We are pleased to announce a rather special conference, CONSTRUIT 2017, at the University of Warwick 13th - 16th July 2017.

It is special because it is the 1st International Conference on Making Construals.

The historian, and philosopher, of science David Gooding made use of the term 'construal' in an extended sense in connection with his study of Faraday's emerging understanding of electromagnetism. He wrote, 'This term [construals] denotes .. representations which combine images and words as provisional or tentative interpretations of novel experience.’ See Gooding’s paper in Cognitive Technology: Instruments of Mind (ed. M. Beynon et al. 2001, p.133).

In the EU Erasmus+ CONSTRUIT! project we have extended Gooding's concept further to embrace computer-based scripts and associated interactive visualisations. We have developed a bespoke environment for making construals (running in a web-browser) and trialled this with many school-teachers and students.

The theme of CONSTRUIT 2017 is

        Making, Thinking and Learning in the Digital Age

The activity of making construals has the potential to transform computer support for learning and offers new possibilities for modelling, understanding and communicating historical processes of discovery. We hope the conference will be a forum for a wide range of current learning and modelling environments, as well as an occasion to present the challenges and achievements of the CONSTRUIT! project itself. Everyone interested in themes of learning and modelling - widely construed! - are welcome. There will be a Topic Group associated with CONSTRUIT 2017 opening shortly on 'History of Science and Museum Studies'.  We are pleased to announce that one of our plenary lectures will be given by Professor Frank James and entitled 'Construing Humphry Davy' . This will be on the Saturday 15th July.

Consult the URL for the conference at
 
http://edumotiva.eu/construit2017/

for further details and the Call for Contributions. The deadline for abstracts is Tuesday 13th June. For illustrative examples of making construals within the online environment newly developed in the CONSTRUIT! project, see

http://jseden.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/construit/?load=49

We encourage you to submit an abstract, join the conference Interest Group, and book your place now!

Questions and comments should be sent to [log in to unmask]

Meurig Beynon and Steve Russ (Co-chairs, CONSTRUIT 2017)