SCIED 552: Science Teaching and Learning Developing Models of Science Teaching

This week’s readings filled in some gaps and opened up new ones for some of the broader ideas we have been dealing with. My analysis of Engle and transfer from the situative perspective is written as a separate post because it is fairly lengthy and doesn’t connect with this post much. I also realise not everyone had it as a reading

Beginning with di Sessa (2014), the influence of the History and Philosophy of Science was helpful in characterising the motivations behind the bigger ideas associated with conceptual change. In particular, the role of Kuhn in changing perceptions about the scientific enterprise and his notion of ‘paradigms’ and ‘scientific revolutions’ seems related directly to the idea of accommodations in conceptual change. I don’t find many traces of Tolumin’s idea of the “moving picture” account. I wonder what the implications of this for conceptual change are. An adoption of this perspective seems to undermine how radical an accommodation can be. The conceptual change picture also seems to be in opposition to traditional ideas of the misconceptions approach. Personally, I am not a fan of the phraseology of a ‘mis’conception. The underlying assumption that incorrect beliefs that are held by the student is somehow wrong goes against the role that previously held beliefs play in a theory of conceptual change, where previously held beliefs and the strength of the hold it has on the learner can inhibit or promote assimilation and accommodation of new conceptions. The whole debate on coherence/fragmentation is a useful construct to influence the way we approach instruction for students. However, the study of the history and philosophy of science brings in more questions then answers. For the implications for the classroom, I wonder if the study of scientific communities should really be the source of what determines our theories. There is a significant difference between the community of scientists and the community of learners and the kinds of cognition and activity that happen in these two communities. While science studies does give interesting questions to answer, I am a little cautious about the amount of consideration we should devote as educationalists towards the concerns of how scientific communities work.

By contrast, cognitive apprenticeship seems to get the best from both worlds. A view of cognitive apprenticeship that “extends practice to diverse settings and articulates the common principles” (Gavriel, 2015, p. 111), enables us to consider the common principles of different communities and use them to influence the way we approach education. This may not always be possible however. There are two issues I could identify with this approach. Firstly, is how easily articulation can be achieved. As Gavriel points out, “strategic knowledge is often tacit knowledge” (p.113).  Science studies scholars have been trying to analyse the structure of scientific communities and the processes that go behind their decision making from multiple lenses and there aren’t any conclusive answers. Therefore the only way to make the tacit knowledge visible is to immerse the student directly into the community as recreations of the community in the classroom by reducing the activities of the community to a set of implementable principles is difficult to achieve. So when he says teaching methods give students the opportunity to ‘observe, engage in and discover expert strategic knowledge in context’ (p.113), I don’t understand how this would work. Even if we can, in principle, identify the principles of scientific communities (which is in contrast with findings from Nature of Science research which denies that there even exists a set of generalizable principles) this brings us into tension with the principles of the learning community at the center of our classrooms. Gavriel repeatedly talks about the community of practice that must be the center of our focus in the classroom. What community does this involve in the classroom? If we are to follow the “learning communities” train of thinking (p.119), what are the practices that are determined to be good, are they a reflection of the real community of practice and who are the experts? A reconciliation of the principles of the learning community of the classroom and the scientific community may not be all that straight forward.

This suggests that a blended approach (Songer & Kali, 2007) may work well. In general, learning sciences can influence and is influenced by science education. Learning sciences also brings in important practical considerations of what can be achieved in a classroom and the larger social systems of education that play a role in what is admissible in classroom microcultures. The standardisation with the new ‘performance expectations’ that ‘combine a body of knowl- edge with ways of knowing into one blended science knowledge statement’ (Songer & Kali, 2007, p. 567) offers promise in this direction. That being said, these standards should allow for flexibility of local contexts and standards. The notion of socio-scientific issues (SSI) is intriguing as helping provide contextual learning for science classrooms. It is also a useful way to prepare students to become scientifically trained citizenry who can make better decisions in the political and social spheres. This should be a major learning goal for science classrooms and one that (from my exposure at least) has found very little emphasis in science education.

References:

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.

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.

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.

The articles this week helped to further unpack the major differences between cognitive and situative perspectives on learning. After reading each article, it became very clear that these two perspectives, no matter how connected temporally and how much someone may want them to fit together nicely, are essentially in-commensurable theories of learning. Each perspective is almost the opposite of the other with very little in common. In fact, the things I saw potentially connecting the perspectives become warped when attempting to reconcile the differences between them. In order to do this, I will focus on the fourth article for this week by Engle (2006) and leverage the other readings to make my points.

From the get go, Engle (2006) states they will be developing a “situative approach to explaining the transfer of learning” (p. 451). In their analysis, Engle (2006) chooses to hone in on students participating in learning relevant content by engaging with many examples, comparing examples, and forming generalizations and how learning contexts frame internationality by involving students in an “ongoing intellectual conversation” (p. 451) as the units of analysis. While attempting to mirror a situative approach, Engle (2006) merely warps the intentions of a situative perspective on learning by expanding the scope of a conceptual change model. This becomes most evident when examining the instruction recommended for knowledge-in-pieces conceptual change because diSessa (Sawyer, 2014) states, among other things, that conceptual change takes time. It requires learning in many contexts, and it is fine-grained enough to track student learning. In Engle’s (2006) study, they feared not enough time would be spent on the project (p. 460). Students entered many different contexts, and they were tracking individual student’s learning. What is key here to remember is that the focus is on knowledge, not practices. Therefore, Engle (2006) is not worried about practices. In fact, the type of knowledge being analyzed is domain knowledge, and that knowledge gets tracked throughout different contexts versus examining how interactions within the different contexts allow for the use of that knowledge.

Within the chapter on cognitive apprenticeship, Collins and Kapur (Sawyer, 2014) outline types of content. They note domain knowledge as being important, but they emphasize that “strategic knowledge” is more important because these types of knowledge are what allow experts to use their domain knowledge. This is a large shift from Engle (2006) who exclusively focuses, in my opinion, on domain knowledge acquisition. In fact, Engle (2006) warps the idea of a community of practice by deciding to make students authors and work within a “frame” of contributing to a larger conversation and contexts of the future. While written subtly and incorporating ideas such as articulation and scaffolding in the design, I believe this is a far cry from the ideas explained by Collins and Kapur (Sawyer, 2014). It positions the knowledge first rather than the interactions and practices at the fore. Yes, I understand Engle (2006) is trying to find a situative description of transfer, but this cannot be done without considering how practices developed within the classroom might have been analogous to the other contexts to allow for them to demonstrate their understanding. Instead, Engle (2006) is taking a purely individual standpoint rather than examining the community; a community which Engle (2006) actually “cherry picked” for this study because they “appeared to have potential for growth” (p. 460).

The fact that the community was chosen is of particular interest because this determines what the community could be like. What does “potential for growth” mean? Does it mean these students have shown to perform better on assessment activities and classroom work? If so, this flaws the main data for the study and raises serious questions about “who” should learn science. Regardless, the data collected, in my opinion, claims transfer is different from what someone operating from a situative perspective would want, even where domain knowledge is concerned. Just like what was mentioned by Songer and Kali (Sawyer, 2014), Engle (2006), examines, “factors to explain cognitive processes of the individual, rather than, “holistically explore the messy naturalistic settings in which learning occurs to explain how all sorts of social and cultural factors play together in a learning process” (p. 576).

Engle (2006) did a remarkable job at attempting to meld together cognitive and situative perspectives. Their attempt at genuinely taking the ideas brought to the fore by situative folks was well intentioned, and I do not believe they misrepresented the situative perspective. However, when digging deeper, it is clear that all Engle (2006) did when constructing the actual study was expand the amount of time and varied contexts of the same knowledge that was intentionally activated for students. While close to what the situative community is saying, in my eyes, this demonstrates how potentially in-commensurable both sides are.

References:

Engle, R. (2006). Framing Interactions to Foster Generative Learning : A Situative Explanation of Transfer in a Community of Learners Classroom All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Framing Interactions to Foster Generative Learning : A Situative Explanation of Tra. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 15(4), 451–498.

Sawyer, K. (2014). The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.

This week’s ‘debate’ illustrated two key ideas for me that seem to characterize a lot of the big thinkers in educational research

1) Each theory operates in fundamentally different paradigms and start from very different presuppositions. This makes even issues that are fundamental to the cause, such as the learning goals that each theory considers to be of importance, incommensurable

2) Each theory and the group that champions for it, target different aspects of the learning experience and as such use different lenses and languages to describe what is essentially the same phenomena. This makes it difficult to effectively synthesise the theories and to identify commonalities between them. Debates in the field therefore tend to be superficial as the two (or more) groups involved talk through each other and over each other rather than with each other.

Primarily, the difference between the two processes seems to be a disagreement on the approach to analytical focus. The situatists work top-down: looking at any situation and breaking it down in terms of the actors and tools, the environmental factors that influence the interaction and the subsequent degree of ‘learning’ that has occurred in this interaction that individual actors can then carry forward into future situations with similar structures. The constructivists work bottom-up: looking at any interaction in terms of the cognitive structures that each individual brings to the interaction and how such cognitive structures can be created and enhanced through learning; either through situational interaction or from individual instruction. Both schools of thought eventually have to encounter the issue of transfer, and I will try and present my thoughts on that at the conclusion of the post.

In what follows I try to examine the claims laid forth in Anderson et al’s preliminary critique (1996) and show why the two arguments presented above and the subsequent papers published by the two schools of thought render this argument counterproductive. I only consider the first two claims here but the analysis for the other two is the same (I realized after writing on the first two claims that it’s starting to run a little long for a blog post).

Claim 1: Action is grounded in the concrete situation in which it occurs

Anderson et al’s (1996) claim that there are “many demonstrations of learning that transfer across contexts” (p.6) is offered as an argument against what they presume is a situativitist claim that “more general knowledge cannot and will not transfer to real world situations” (p.6). Greeno’s counterargument (Greeno, 1997) is to claim that the studies cited by Anderson et al as a constructive argument for the cognitivists are actually proof for the situative claim that  activities in some situations can include aspects of practices that have been learned in other situations. Clearly, the same studies can be shown to different claims depending on the lens we choose to employ to analyse the results. The efficacy of a teaching methodology in the classroom that transfers to a real world situation is viewed by the constructivists as proof that cognitive structures and general knowledge are being transferred by the individual to be deployed in multiple situations whereas the situatists would take this as proof that structural similarities between the two contexts enable a learner to deploy the same practices in both situations. However, it is undeniable that the situatists have argued that school knowledge is not legitimate. Even this simple statement is interpreted differently by the two schools. Cognitivists view this as a blanket critique that the situatists have of the merits of any kind of schooling system whereas Greeno argues that illegitiamacy of school knowledge is due to the learning of algorithms that is “not a necessary condition for successful reasoning” (p.7).

Greeno’s rephrasing of the two questions does little to help the situation and Anderson et al can’t see the difference “for the life of [them]” (Anderson et al, 1997, p.19). The only way they seem to be able to find some reconciliation is if the difference becomes a matter of “definitons one chooses for knowledge and learning”.

It bothered me that neither school chose to elaborate on this statement because I definitely feel like this is where the crux of the difference is. Greeno and the situatists view knowledge and learning in terms of the kinds of practices that students can engage in situationally. Cognitivists look at knowledge and learning as the development of stable cognitive structures that are deployable by the learner in different situations. Situatists look at practices as they constructed in situ and then look at structural similarities between activities and therefore would seek to enforce an activity based learning in schools that simulate the kind of activities that students will have to face in the real world. They eventually come close to some form of reconciliation when they look at the gaps that each theory can fill in the other; cognitivsts need to look at other actors in a situation and situatists need to look at individual cognizing agents and the structures they bring in to a situation (Anderson et al, 2000).

Claim 2: Knowledge does not transfer between tasks

Anderson et al argue that situatists deny the existence of transfer, again quoting Lave (1988) to make their case. Greeno’s rephrasing this time explicitly shows the defintional differences between the two schools. His ‘cognitive question’ uses the word ‘knowledge’ when talking about transfer whereas his situative question uses the phrase ‘participating in an activity’. Here we can’t deny that every situation that a learner engages in involves both knowledge and how to put that knowledge into practice. This suggests that we ideally would need to consider both analytical lenses in trying to understand student participation in any kind of activity and how learning can facilitate transfer. However, we again encounter an issue as the two schools look at transfer differently because their notion of what gets transferred is different. Cognitivists don’t deny the situative nature of activity, but they argue that in such situations transfer is of cognitive structures. They work bottom up. Situatists look at practices as they constructed in situ and then look at structural similarities between activities and therefore enforce an activity based learning in schools that simulate the kind of activities that students will have to face in the real world. They work top down.

Viewed in this manner, the differences between the two theories disappear. What they offer are two different analytical frameworks that can provide different insights into the way that learning occurs and the ways in which what is learnt is manifested in different situations. The authors coming together acknowledge this eventually in agreeing that in “the present state of our theoretical understanding, both perespectives are needed” (Anderson et al 2000, p.12).

I’m left feeling that there needs to be a stronger synthesis of the two approaches into one consolidated theory. While they are both useful they differ in terms of their implicaitons for the classroom. It is imperative that research is able to reconcile the differences in the conceptual underpinings of these two theories to produce a theory that can direct educational implications for the classroom that can incorporate the salient features of individual cognition and interactionist, situative considerations.

References

Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics and Culture in Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511609268

Anderson, R. A., Reder, L. M., & Simon, H. A. (1996). Situated Learning and Education. Educational Researcher, 25(4), 5–11.

Greeno, J. G. (1997). Response: On Claims That Answer the Wrong Questions. Educational Researcher, 26(1), 5–17.

Anderson, J.R, Reder, L.M., Simon, H. (1997). Rejoinder: Situative versus Cognitive Perspectives: Form versus Substance. Educational Leadership, 26(1), 18–21.

Anderson, J. R., Greeno, J. G., Reder, L. M., & Simon, H. A. (2000). Perspectives on Learning, Thinking, and Activity. Educational Researcher, 29(4), 11–13.

Greeno, J. G. (2006). Chapter 6: Learning in Activity. New York: Cambridge University Press.

I had good time reading the academic argument between Anderson et al. and Greeno this week. I found it particularly amusing that Greeno’s critique of Anderson’s original article is substantially longer than the original article itself (much like the acclaimed Phantom Menace review that is allegedly longer than the original movie).

In the open article from Anderson et al. (Situated Learning and Education, 1996), it is argued that “how tightly learning will be bound by context depends on the kind of knowledge being acquired” (p. 6). To me, this sounds like the authors are arguing that the beans/grist (in the grist and mill analogy) differ from situation to situation and how closely it is bound to its contexts differs depending on the content itself. I suppose then that this means the beans learned in school may be entirely different than those needed for the real world (i.e. chemistry learned in school is different than chemistry theory used by chemists). The authors also argue that “abstract instruction can be ineffective if what is taught in the classroom is not what is required on the job. Often this is an indictment of the design of classroom instruction rather than the idea of abstract instruction itself” (p. 8). To me, the idea of the “design of classroom instruction” deals directly with the interactions between students and teachers as well as peer interactions– inherently social ideas that deal with the classroom context and how it affects learning. Additionally, Anderson et al. state: “while one must learn to deal with the social aspects of jobs, there is no reason why all skills required for these jobs should be trained in a social context” (p. 9), to which I ask, is there any situation that is completely devoid of a social context? It seems to me that learning is in and of itself at least a little bit social, as learning involves interacting with ideas that other human beings have also thought about and influenced, even if it is through individually reading or working out math problems.

In Greeno’s rebuttal, he starts out his article by using his relationships with Anderson et al. to explain his issues of presuppositions and assumptions about term meanings (which was humorous to read). After this intro, Greeno goes on to explain that “people can learn adaptively in situations where they engage in activities”, meaning that while it looks like knowledge is being transferred from school to other settings, what is actually happening is that people are adaptive and creative in their reasoning and ability to solve new problems (because the problems in various contexts appear different than those in school, though the math necessary may be the same). In Anderson et al.’s original article, they say that it is ridiculous to assume that the math learned in school can’t help shoppers compare prices and vendors make change. After I read this I thought to myself: I suppose school has failed me, as my elementary school money math units were the last thing on my mind as I tried to make change on the fly as a barista. Greeno argues that my success in making change was less about content I learned in school and more about adaptability to solving new problems.

Anderson et al. writes a rebuttal to Greeno’s rebuttal and things get spicy: “For the life of us, we fail to see the differences between these questions although we confess to feeling some attraction to the simpler and more direct cognitive version. Perhaps there is a difference if one believes that “knowledge” is not what is learned, but then the supposed difference becomes entirely a matter of the definitions one chooses for knowledge and learning” (Anderson et al., 1997, p. 19).  I think that the differences in what cognitive and situative views define as “knowledge” or focus on as “knowledge” is a key difference between the two theories. I think in this quote Anderson does not understand that what he and his colleagues view as knowledge, aka content (beans/grist), is different than what the situative camp is focused on– the way of thinking (the mill).

Anderson, Greeno, and friends come together find some common ground and agree that both cognitive and situated ideas are important to “the advancement of a fair, just, caring, and productive society” (p. 11). How nice of them to come together and see maybe they aren’t so different after all. In Greeno’s book written in 2006, we describes cognitive science as focused on the “models of the processes that individuals use to construct, store, retrieve, and modify patterns of information”, while he explains situated/social learning as focused on how people talk to each other as they plan, evaluate, and coordinate their interactions…” (p. 82). To me this seems like a key difference between the two theories, cognitive folks focus on what goes on inside an individual’s mind, while situative folks focus on how interactions influence people. Rather than one theory being right or wrong, it seems like the focus of each is different.

This week’s readings held a lot of information about both cognitive and situative perspectives on learning. However, I found the messaging of the authors to be of particular interest within each article. I think by focusing on this aspect of the debate, I can hopefully say something without repeating what the authors stated and add my own sense about what was shared. Overall, I thought about what occurred in the readings this week as a “power struggle.” Interestingly, while cognitive perspectives had more power historically, the authors of this paper wrote in a way that portrayed the desire to quash the usurper (situative perspectives).

In the abstract of their article, Anderson, Reder, and Simon (1996) stated, “… we cite empirical literature to show that the claims are overstated and that some of the educational implications that have been taken from this claims are misguided” (p. 5) about situated perspectives of learning. This indicates, in very direct terms, that the authors do not believe research from a situative perspective is useful in any manner. In fact, they approach calling it frivolous verging on irresponsible. Overall, their article, in my eyes, attempted to debunk a lot of the claims within situative perspectives on learning while advocating that cognitive approaches can answer the questions posed by situative perspectives better. Interestingly, a lot of the evidence they provided seemed to support a broader view of learning encompassed by situative perspectives. For example, on page 8 they detail how classroom instruction for police officers does not translate to the job. The authors argue that it is more about the design of the learning environment and problems of the job rather than an issue with abstraction. From what I understand, abstraction in a situative perspective, is acceptable as long as the abstract instruction is contextualized. Essentially, a situative perspective adds more to what cognitivist already think about. If taking a situative stance, researchers are now open to thinking about what practices contribute to being a police officer and can design environments that support learning whether it includes abstraction or not. Additionally, the instruction would be determined by the types of interactions the instruction is looking to evoke rather than attempting to guess how to build a mental construction that can only be measured by examining performance any way. This barrier of measurement, in my opinion, is decreased significantly when thinking about learning as situative because learning is measured by participation not “performance” in the way that cognitivists would refer to it as.

In response, Greeno (1997), uses some of the above ideas to demonstrate that the situative perspective actually incorporates cognitive positions into its framework but chooses to orient the questions differently. While clearly attempting to separate and privilege situative learning from cognitive perspectives on learning, Greeno (1997), never outright stated that cognitive perspectives were wrong. Rhetorically, what I gained was that cognitive perspectives were merely not seeing the whole picture (or at least a specific parts of it) versus Anderson et al.’s (1996) position that situative learning was “misguided.” Right from the start, Greeno (1997) discussed the question around generality by generating two questions that were similar, yet significantly different. Even Anderson, Reder, and Simon (1997) stated, “…we fail to see the difference between these questions…” (p. 19) about the questions. Anderson et al. (1997) boil the difference down to language. While this is true because the questions did contain different words, this avoids the issue at play entirely in my eyes; an attempt I think aimed at brushing off the “pesky” other. However, when I sat back to think about the differences in the questions Greeno (1997) presented, the implication was radical. Cognitive folks see knowledge acting on a task, while those in the situative camp see knowledge and activity as inseparable. This dramatically expands how one thinks about learning and how one can observe learning. Ultimately, the exchange in the 1997 articles consisted of Greeno stating, “we see the value in this perspective (cognitive), but think it can be better and built upon,” while Anderson et al. took a “your wrong and just give it up” approach.

While I think the “coming together” article was helpful to frame both issues, I want to turn my attention towards the chapter by Greeno (2006). This chapter really clearly framed the situative perspective for me while also showing what has happened to this debate; both sides see value in the other but cognitive folks now need to see situative folks as a legitimate participant in the conversation around learning. Interestingly enough, in engaging in a practice within the community of educational research, learning happened for all parties that is evident in the chapter. This learning is very clear as both parties responded in a written conversation and negotiated their ideas. So, while I do tend to fall more on the situative side of things because, “It combines the strengths of each of these approaches with the goal of better understanding how learning occurs…” (Greeno, 2006, p. 91), I believe both perspectives have a role to play. From what I can see both ask different questions that can have value in adding to the conversation about how to improve education as a whole and understanding how people learn.

References:

Greeno, J. G. (2006). Chapter 6: Learning in Activity. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Anderson, J. R., Greeno, J. G., Reder, L. M., & Simon, H. A. (2000). Perspectives on Learning, Thinking, and Activity. Educational Researcher, 29(4), 11–13.

Anderson, J.R, Reder, L.M., Simon, H. . (1997). Rejoinder: Situative versus Cognitive Perspectives: Form versus Substance. Educational Researcher, 26(1), 18–21.

Greeno, J. G. (1997). Response: On Claims That Answer the Wrong Questions. Educational Researcher, 26(1), 5–17.

Anderson, R. A., Reder, L. M., & Simon, H. A. (1996). Situated Learning and Education. Educational Researcher, 25(4), 5–11.

This week’s readings were very interesting and incorporated, again, many of the readings we have discussed so far this semester. The readings came from two varying perspectives: cognitive (focusing on individual’s cognition) and situative (taking into account social interactions accounting for learning.) Seeing how previous readings from Dewey, Skinner, and Brown, Collins, and Dugid were referenced in the articles also helped me to better understand the connections between the readings for this semester so far.

The debate of situative versus cognitive learning started with Anderson et al. (1996). They examined situated learning through a cognitive perspective and made four major claims: learning in concrete situations, knowledge not transferring, lack of importance of training by abstraction, and instruction needing to be done in complex, social environments. Out of the four claims, I found “Claim 4: Instruction Needs to be Done in Complex, Social Environments” the most interesting especially based on my education (Anderson et al., 1996, p. 9). Growing up, I always preferred, and still do, individual work over group work. The idea of group work being “counterproductive… difficulty of finding times for the group to meet to work on assignments…. others exploit the system” are all feelings I have personally experienced doing group work (p. 10). Reading this in the article made me initially agree with Anderson and the cognitive perspective. But then I thought about student teaching where students did most of their learning in groups (via ambitious science teaching) and I thought about  the impact that socializing and arguing had in their learning, and the potential in could have in learning in general.

This lead me to think about Greeno’s 1997 article where he writes a rebuttal to Anderson et al. (1996) stating that Anderson and his colleagues framed their questions through a cognitive lenses. Greeno then provides two questions for each of Anderson’s claims: a situative and a cognitive phrased question. It was interesting to see that Greeno broke the claims into two questions, doing so allowed me to see how the two perspectives vary in the questions they can ask. I especially found the analysis provided by Anderson et al. (1997) helpful in allowing me to determine differences in both perspectives. After reading these three articles, though, I left feeling that both sides were in a “That is not what I meant to say” argument and I am curious to know if anyone else found/felt that?

The debate then ends with Anderson et. al (2000) writing that there are actually agreements between their cognitive perspective and the situative perspective presented in Greeno (1997). The idea of “we agree that the development of educational interventions should be informed by the growing bodies of research in cognitive and social sciences” (Anderson et al., 2000, p. 13) allows the reader to see the potential for both perspectives to be used in understanding learning. Lastly, Greeno’s (2006) chapter almost hints at this idea with Greeno himself, a firm situative perspective individual, stating that he is going to look at the cognitive perspective to see similarities between the two sides.

With all that said, the idea of a combined situative and cognitive outlook on learning would be interesting. I found that the cognitive perspective focused more on individual cognition (IQ, memory, etc) while the situative perspective built upon more social interactions, argumentation, etc. As it is hinted in some of the articles, I am curious to know which view would provide the foundation/framework in a combined perspective. Does the situative perspective provide the foundation for learning with individual cognition being built off of those interactions? Or do individual intellectual performers provide the foundation with social participation contributing to students’ learning? I am curious to see what other thinks via responses and in class.

Works Cited

Anderson, R. A., Reder, L. M., & Simon, H. A. (1996). Situated Learning and Education. Educational Researcher, 25(4), 5–11.Anderson, J. R., Greeno, J. G., Reder, L.

Anderson, J.R, Reder, L.M., Simon, H. . (1997). Rejoinder: Situative versus Cognitive Perspectives: Form versus Substance. Educational Leadership, 26(1), 18–21.

M., & Simon, H. A. (2000). Perspectives on Learning, Thinking, and Activity. Educational Researcher, 29(4), 11–13.

Greeno, J. G. (1997). Response: On Claims That Answer the Wrong Questions. Educational Researcher, 26(1), 5–17.

Greeno, J. G. (2006). Chapter 6: Learning in Activity. New York: Cambridge University Press.

This week’s readings were concerned with a debate of situative versus cognitive approaches to studying how learning takes place. The first three articles were a back and forth debate over the criticisms of the situated approach as made by Anderson et al. (1996). Greeno then rebutted those four criticisms by rephrasing them in situative language as compared to the cognitive language used by Anderson et al. (Greeno 1997). The following paper was a joint paper by Anderson et al. and Greeno that was written to clarify what the two groups had established through their debate over situative versus cognitive approaches (Anderson et al. 2000). The final paper written by Greeno, actually a book chapter, further summarized the differences and similarities between the two approaches (Greeno 2005). Two things struck me as interesting about these readings. The first is the lack of clear understanding about the various definitions regarding different learning study systems that are being used. The main issue for all of these readings was just trying to establish what the other side actually believed as the fundamental foundations of their study systems. This debate reminded me of the Lave paper, in which the authors state that their goal in writing about cognitive apprenticeship was to clarify exactly what the term meant (Lave 1991). Is this kind of discussion or debate common in the learning sciences? I haven’t come across anything similar in the natural sciences that I can think of. The other interesting thought that the final Greeno paper brought up was a similarity between natural history studies and ecology compared with cognitive learning and situative learning. It struck me that cognitive learning is similar to natural history studies in that both focus on the individual. In the case of natural history, an individual species. In the case of cognitive studies the individual learner. In ecological studies the interaction between various animals and their environment is studied. In situative learning the activity between individuals or within groups is studied. In either case the goal is to learn more about the individual but the approach is different. In either case the both methodologies provide different insights but with the goal of answering the same question. The end message being that rather than fighting over which approach is superior (several of my biology professors loved to criticize natural history studies) researcher should agree that each method has its place.

Reference

Anderson, J. R., Reder, L. M., & Simon, H. A. (1996). Situated learning and education. Educational researcher, 25(4), 5-11.

Anderson, J. R., Reder, L. M., & Simon, H. A. (1997). Situative versus cognitive perspectives: Form versus substance. Educational researcher, 26(1), 18-21.

Anderson, J. R., Greeno, J. G., Reder, L. M., & Simon, H. A. (2000). Perspectives on learning, thinking, and activity. Educational Researcher, 29(4), 11-13.

Greeno, J. G. (1997). On claims that answer the wrong questions. Educational researcher, 26(1), 5-17.

Harriet Smith

The article by Anderson et al. (1996) uses civility when criticizing some aspects of situated cognition, including cognitive apprenticeship. In outlining claims made by situated scholars, Anderson et al (1996) considered the argument, considered how it was flawed, and then kind of painted this grey area which more so muddied the educational waters more than anything else. I found this article particularly helpful to fill some gaps that I had from the previous weeks, mostly because these authors dug into issues that I had with the situated learning theory. For example, this idea of transfer, and that knowledge can’t just be taken from one context and applied to another.  I think about my own learning in this instance, I find some things I learnt in school to be helpful in understanding phenomena in the real world, and other forms of knowledge I know that I struggle to ‘apply’ per se to things I encounter now. Anderson, Reder and Simon (1996) argue: Do the situations share cognitive elements? = more likely to transfer, does the process of learning knowledge include a variety of examples? = more likely to transfer. They then go on to argue that ‘the real goal should be to get students motivated and engaged in cognitive processes that will transfer’ (p.9). Where this leaves me is thinking about how we have discussed the idea of teaching scientific reasoning and skills on learning to learn, similar to last week’s article. Greeno, who quotes himself (1993) considers that ‘we need to take into account the kinds of activities in which we want students to learn to be successful,’ his argument takes into account that schools are by necessity, teaching abstract content, so that a student can learn to participate in general forms of practice(p.13). He does not discuss explicit examples, aside from mathematical revisions, to support this argument and I am left wondering who else felt the same way about this particular section in his argument.

The idea of abstraction and its merit in regards to specificity of content given is also interestingly debated by Anderson et al (1996). Where the situated folks consider that abstraction has no place in effective knowledge application, the authors disagree when they argue ‘numerous experiments show combining abstract instruction with specific concrete examples is better than either one alone’ . The final claim that is refuted by Anderson et al (1996) considers how learning must be done in complex social environments. Firstly, I would like to ask, if anyone else read the claim as being that ‘learning and knowledge construction is inherently social’ rather than, in order to learn effectively about something else, we need to mimic the social interactions that constitute the environment of the real practice. Another way I am trying to explain the social context of learning argued by the situated camp involves more closely knowledge creation will always be tied to a certain context, but this does not mean we cannot take parts of that knowledge and break it down to make it separate. Ie. I thought that the situated folks had not made this such a specific definition. Anyway, Anderson disputes this and the example I found most useful to agree with was the idea of a violinist practicing violin away from an orchestra and then participating in an orchestra in two separate occasions. I consider this also lends itself to the transfer claim and ties together the arguments Anderson et al (1996) makes. In the response piece of Anderson et al (1997) to Greeno (1997), there is this distinction that ‘the situated position has not shown that it provides the right theoretical or experimental tools for understanding social cognition. Such understanding can only be achieved through serious attention to what goes on in the human mind, and not simply through external observation of social interaction,’ (p.20). It sounds as though, conceptual change, is still the needed basis for understanding cognition, although social interaction is important, situative and cognitive theories are still unable to, in Andersons words, ‘advance the causes of education,’ (p.20).

The peace flag raised in the collaborative work by Anderson, Greeno, Reder, and Simon (2000) continues the dialogue between the two learning theory camps and offers the resolution that we should probably get along for the good of the children. It’s kind of amazing to read this, considering what came before as academic arguments. Seems pretty bipartisan and atypical for academics, maybe they realised they were both right? This makes me wonder now about taking my own stance on educative learning theory, where do I stand? Is hybridization a good way to pull the best ideas out from all that is read? Why does this not always happen? Did anyone else take this away from the article? The final document on the learning sciences by Greeno (2006) is more familiar to me in regards to academic reads, and my brief exposure to the learning sciences. As a closure chapter, I leave with a better sense of how this current community of scholars came into being, and I can appreciate the process and ‘backward and forward’ nature of academic dialogue that it took to get here. I look forward to tying this together in class as it was a lot to process and read and I inevitably missed some points.

Works Cited

Greeno, J. G. (2006). Chapter 6: Learning in Activity. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Anderson, J. R., Greeno, J. G., Reder, L. M., & Simon, H. A. (2000). Perspectives on Learning, Thinking, and Activity. Educational Researcher, 29(4), 11–13.

Anderson, J.R, Reder, L.M., Simon, H. . (1997). Rejoinder: Situative versus Cognitive Perspectives: Form versus Substance. Educational Leadership, 26(1), 18–21.

Greeno, J. G. (1997). Response: On Claims That Answer the Wrong Questions. Educational Researcher, 26(1), 5–17.

Anderson, R. A., Reder, L. M., & Simon, H. A. (1996). Situated Learning and Education. Educational Researcher, 25(4), 5–11.