I am very sad to hear that Naomi passed away. I cherish all the times we brain stormed together and engaged in discussions that (almost always) continued late into the night.  She had inspired me at many levels, and always reminded me to see the bigger picture, and think how my work can impact the real world. Naomi was passionate about her research in the field, and always gave everything she had to make things happen. She never ceased to amaze me on her powerful drive to keep on going, keep her passion alive, addressing challenges with clever creativity and wit, and continuing to step up to the plate when opportunities arise. She truly cared for the Learning Science community and ISLS will not be the same without her.

From Sandra Okita

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It is with great sadness to know about the passing away of Naomi Miyake who is one of my most highly respected scholars. I first knew of Naomi through her research writing as a graduate student reading her ingenious paper on constructive iteration and processes; my supervisor noted it as a must-read paper.  As with Naomi, I also had a background in Cognitive Science and later developed research in Learning Science and CSCL.  Over the years, I came to meet Naomi in conferences and research groups and she always striked me with such insightful ideas; her research innovative with strong theoretical foundation; and her design work beautiful and intriguing. She was a good friend of knowledge-building reseach and had served as discussant on different occasions and her comments always so helpful. Naomi is a dedicated scholar contributing much to our field; she was one of the major founders of CSCL editing books and ijCSCL and she played important roles serving ISLS.  On a personal level, she was always kind and supportive; our last conversation was at CSCL 2011 and we talked about visiting schools in Hong Kong and Japan. It is difficult for research to have impacts but I understand her work has influenced education in Japanese schools.  It is a great loss to us but she will be dearly remembered as a great scholar who inspired and contributed much to moving our field forward.

–From Carol K. K. Chan

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Very sad news, I met Naomi a few times and (besides the quality of her work) I was very much impressed by her very pleasant personality.

From Ton de Jong

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As a nervous new academic at Lancaster University in 1986, I joined John Self, Steve Payne, Jim Ridgway and others in the Centre for Research on Computers and Learning. At one of the very first meetings we discussed Naomi’s paper on “Constructive Interaction”, which had recently appeared in Cognitive Science. It’s a paper every grad student should read, for the ways it builds a complex argument in simple language; elegant exposition.  Naomi’s approach stimulated a number of our projects on the study of teachers’ thinking in one-on-one tutorial sessions – aimed at improving intelligent tutoring systems. She had a rare kind of talent for producing infectious ideas – we will all miss her.

From Peter Goodyear

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I remember Naomi Miyake’s opening of the CSCL conference in Hong Kong in 2011.

She shared a story (and a perspective) that I have never ever forgotten and which I share with others. The conference took place not long after the tsunami hit Japan, and Naomi told about one elementary school where a local engineer had helped the school develop a different type of emergency preparedness than most of the other schools. Normally, she explained, in the event of an earthquake students would go to an open space in the schoolyard and wait for the teachers to check the school and come out. Relying on adults.

In this school, however, the students were taught to go to the schoolyard, evaluate the safety of the situation themselves, and go to higher ground if they determined they needed to. This school was one hit by the tsunami, and while the survival rate in all the other schools was extremely low, in this school it was over 90% because the children themselves took the initiative to evaluate their safety and move to higher ground.

The story brings tears to my eyes each time. What a belief in what kids are capable of, and what an important story to tell to remind us all to engage kids in their fullest capacities for reasoning and looking out for each other.

Naomi told the story with tenderness, and I know that her work as a scholar was with this ethic in mind – to educate in a way that children reach to their fullest capability in learning and taking responsibility.

I am so sad for the loss of Naomi to our community.

From Deborah Fields

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