Harriet Smith
As I read through the chapters this week I encountered the idea that the learning sciences could incorporate the contrasting perspectives of both cognitive and situative scholars and I found our discussion of terminology last week useful in deciphering where the chapters positioned learning theory.
The chapter by Songer and Kali (2014) drew together science education, the learning sciences and the implications of the most recent research. I found this chapter informative and a thorough analysis of the issues that face science education and how a development in understanding the ways in which people learn can be used to improve how science is taught. The issues raised in the chapter appear to be very similar to those that we have discussed in previous classes, particularly around formal schooling. In referencing the NRC (2012), science knowledge is described as being either scientific processes or content knowledge.The focus of traditional schooling has been largely on the latter and accounts for the large sums of information, facts and definitions that are typically found in textbooks and lectures. The push to transition to a blended form of knowledge including ways of knowing and content stand in contrast to traditional schooling by changing the way in which we discuss science. The use of argumentation, and modern day problem solving of complex phenomenon is vastly different from the compartmentalised structure of science in the past. The notion that students prior ideas and conceptions around science are also valuable within a classroom is an identifiable difference that offers an opportunity to engage with all learners and not just those who have been privileged with exposure to previous science knowledge. The extent to which previous ideas are valued, though, remains to be defined and I will discuss this later. For me, one of the most important issues raised by Songer and Kali (2014) involves who should learn science. This gets to the heart of our discussion around what is the purpose of schooling. Developing scientific literacy is different from simply immersing a student in a huge number of facts and definitions, or only teaching to the future scientific elite, our ‘little scientists’ description. Like most educational vocabulary, I wonder if the definition of scientific literacy is also disputed, if so by whom ?
The chapter by Collins and Kapur (2014) considered cognitive apprenticeship, its development from a traditional apprenticeship and the implications for an apprenticeship model of learning within the constraints of the traditional classroom. Having separated cognitive apprenticeship and situated learning in previous weeks, I found this chapter to somewhat merge the two. In the past, I had viewed the cognitive apprenticeship model as having roots in a situative perspective, but lacking some of the nuances that made situated learning so compelling. One such example being that the original cognitive apprenticeship model that we had constructed as a class made little to no reference to the importance of fellow student interactions and the importance of completing practices within a community that were valuable and served to initiate the navigation of the learner closer towards the center of the community. Yet this chapter made reference to communities of practice and the value of legitimate peripheral participation in order to describe the importance of an apprentice not just completing menial tasks within that culture, but engaging with a form of productive apprenticeship. Lave and Wenger (1991) are cited in regards to the example of the meat cutters who worked in a separate room from the other members of the butcher community and thus were unable to progress in their learning without the social interaction of others; ‘productive apprenticeship depends on opportunities for apprentices to participate legitimately in the communities that they are learning,’ (p.118). At the end of this chapter I was left wondering if cognitive apprenticeship and situated learning are one in the same as defined by modern scholars. WIll be interested to hear if any of my fellow classmates share a similar opinion.
DiSessa (2014) discusses the evolution of conceptual change and how it is relevant in the learning sciences. ‘Conceptual change is among the most central areas in the learning sciences for several reasons. Firstly, many critically important ideas in science cannot be successfully learned unless learners undergo conceptual change. Second, understanding conceptual change requires us to engage with some of the deepest theoretical issues concerning learning,’ (p.88). This chapter compelled me to see the importance of a conceptual change theory of learning in understanding science. I can appreciate how, for a student to learn something, they must be able to give up their previous naive ideas about a topic and adopt more scientific ones, but there is of course no mention of how one goes about assessing the quality of the ideas a student has. Furthermore, as conceptual change has developed the idea that ‘instead of rejecting students conceptions altogether, one can choose the most productive ideas and refine them to create normative concepts,’ (p.89) makes me wonder who decides the ideas that are most productive? I take issue with the description of this model in that science ideas are strictly defined and a student has to be taught how to think by changing their cognitive patterns because they have been assessed as not useful to think more scientifically. This perspective places no real value in a students cultural background and assumes that regardless of who that student is outside of the classroom, if they are presented with enough scientific evidence they can alter their misconceptions. I read a recent article by Zhou (2012) that considered culture and conceptual change. The perspective he discussed involved how students, despite undergoing conceptual change within a school classroom, are likely to revert back to preconceptions back in the broader context of daily life. Furthermore, students who come from cultural backgrounds that sit out of alignment with western cultural perspectives of science are far more likely to find the science taught in the classroom alienating. ‘Student preconceptions are a product of their everyday culture plus traditional culture, both of which constitute their life-world culture. If we look at student preconceptions in a different way by changing ourselves from being an outside inspector with scientific ideas as judging criteria to being an insider of students’ real-life world, we will find that student preconceptions, although in many cases at odds with science, make sense to the students themselves,’ (Zhou 2012, p.117). I want to hear what others have to say about this, and whether we want and need to create scientific literacy by removing preconceptions that are identity defining aspects of that individual.
Collins, A., & Kapur, M. (2014). Cognitive apprenticeship. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (2nd ed., pp. 109–127). Cambridge University Press.
DiSessa, A. A. (2014). A History of Conceptual Change Research. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (2nd ed., pp. 88–108). Cambridge University Press.
Lave.J. (1988). The culture of acquisition and the practice of understanding (Report No. IRL88-0007). Palo Alto, CA: Institute of Research on Learning.
Lave,J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Songer, N. B., & Kali, Y. (2014). Science Education and the Learning Sciences as Coevolving Species. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (2nd ed., pp. 697–722). Cambridge University Press.
Zhou, G. (2012). A Cultural Perspective of Conceptual Change: Re-examining the Goal of Science Education. McGill Journal of Education, 47(1), 109.
Harriet, I also wonder about your question on scientific literacy. I feel that I’ve met people (specifically educators)throughout my life that could (and probably do) have very different definitions of scientific literacy. Upon reading your question, I wondered what my own answer would be, and to be honest I’m not sure if I’ve got a good one. Clearly it does not mean having an all-encompassing knowledge of science, but to what degree do we consider an individual “literate”? I wonder if a specific stance on a theoretical approach changes an individual’s view? In regards to your discussion of the cognitive apprenticeship article, I think that the article both expanded cog. apprenticeship into the situated view and also helped to illuminate ways of incorporating cog. apprenticeship into teaching practice.
Harriet-do you have an example of “preconceptions that are identity defining aspects of that individual”?
Harriet, I too had difficulty distinguishing between situated cognition and cognitive apprenticeship after reading the chapter by Collins and Kapur (2014). As you mention in your post, in previous weeks we had established that both are similar in nature but cognitive apprenticeship focused more on individual’s thinking with a social component involved while situated cognition was concentrated on the norms and practices of a community. When reading Collins’ and Kapur’s chapter (2014), I too found myself thinking that the authors combined the two theories together in a way where cognitive apprenticeship was explained as extending situated learning to more diverse and complex settings. Based on this reading, and what was hinted at in previous class discussions, I feel that both are often lumped together but I am curious to discuss this in class.
As for the point you make about the NCR in the chapter written by Songer and Kali (2014), I also found it interesting that this is the first time standards and “goals, educators, and policy makers must agree on the desire learning outcomes” have been discussed (p. 566). When reading about the NRC reports, I was reminded of the NGSS standards and how they are written with three sections: science and engineering practice, disciplinary core ideas, and crosscutting concepts. The content knowledge is evident in the “disciplinary core ideas” section while the scientific processes knowledge, as you discuss in your post, are in the other two sections. From this reading, I started wondering when standards first came up and were discussed in the learning theories? As mentioned above, we have not discussed standards so far this semester, but they are prevalent in today’s discussions on learning, leading me to be curious about them. I am not sure if you know this answer but thought it was interesting food for thought!