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

Conceptual Change.

Posners paper on analyzing conceptual change in scientific phenomenon covered many aspects of the topic (Much of which I would have not considered myself). One portion of the paper that caught my attention was the mention of how important analogies are in conceptual understanding. This makes me wonder if posners work had any baring on the SATs content much of which was heavily focused on understanding analogies.

The Cambridge handbook also had a lot of interesting things to say about conceptual change in sciences. One parallel between the two readings that I noticed was this essence of politics in these methods of teaching. In posners article he uses phrases like ‘In order for a student to consider an alternative conception he must find it intelligible”. And the cambridge handbook talks about how some science theories seem to be hard to add concepts onto because they came about in times of a scientific revolution and have been politicized and the collective view of the theory is like a fond tale of the past that is seemingly impossible to let go of.

This is what I got out of these articles but I may be misunderstanding some of the points. I am eager to get into class and make this teaching method more clear.

I tend to think of a Pavlovian response as a sign of a baser nature: who but beasts salivate at the ringing of a bell?  I’m uncomfortable with the simple, tidy antecedent-behavior-consequence model of applied behavior analysis (ABA) for which B.F. Skinner laid the groundwork.  Even as he argues for the use of mechanical reinforcement devices, he writes “The cry will be raised that the child is being treated as a mere animal…” and yet he does little to assuage this concern (Skinner, 1954, pg. 96).  I want to guide my students to an intrinsic love of learning by introducing them to the entrancing mysteries of the natural world. “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire,” goes the quote that is often attributed (probably apocryphally) to Yeats.  This quote, perhaps more than anything, has guided my decisions as a teacher.  And yet.

I haven’t learned the bell schedule where we are student teaching, but I know when to expect the bell by watching the behavior of the students in the classroom.  They don’t salivate, but they do, almost as one being, start shuffling papers and zipping pencil pouches about a minute before the bell rings.  Are students and pigeons more alike than I’d like to admit?  Are they bird-brained?  Of course not.  And yet.

The evidence for the efficacy of ABA in the classroom is vast (Martin & Pear, 2015).  ABA techniques are widely used to help students with disabilities make educational progress.  In everyday life, operant conditioning abounds: parents giving screentime in exchange for a child cleaning their room, police giving a driver a speeding ticket, or a boss giving an employee a spot bonus for excellent work are just a few examples.  Principles of behaviorism and operant conditioning are widely used because they can be systematized, easily implemented, and their effects quantified.  Behaviorism applies a scientific method to the process of education—much like the “recipe” that Dewey writes about (Dewey, 1929, pg. 15).  Principles of behaviorism remove some of the art of education and efficiently effect change in behavior and learning—but at what cost?

John Dewey, the father of the progressive education movement, views education as an art, as a science, and as a social and community endeavor.  Dewey puts his trust not in the whip or the sugar cube and not in the direct application of scientific procedures to education, but rather in the training and instincts of the teacher:

“We must distinguish between the sources of educational science and scientific         content.  We are in constant danger of confusing the two.  We tend to suppose that  certain results because they are scientific are already educational science.  Enlightenment, clarity, and progress can come about only as we remember that such results are sources to be used, through the medium of the minds of educators, to make educational functions more intelligent.” (Dewey, 1929, pgs. 22-23).

He believes that the application of scientific principles helps to make a gifted teacher’s individual successes durable and transmittable (Dewey, 1929, pgs. 10-11).  While writing about how to leverage this application of scientific principles, Dewey highlights the importance of “connecting principles” and the linking up of “various findings” which presages the NRC’s notion of “crosscutting concepts” by more than 80 years (Dewey, 1929, pgs. 20-22); (NRC, 2012, pg. 30).

The Framework also discusses how young children initially learn about science “through everyday activities, such as talking with their families, pursuing hobbies, watching television, and playing with friends,” which echoes Dewey’s belief in the community nature of education (NRC, 2012, pg. 24).  NRC further highlights the social nature of science education, writing that “science is fundamentally a social enterprise,” (NRC, 2012, pg. 27).  The NRC’s prioritization of science process alongside and perhaps above science knowledge also feels like an intellectual descendant of Dewey’s work (NRC, 2012, pgs. 27-28), while I’d argue that standardized testing is the intellectual descendant of Skinner.  Finally, I can only imagine that Dewey would see the NRC’s commitment to equity (NRC, 2012, pg. 28) as the fruition of his contemporary, Jane Addams, work at Hull House and throughout Chicago.

References:

Dewey, J. (1929). The Sources of a Science of Education. New York, NY: Liveright.

Martin, G. & Pear, J. (2015). Behavior modification: what it is and how to do it (10^th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall.

National Research Council. (2012). A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas. Committee on a Conceptual Framework for New K-12 Science Education Standards. Board on Science Education, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press (Ch. 2).

Skinner, B. F. (1954). The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching. In A. A. Lumsdaine & R. Glasser (Eds.), Teaching Machines and Programmed Learning: The Science of Learning (pp. 99-113): National Association for the Education of Young Children.

The three readings assigned this week were each extremely interesting in their own right, but I think I want to focus here on how they interplay with one another in my mind.

I read these three in order by publish date because I was curious to see how the views on teaching evolved with time. The article by Dewey was honestly incredibly confusing to me because I couldn’t seem to put my finger on exactly what they were advocating for. It seemed at once they both wanted some sort of framework for teachers to be able follow e.g. following their reasoning that “science gives common efficacy to the experiences of the genius” (pg. 11)  while also arguing that it is an art form whose “value is not to supply objectives to him, any more than it is to supply him with ready-made rules…… As an act it is wider than science.” (pg. 75) So which is it? I personally lean towards the second idea that as a teacher, you must draw from a wide variety of sources in order to make your teaching effective and that there is no one-size-fits-all teaching methodology you can learn to make your lessons the best they can be.

Skinner, however, would disagree completely. He seemed to focus solely on the “how” of teaching and teaching implements while Dewey was more a philosophical approach. I loved seeing that Skinner was suggesting this immediate reward machine that isn’t unlike the learning style implemented in apps such as Duolingo – bell included! However, this seems to be the exact sort of blind application of science results to the science of education that Dewey warns about. There are so many issues with blindly throwing technology at education problems as a “solution” and we’ve seen that play out in recent years with some implementations of ipads and laptops in schools too.

After reading Skinner and Dewey, it was interesting to me that the NRC seems to have taken a middle-ground between the two extremes. They provide a loose framework of ideas, goals, etc to be used by teachers in each grade without telling them exactly how they should be taught and implemented. However, they do seem to encourage a discovery/inquiry/lab/hands-on based approach, but my issue with this is the same as another that I have with Skinner’s “solution” which is chiefly funding and equity across schools.

Despite Skinner’s ideal of “Once we have accepted the possibility and necessity of mechanical help in the classroom, the economic problem can be easily surmounted,” (pg 97) the truth is that mindset just hasn’t come to pass. Schools with large amounts of funding can afford electronic lab materials such as velocity sensors, carts and tracks, etc that will definitely make the lab-based learning that the NRC routes an achievable goal. However, schools who don’t have the money to turn the AC on certainly don’t have the ability to fund this kind of activity. Overall, it seems to me that following the NRC guidelines becomes increasingly difficult as funding decreases and which generates a vicious lack-of-funding circle since grants, etc are often given out based on how well a school has excelled at these guidelines themselves.

-Rachael

The first reading I completed for this week was the Skinner article. After completing the other two readings I feel like it was fitting that I read the Skinner piece first. I feel like Skinner’s thinking about teaching and how people learn was the furthest from my current understanding of how people learn and should be taught, compared to the other two readings. Skinner introduces the idea of reinforcement to encourage behavior in a classroom. I think he was onto something and reinforcement can be a valuable tool. However, what I am skeptical about is the behaviors he focused on reinforcing in the classroom. He wants immediate reinforcement of “right” answers. This reinforcement would shape students to be able to solve math problems, memorize information, and report this information back to the teacher but is that really learning? The NRC framework suggests no. I believe the NRC chapter would describe Skinner’s students as novices, “novices tend to hold disconnected and even contradictory bits of knowledge as isolated facts and struggle to find a way to organize and integrate them” (NRC, pg. 25). I believe Skinner’s tool, which dings when the student gets the right answer, would allow the students to have an understanding of isolated facts but they would not be provided with the experience that would allow them to understand the foundational principles needed to tackle novel problems. The NRC suggests that is in fact what experts do. So, that is kind of why I had a hard time buying into Skinner’s article. However, I think I probably overlooked some of the value of his work because I was thrown off by some aspects. For example, both the NRC chapter and the Dewey article elude to the fact that individual students’ needs should be considered. Skinner does not seem to do this. To me it seems like he has a plan that he thinks will work for everyone, almost like he is training a dog how to sit.

I found a lot of parallels between the Dewey article and the NRC article. After completing both readings I was left with the impression that a teacher’s job is never set in stone. The NRC suggests that a teacher should always take into consideration the students’ past experience and adjust lessons to reflect where the students’ thinking is at. The Dewey article seems to be focused more on a higher grain size than an individual lesson or classroom. He seems to say that educators should never be satisfied that they are teaching the correct way or possess the correct teaching philosophy (i.e. teachers and school administrators should have an open mind to learn from educational research). This makes sense to me because during Skinner’s time I am sure his philosophy was much better than what they were doing prior to his work.

The NRC and Dewey also get into the collaboration aspect necessary for learning and doing science. The NRC clearly says that science is a collaborative process, while Dewey presents an objection to “arm-chair science” because of its remoteness. I was not entirely clear on what he meant exactly, but I think he was saying that connections are made when you work with your ideas, likely with the help of others. On the other hand, I have a picture in my mind of Skinner’s devise lighting up red if a student turned to discuss an idea with a peer rather than silently putting it in their device.

All three readings helped me see that we should constantly keep an open mind and learn from the work of prior teachers and researchers.

How do people, particularly students, learn?  This question is fundamental to education in general and science education in particular.  It has a history of competing philosophies which create very different educational environments.  Two of these philosophies – scientific efficiency and child centered learning – have permeated American educational thought since the early 1900s.

Skinner (1954) focuses on the need for immediate reinforcement of responses when students are learning, and the learning machine he has created provides a way for students to receive that reinforcement even in large classes.  His model for learning is a technological extension of memorization through drill and correction.  In modern classrooms, computer programs are used to facilitate learning in this way.  For example, IXL provides ample practice for different math concepts with instant feedback and virtual rewards like unlocking stickers and earning experience points.

In contrast, Dewey (1929) emphasizes the importance of the cumulative and/or the whole in and for education.  In this chapter, he views education as more of an art than a science because he seems to think that science, when poorly understood, may be fractured into individual units instead of valued for the composite that it builds that is greater than the sum of its individual parts.  This fear may materialize in Skinner’s learning machine, which reduces learning to memorization.  The mention of Dewey brings to mind scientific inquiry driven by the interests of the students doing the learning.  This type of learning is more process driven and more organic than the efficiency focused memorization that Skinner supports.

The NGSS Framework states, “Science is not just a body of knowledge that reflects current understanding of the world; it is also a set of practices used to establish, extend, and refine that knowledge.  Both elements – knowledge and practice – are essential” (2012,  p26).  I would argue that the emphasis on knowledge can be traced to strands of scientific efficiency that include Skinner’s focus on improved retention of “facts” which were considered important for students to know, particularly since information was not readily available via Google or Siri.  Similarly, the emphasis on practice can be traced to Dewey and other educators who believed that learning should be centered around the interests of children.

NGSS appears to want to combine knowledge and practice so that students learn particular core content while practicing the “methods” of science.  The goal is that students will grow to be able to apply the practices to new situations and information that they encounter later in life.  It appears to favor Dewey’s approach over Skinner’s because it focuses on process instead of memorization of content.

There was one quote that really stood out to me from the Braund and Reiss article (2007) that captured some of the thoughts I have about learning generally:

“The key question is not: do people learn science from a visit to a science centre? But, do science centres help people to develop a more positive relationship with science? (Rennie & McClafferty, 1996, p. 83).”

As someone who teaches general chemistry labs to non-majors, for many of my students, my class will be their last interaction with chemistry. A big concern of mine of the last couple years has been how I can help students to have a better relationship to chemistry. Because most people really don’t like chemistry (and are happy to tell me so!), I really want my students to feel some positive association to the subject, so that they feel more comfortable looking to chemistry for answers to questions later in life.  The challenge of course is that as a TA, I cannot fundamentally change anything about the lab. Generally, what I can control are my pre-lab talks and the way I act towards students. So, the discussions amongst the articles on the power of informal learning environments to engage students were interesting to me. One of the biggest strengths for informal learning environments, in this case museums, is that they are more intrinsically motivating to students. Largely, students will be more excited to go on a field trip to a science museum than to go to their regular science class. A point made by Harriet at the end of her post was how can we harness what makes learning environments like museums so engaging to students and go on to conduct more authentic activity in every class, not just the occasional field trip? I feel like picking out what makes museums so engaging is one of the more important things we can gather from research on museum learning. Braund and Reiss discussed in their article how there is concern about the degree of learning which actually occurs in museums and other informal environments, hence the above quote. Taking what makes learning exciting and combining it in the more formal school learning environment, where learning is actually tracked over time, could be very productive. Braund and Reiss bring up the possibility of school teaching being contextually driven because students “want teachers to show them why the concepts are important.” (pg. 1383) I think such an approach could combat the sterility that is often associated with science learning, as it would then connect to life outside school. Going back to my thoughts on how to engage students as a lab TA, reading this paper made me consider how I could frame my pre-lab talks to briefly touch on why something is interesting. Thinking about the School-Museum Learning Framework (SMLF) discussed by Griffin, she states that this framework involves “students bringing their own chosen questions or ‘areas of inquiry’ to the museum.” (pg. 659) This is certainly a helpful way of making field trips more productive, but I think the same idea could be used in classroom learning. Students could be asked what questions they have about a topic, and these could be used to personalize a lesson to a particular class.

An aspect of the paper by Andre, Durksen, and Volman (2017) that I was interested in was the different interactions listed. The value of students interacting with peers, adults, technology, and the environment all connected to what we’ve already seen in situated learning theory. What interested me was the importance placed on parental involvement. This might seem like an obvious conclusion, but having participated in the past with outreach activities, I’m not sure I’ve seen parents actually interact constructively in informal learning environments. As stated by the authors, the parents are more comfortable taking part when they have clear directions on what they can do. This is something I haven’t seen used in any of the outreach that I’ve done. Parents who come along with their kids typically either stand out of the way and don’t participate, because they see the activity as being for their child, not them, or they get too involved, quickly telling their child the answer without letting them think or ordering them to do this or that better or more quickly. So, this point about parents not knowing how to take part or feeling uncomfortable being playful in public stood out to me as something that I can bring up with the organizers of the outreach I take part in.

References:

Andre, L., Durksen, T., & Volman, M. L. (2017). Museums as avenues of learning for children: a decade of research. Learning Environ. Res. 20, 47-76.

Griffin, J. (2007). Learning science through practical experiences in museums. International Journal of Science Education. 20(6), 655-663.

Braund, M. & Reiss, M. (2007). Towards a More Authentic Science Curriculum: The contribution of out-of-school learning. International Journal of Science Education. 28(12), 1373-1388.

Rennie, L. J., & McClafferty, T. P. (1996). Science centres and science learning, Studies in Science Education, 27, 53-98.

Before taking this class, I had done some reading on my own on the issues gender and LGBT equity in STEM, and so I was very interested in the readings for this week to learn more on equity for students of color. In the article by Barton and Yang, they discuss how for Miguel, the field of science felt disconnected from his Puerto Rican identity. He describes how science is only for smart people who are somehow discovered. Overall, his description of how one becomes a scientist reveals how that information is not open for everyone. Seeing science as a valid career path is then heavily dependent on a student’s community at home and the way educators perceive the student. This was highlighted by the fact that none of his teachers ever encouraged Miguel to consider college, let alone science. What especially stood out to me was the discussion of Miguel’s high school guidance counselor keeping him from taking science courses. I wonder how common it is for students to be barred from science and math by counselors who don’t believe in them? Something similar happened to my girlfriend when she was in high school. While not caused by race in her case, her guidance counselor decided that the only hope she had for college was art school, and so the counselor barred her from taking math classes or upper level science classes, even though she was interested in taking these classes. The fact that high school counselors have the power to completely close off certain subjects to students is incredibly concerning. One other point made by the authors that stood out to me was the following: “The “sterile” image of science does not encompass other cultures nor does it project friendly accessibility. These images of science as a Western entity are directly tied to the “culture of power.”” (pg. 876) The description of the field of science as sterile is something that I have seen multiple times now as it also came up in the prior reading I’ve done on the experiences of women and LGBT people with science.

Moving to the paper by Carlone, Scott, and Lowder, the discussion about the figured world of traditional schooling really revealed how schooling is set up to prioritize and reward students of certain backgrounds. In the example of Mr. Campbell’s classroom, they highlighted how compliance was valued above all else. The fact that his top students (from his perspective) were white and east Asian girls was then consistent with cultural stereotypes of quiet obedience. In the case of William, who was able to take on a compliant nature in this sixth grade class, the authors note that Mr. Campbell tended to describe him in feminine ways, which would be consistent with associating compliance with femininity. But William was not considered to be one of the best students by Mr. Campbell. I would have to wonder if the perceived gender nonconformity of his personality, especially in terms of being seen as unusual for Latino boys in particular, would be a major cause of not being recognized as one of the top science students in the class as he had been in fourth grade. While he was compliant in terms of his role as a student, he was not compliant in traditional masculinity, at least from his teacher’s perspective. The value placed on compliance was particularly harmful to Aaliyah, who ended up being sorted into the “loud black girl” stereotype by Mr. Campbell. What was really striking was the fact that Mr. Campbell stated he was too nice to his students because he didn’t want to be that white male teacher, which really revealed that even with good intentions, a more rigorous self-evaluation is necessary for teachers to consider whether cultural bias is affecting our teaching. The article was not totally negative though, as the earlier discussion of Ms. Wolfe’s class was very encouraging. With her reform-based teaching style, curiosity, asking questions, and working well with others was prioritized in the science classroom. This teaching style worked very well for all three students followed by the case study, and it was notable for encouraging more scientist-like activity by students. One question I did have about Ms. Wolfe’s teaching is the effect it had for quieter students. As she encouraged students to engage verbally with each other, I was wondering if the teaching style was stressful for shy kids.

Finally, going to the article by Bang and Marin, I hadn’t really considered the issue of nature-culture in these terms. They discuss how typical settled ways of discussing nature treat humans as separate from nature. Through traditional indigenous ways of knowing (IWOK), humans are recognized as a part of nature. The authors then discuss students taking part in a summer program as well as walks with family. They highlight the use of Miami and Anishinabe languages to break down the time-space settler-colonial conception of Indigenous language as past and English as present. One thought I had, that I see Ashwin also discussed, is that the use of Indigenous languages and IWOK should be taught to white students. It is white kids who are most easily able to grow up ignorant to Indigenous culture.

References:

Bang, M., & Marin, A. (2015). Nature-culture constructs in science learning: Human/non-human agency and intentionality. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 52(4), 530–544. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21204

Barton, A. C., & Yang, K. (2000). The culture of power and science education: Learning from Miguel. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 37(8), 871–889. https://doi.org/10.1002/1098-2736(200010)37:8<871::AID-TEA7>3.0.CO;2-9

Carlone, H. B., Scott, C. M., & Lowder, C. (2014). Becoming (less) scientific: A longitudinal study of students’ identity work from elementary to middle school science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 51(7), 836–869. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21150

To start this post, I’ll address the article by Engle (2006) as I found it to be quite compelling. In the case study presented, we return to the jigsaw teaching method we originally saw discussed by Brown et al. (1993) on the “Fleshing out some Details” week. I thought this distributed expertise method was interesting, so I was pleasantly surprised to see it again. Engle uses the distributed expertise framework to discuss how transfer can be understood through the lens of situated learning. The discussion on framing of students as authors and as parts of a larger community indicated an enculturation into the scientific community, where these types of framing are inherent to the position of scientist. Not only does this have the effect of enculturation, but it situates learning as a social practice. As authors, the students are responsible for the learning that occurs, and as members of a larger community, they are responsible for sharing knowledge. They are not just focused on the content of the learning, but on how students collaborate, think of themselves and their peers, and how they consider the larger effects and audience of their learning. By framing learning as something that will be of interest to an undefined group of people, the educators can have students view their own learning as more valuable because it will be of interest to others. This perspective is echoed by Songer and Kali (2014) when they discuss the biology lecture which involved mini-conferences, stating how the use of this approach allowed students to take more ownership of their learning. This view of situated learning resulting in students taking ownership is intriguing, as it indicates a level of individual cognition not expected of situated learning. I believe the way that this ownership is derived is what makes it coherent through the situated framework, as it is derived from interactions with others – to be an expert means to be able to add to the conversation, to answer questions, to know where to look and who to ask for more information. As stated by Collins and Kapur (2014), “[i]t is not necessary that each member assimilate everything that the community knows, but each should know who within the community has relevant expertise to address any problem.”

When described by cognitive learning scholars, Engle describes the issue of transfer as focused on content. A line discussing this stood out to me: “In particular, purely content-oriented explanations of transfer make one crucially flawed assumption: If learners have the right kind of knowledge at hand and know that it is applicable in a particular context, then they are going to use it.” (Engle, 2006, pg. 455) I think this is an incredibly important point to make and reveals a major issue I was having with cognitive learning. If a student has some knowledge and knows it’s supposed to be used, then there should be no problem using it, based on the cognitive approach. This is not the reality. In the first Anderson et al. paper from last week, they made some comment about how remarkable it is that students are able to transfer their general math knowledge to science contexts, particularly to the laboratory setting. This feels like a bold claim, and I would be interested in looking in to their cited papers more closely. My experience teaching many general chemistry lab courses is that there is a major mental block for many students in terms of using math, even very basic math, in the science context. My advisor asked me earlier in the semester if I had any ideas why so many of his general chemistry students were struggling to use equations for electromagnetic radiation (like E=hv). To him, it was such an easy equation, and the students just need to put the right numbers in the right spots, so what’s the issue? I said that they might just not feel comfortable with symbolic math. I think this may be an example of situated learning with math – a student may be able to solve for x in a simple algebraic equation, but if they now need to solve for frequency using E=hv, there’s a barrier to doing so. I think looking at transfer though the lens of situated learning is vital because the barrier to students using information in different contexts is not so simply solved by informing them that they can use that other information.

I’d like to end my post by discussing something I have been thinking about since reading the diSessa (2014) article yesterday. There’s a lot of discussion on misconceptions, and on cognitive research focusing on misconceptions. Looking at the first figure of the expert versus the novice approach of describing forces acting on a ball thrown up into the air, I’m intrigued at the fact that the novice concept can be described with one image. If knowledge exists in just the mind, and is not directly the result of the sociocultural influences of the learner, then would there not be many novice pictures of forces? How is a study of misconceptions even possible if they are all independently generated by individual people? This is leading me to consider the role of language on cognition. The reason there is one (or very few) common misconceptions for various scientific concepts is a reflection of the language used to colloquially discuss these concepts. Why does a novice thinking throwing the ball up counts as a force? Well, that’s just how people talk about forces in daily life! The root cause of these initial conceptions may be a reflection of the language, and thus the culture, of the learner.

References:

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

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.

“The situative view, which recognizes that learning is participation in social practice, assumes that all instructions occurs in complex social environments. For example, a student studying alone with a textbook or a computer tutor may not have other people in the same room at the time, but the student’s activity is certainly shaped by the social arrangements that produced the textbook or the computer program, led to the student’s being enrolled in the class where the text or program was assigned, and provided the setting in which the student’s learning will make a difference in how the student participates in some social activity, such as a class discussion or a test.” (Greeno, 1997)

Apologies for starting out with a lengthy quote, but this excerpt really stuck out to me in the reading. In my discussion of distributed intelligence last week, I had a bit of an “aha!” moment with respect to situated learning. The passage by Greeno given above validates the thought I wrote about last time. The situative learning perspective takes the view that all activity is social, as the social process of developing tools and “artifacts” means that interactions with objects are indirect interactions with others. The whole of human life is innately social – we are not reinventing everything that we come in contact with. We are continuously impacted by other people, even if we are physically alone. At this point, I think my general thoughts are that a situated understanding of learning is the backdrop of all learning, assuming we use this more general understanding of situated learning. From the 2006 Greeno chapter in the Handbook of Learning Sciences, he states that for the situated approach, “the main focus of analysis is on activity systems: complex social organizations containing learners, teachers, curriculum materials, software tools, and the physical environment.” This then supports that when considering situated learning, it is always present in the learning process, even if it is not obvious. While it may be the case that this situated approach is always present, it is not the only tool to understanding learning, or always the more relevant tool. The cognitive view has value in that we do, ultimately, want to impart some content knowledge with students.

The writings by Anderson, Reder, and Simon point out some issues that they had with situated learning, which I found valuable to address. These largely focus on the degree of specificity intended by situated learning: is learning truly context-bound? Can it be transferred between different scenarios? Must everything be taught in “concrete, almost vocational settings?” (Anderson, Reder, & Simon, 1997) Of the four claims addressed in the original 1996 article, I found the last one, “Instruction must be done in complex, social environments” to be the last relevant critique of situated learning, as it was expressed to be a literal understanding of this statement – that learning cannot happen unless there are physically other people present. I do not think this claim as explained by Anderson, Reder, and Simon has been really stated by the situated camp. Instead, I understand them to claim that all learning is socially mediated, in that we will understand things through our cultural norms, and that even tools and the environment carry some social meaning. In regards to the other three questions, I felt that Greeno’s responses did adequately argue against this highly specific view of situated learning. However, as Anderson, Reder, and Simon stated in their 1997 response, the differences between cognitive and situated learning stated by Greeno did feel largely semantic in origin, and it lacked some specificity that is present in the conceptual change camp.

I find myself in agreement with Greeno’s repeated statements that both forms of learning theory have value and should be well-studied. I think there is value in both a social and individual cognitive understanding of what is occurring when learning happens. In Greeno’s 1997 paper, he mentioned something called the Chinese room parable. In this parable, someone who does not speak Chinese is alone in a room with some directions on how to translate strings of Chinese characters to different strings of Chinese characters. In essence, the person inside is (correctly!) answering questions in Chinese, but has no idea what they are being asked, or even that they are being asked anything. I found this to be an interesting example of the value of both cognitive and situated perspectives. It reveals that knowledge cannot just be measured by correct answers to questions, as a correct answer does not necessarily indicated deeper knowing. This deeper knowing would be the internal, cognitive process. It also reveals how the way of asking questions has value. Should the language be changed to something both the questioner and answerer understands, then effective communication may occur, and the person inside the room can better participate in the process. This reminded me of a chemical education paper I read a few weeks ago on students’ multimodal representations of intermolecular forces. The authors made an interesting observation that a significant number of students correctly gave textbook-like descriptions of dipole-dipole interactions when asked to describe these interactions in words, but gave contradictory responses when asked to draw these interactions, drawing them as within a single molecule instead of between molecules. (Cooper, 2015) Thus, I think there is value in understanding students’ mental representations of ideas and the conceptual changes which may occur in classrooms. Just giving a correct answer does not indicate understanding. In the same vein, I think there does also need to be consideration to the social nature of learning: how do we ask questions? What is the context that information is expressed? Would understanding concepts make more sense if students know why the community of practice care? There are both cognitive and situated aspects of learning, and so the agreements made in the collaborative Anderson, Greeno, Reder, and Simon article are an important perspective.

References:

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.

Cooper, M., Williams, L., Underwood, S. (2015) Student Understanding of Intermolecular Forces: A Multimodal Study. Journal of Chemical Educations, 92, 1288-1298.

Going into this week’s reading, I have been interested in seeing readings bridging conceptual change and sociocultural learning models. To my surprise, the Brown et al (1993) and Pea (1992) readings on distributed expertise and distributed intelligence, respectively, stood out to me the most this week. Some of the issues that I have had with the Vygotskian models were eased by these papers. One of my larger issues was with the idea that “learning is an integral and inseparable aspect of social practice.” (Lave and Wenger, 1991) I’ve been questioning whether learning requires a social component to occur. I was never very attentive in school growing up, and I never really worked on homework or studying with classmates, and yet I did well by academic standards! So, how can I subscribe to the notion of learning as innately social? This question was answered in Pea’s (1992) writing on distributed intelligence. “What was thus missing, in my view, was an explicit recognition of the intelligence represented and representable in design, specifically in designed artifacts that play important roles in human activities.” (Pea, 1992) If we take a more liberal definition of social learning, and consider a sort of delayed social interaction embedded in “artifacts” (objects) that we use, then the ubiquity of social learning becomes apparent. There are many instances where I have taken an attitude of “I’ll learn how to do [some concept] when I do the homework.” I’ve always considered this as a solitary activity of learning, but would the homework itself constitute an interaction with my teacher? Any tools I consider, a textbook, a calculator, a periodic table, are embedded with meaning from many other people in their designs, allowing me (and any other person) to learn from others indirectly. What also struck me about Pea’s work was the criticism of measuring intelligence as individual, stating that “[w]e should reorient the educational emphasis from individual, tool-free cognition to facilitating individuals’ responsive and novel uses of resources for creative and intelligent activity alone and in collaboration.” This is something that I’ve considered in the past – why force students to memorize polyatomic ions, for example, when a “real” chemist would always have access to tools to look them up? I personally regularly forget whether sulfate has three or four oxygens, and normally have to look it up online, but I wouldn’t consider that to make me a “bad” chemist. Rather, in reality, we always have tools and social networks at our disposal to help ourselves. Thus, testing students for memorization of facts that no real member of the field actually needs memorized seems to be a poor choice of assessment.

This train of thought continues into Brown et al’s (1993) paper on distributed expertise. Here, they oppose a more literal apprenticeship model where we would attempt to make middle school science students into apprentice scientists. Instead, they argue that the point of schools is to be “communities where students learn to learn.” I think this is an important perspective that we’ve been needing to address. The idea of enculturating every child into all the communities of practice covered by K-12 education seems unrealistic. Instead, to help children become lifelong learners makes sense and sets them up for success as they specialize later in life. To bring this together with distributed intelligence, Pea discussed the use of tools and technology as a valuable part of learning. This makes sense if we seek to “learn to learn.” I don’t need to have the exact structure of all the common polyatomic ions memorized to be a good chemist, but I do need to know where to look and to have some idea of what I can do with this information. Brown et al’s description of a classroom taking a distributed expertise approach was incredibly interesting to me. Allowing students to research particular subjects and teach each other and allowing them to take part in the formation of their own curriculum and assessment is an exciting approach to a classroom. I think what really allows this social learning method to work is the role of the teacher as a guide. If the teacher were to take on a too distant role, then I could see this classroom strategy as being fruitless for many students as they struggle to understand what the teacher wants from them. On the other hand, if the teacher were to give the students too much information, then they might not learn strategies for learning, and instead return to the typical classroom environment where the teacher bestows knowledge for students to learn (or memorize). By enculturating children into a community of learners, then “[t]hese learning experts would be better prepared to be inducted into the practitioner culture of their choosing; they would also have the background to select among several alternative practitioner cultures, rather than being tied to the one to which they were initially indentured, as in the case of traditional apprenticeships.” I think this is really important, not just as a discussion of the purpose of schools, but also in the face of statements like “why do we need to learn algebra? I’ll never use it” or “why do we learn art? I don’t need it!” There’s a big difference between choosing not to be a scientist and having the option of becoming a scientist totally barred from you. By having an educational system with a goal of gaining some proficiency in a variety of subjects, and teaching students how they would go about further learning, children will be able to leave school with many paths open to them.

Going into the readings by Pintrich, Marx, and Boyle (2016) and Driver et al (1994), we see a link from conceptual change to sociocultural learning models. In the former reading, the authors avoid treating students as willing recipients for conceptual change. “The assumption that students approach their classroom learning with a rational goal of making sense of the information and coordinating it with their prior conceptions may not be accurate.” (Pintrich, Marx, and Boyle, 2016) This statement feels like an obvious observation – of course many students don’t have that goal! – but it is something that is important to recognize. The authors discuss how scientists may internalize our community’s goal of seeking knowledge and consistency in theories, models, and data to describe how the world works. They go on to discuss how this is not typically the case for students. I think this might bring up an issue with the cognitive apprenticeship model, which has largely focused on behavior – will students act like a certain community of practice? – it leaves out the interior experience of students, many of whom will simply not enter class with the goals of the community of practice. So, the ability to internalize the norms of the community will be mediated by the student’s actual goals. By considering the combination of internal (conceptual change) and external (cognitive apprenticeship), we can see that learning is not so simple as giving students some demonstration that makes them dissatisfied with their current concepts, nor is it satisfactory to throw them into a scientist-like environment. Students are individuals with individual motivations, and this will affect their tendency to engage in deeper cognitive activity. Finally, thinking over Driver et al’s (1994) paper, they discuss how conceptual change does not occur in the absence of a larger culture. They discuss the existence of common-sense explanations for phenomenon that are common amongst many groups of people, and how this serves a purpose of communication. For example, the idea of letting cold air in is not a scientific description of heat, but it is so common a statement, that even a scientist who knows better will state it for ease of communication. Thus, conceptual change does not result in a replacement of information. When we learn something new, the previous idea is not wiped out from our minds. Instead, we may still use these common-sense ideas in day-to-day communication, even though they are not scientific. This can also explain the inability to use academic information easily in everyday contexts – the socially commonplace explanation might be the most natural understanding to come to mind, and thus takes precedence.

Overall, this week’s readings have left me with a lot to think about as I consider what I want to say in my theoretical framework. I’ve been interested in the theories coming from the Vygotsky side of things, but felt unsure if I could really agree with them. If I consider that all learning requires social interactions (both direct and indirect) to be facilitated, in the very least due to the need for language to express thoughts, then this makes learning as a social practice much more coherent.

References:

Brown, A. L., Ash, D., Rutherford, M., Nakagawa, K., Gordon, A., & Campione, J. C. (1993). Distributed expertise in the classroom. Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations, 188–228.

Pintrich, P. R., Marx, R. W., & Boyle, R. A. (2016). Beyond Cold Conceptual Change : The Role of Motivational Beliefs and Classroom Contextual Factors in the Process of Conceptual Change, 63(2), 167–199.

Driver, H., Asoko, H., Morimer, E., & Scott, P. (1994). Constructing Scientific Knowledge in the Classroom. Educational Researcher, 23(7), 5–12.