is whether a description of this type of reasoning would give us a more complete description of commonsense thinking and its functioning, and thus give rise to new and different elements of 'concrete logic'. This work started with young children, then continued with young people and students and I am now looking at adults (1985 – to present).

I chaired and organized a Task Force to research and critique studies in Situated Cognition, which was part of a larger project funded by the European Science Foundation on Human and Machine Learning. The task force comprised members from 12 European countries, who, together, explored issues of learning, using social and technological resources (1994-1998)

Between the years 1986-1996, I created and led a voluntary interdisciplinary, inter-institutional research group, the London Mental Models Group. Its research goals included the modeling of cognition, and studying the nature of the representations used in everyday thinking, setting these in educational contexts. The Group permitted the discussion and development of individual's research interests.

Through the London Mental Models Group (LMM), I led a European Union funded Working Group, which investigated the nature of children's and teachers' explanations in various areas such as science, history, etc (1989-1993). The funds also permitted members of the Group to travel and to learn about people's work in different research institutes throughout the EU.

As the result of a LMM successful research bid, I led, with Jon Ogborn, a major national funded research programme where we investigated young secondary pupils' reasoning with computational modeling tools, challenging conventional beliefs that modeling activities were appropriate only for much older students that challenged conventional belief that modeling activities were appropriate only for much older student.

From 1992-1995, I led a research project (with a team from King's College, London University)

Health Education has been an area within my research interests. Thus with a team (from King's College), I ran a research project on how cancer patients live with their diagnosis of cancer, and the factors that help or hinder progress in adapting to the diagnosis, in a longitudinal study of breast, colorectal and prostate cancer patients (1989-93).

On the methodological front, I developed, with J. Ogborn, a new approach to the analysis of complex data deriving from interviews or observations, which respects its qualitative character but insists on rigour of analysis (1979-1982, Chelsea College, London University).

Soon after my return to the UK (end of 1971), I co-operated with university science teachers in the Higher Education Learning Project (1973-1978), directing a study of undergraduates' motivation to learn science.

While still in Geneva, I collaborated with the Nuffield Mathematics Project (1968-1972), and produced three volumes of diagnostic instruments for primary pupils' mathematical reasoning, now known as formative assessment, and which predate by more than a decade current concerns with graded assessment and attainment targets.

My research with Jean Piaget (1961-1971) covered the areas of first mental imagery, then memory and finally, causality or cause and effect in science.