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Learning for anything everyday
... Unlike Brown et al. (1989) and Lave and Wenger (1991) who focused more on the physical prerequisites of an authentic learning environment, Heath and Mclaughlin (1994) and Hierbert et al. (1996) had a more student-centered approach that considered students' individual differences and different contexts of learning rather than focusing on the physical environment where learning occurs. They argued that authenticity in learning could be achieved by offering learning activities that align with a student's personal perception and contextual elements of the real world. ...
... (p. 231) For this case study, we adopted the definition of 'authentic learning' from Heath and Mclaughlin (1994) and Hierbert et al. (1996) primarily because their approaches allow the possibility of virtual worlds as places of authentic learning and help explain how SL's social features enhance collaborative interactions between participants, leading to authentic learning for students. In addition, we adopted Van Oers and Wardekker (1999)'s approach to analyze the learning process regarding cultural renewal and refreshment inside and outside the team-based activities. ...
... If students' perceptions had not evolved beyond the superficial sense of novelty, we argue that authentic learning would have been impossible. According to Heath and Mclaughlin (1994) and Hierbert et al. (1996), students must make meaningful connections to their own lived experiences for authentic learning to take place. Novelty, on its own, is merely entertaining and not meaningful. ...
This qualitative case study investigates graduate students’ perspective changes apropos their cross-national collaborative learning experience while participating in an online teaching and learning course jointly taught by graduate schools in the United States and Israel. The participants met virtually, on a weekly basis between November and December 2018, on a platform called Second Life, to design and participate in collaborative learning activities. On completion of the course, interviews were conducted with a small sample of student-participants regarding their experiences. During the design phase, participants’ dominant perceptions of their learning experiences were characterized by genuine “excitement” at the novelty of collaborating virtually with colleagues on the other side of the world. Their initial perceptions evolved during the participation phase to realization as learning communities emerged and students’ roles expanded beyond the scope of mere participants. In this study, the authors argue that participants’ construction of new knowledge resulted in authentic learning from the standpoints of social constructivism and online collaborative learning theory and further discuss the factors that enabled the participants’ authentic learning experience.
... A camp situated among professional scientists and their tools and focused on a student-led research cycle poses a significant opportunity for learning. Such a camp would include student-led projects that contain the full cycle of a research project, from design to presentation, prepared for an outside audience (Heath & McLaughlin, 1994), access to the tools of a particular scientific community of practice (diSessa, 2000), and involvement with professional scientists who model behaviour, scaffold learning, collaborate on projects that learners could not do on their own, give information in context alongside relevant experiences, and help learners take on the identity of a scientist. ...
... This was a clear intention of the director, who listed it as one of his goals. The importance of doing the entire process is affirmed by Heath and McLaughlin (1994) who found that collaborative projects bounded in time and prepared for presentation to an audience were vital to successful community youth organisations. The types of thought that the projects required included much of what Chinn and Malhotra (Chinn & Malhotra, 2002) identified as taking place in the minds of scientists but not normally found in school curriculum: choosing a research question, selecting multiple variables to investigate, facing concerns with methodological errors, doing comparative research, making indirect inferences, devising indirect procedures to address their questions, and deciding between multiple theories for explanations. ...
... Second, since the characteristics of Advanced Astronomy Camp locate it within the description Gee (2004) gives of 'affinity spaces', other affinity spaces based on common interest in some form of science should be explored and designed to facilitate identity and community formation that link youth with larger communities of scientists. In particular, encouraging youth autonomy and diversified expertise through youthdesigned projects supported by adults is known to provide meaningful and motivating experiences in community youth organisations (Gee, 2004;Heath & McLaughlin, 1994), but the possibilities of developing these in science education have yet to be fully explored and investigated. Finally, further investigation is needed to understand the impact that identity construction at a short-term science camp can have on youth's long-term identification with and possible pursuit of science. ...
This study explored American high school students’ perceptions of the benefits of a summer astronomy camp emphasizing a full cycle of the research process and how the organisation of the camp contributed to those perceptions. Semi-structured interviews with students and staff were used to elicit the specific benefits that campers perceived from their experiences and examine them in relation to the stated goals and strategies of camp staff. Among the perceived benefits that students described were peer relationships, personal autonomy, positive relationships with staff, and deepened science knowledge. These perceived benefits appear to influence the kinds of identities students constructed for themselves in relation to science. Gee’s (2004) concept of ‘affinity space’ is used to consider how features of the camp’s design, especially those that promoted student autonomy, contributed to students’ positive perceptions, and to draw implications for the design of informal science learning experiences that can link youth with larger communities of scientists.
... For Heath and McLaughlin (1994), pedagogical authenticity resides in the structure of tools and activities that they understand to be "sustain[ing] participatory appropriation, guided participation, and apprenticeship" (487) in a specific community (Exhibit 6). Authentic curricula must include access to and analysis of "the social distribution of knowledge and skills through personal, interpersonal, and community working together" (473) and must instruct by giving students the opportunity to participate in and engage with particular historical, material, or social geographies. ...
... Participants should understand activities and consequences as relevant to their day-to-day lives, rewards should occur naturally and relate to participants' personal satisfaction, participants should be able to identify reasons for participating, and participants should see a connection between their experiences and the broader contexts of their lives (Carver 1996, 10). For example, in organizations such as the Boys and Girls Club studied by Heath and McLaughlin (1994), the goals, values, initiatives, and functions of the organization are relevant to the day-to-day needs of the participants as well as the communities involved, and thus they provide authentic learning experiences. ...
... Authenticity cannot be artificially created, and supportive environments embedded in authentic activity can help novice members move successfully into more sophisticated roles (Heath and McLaughlin 1994). The successful, authentically embedded informal learning fields studied by Heath and McLaughlin share a number of structural features: ...
Traditional e-learning efforts use information communication technologies to create and support educational opportunities that are not constrained by temporal and spatial considerations. The focus of ee-learning is to couple e-learning's approach with experiential education models that employ service-learning methodologies and with social-constructivist views of learning that rely on learner participation in a community. Sandra B. Schneider and Michael A. Evans provide a theoretical framework for thinking about the relationship of experience and participation to pedagogy. Their model, which draws on Barbara Rogoff's work as well as John Dewey's notion of habits, examines pedagogical authenticity from a sociocultural perspective and highlights some structural features of successful, supportive organizational environments for authentic curricula. (Contains 6 exhibits and 1 table.)
... This is partly a methodological concern and there is an urgent need for researchers to design more authentic methods and tools which will gain access to this largely missing learner perspective. This is a genuine concern since designing realistic, real world tasks or contexts and processes that mimic or place learners in actual professional communities may count for little if the learner does not perceive these artefacts to have personal significance and meaning in relation to their desired learning objective "It is very important to consider what is meant by authenticity and to whom -who is the judge (the educator; the learner or the community upon which they try to emulate?)" (Barab & Duffy, 2000) Indeed there is a concern amongst some that what constitute genuine real world communities of practice for adults may be far from authentic from the perspective of learners who may speak an entirely separate discourse based on the 'curricular language' with which they are familiar (Heath and McLaughlin, 1994). These critics argue that teachers should attempt to locate authentic learning in what they term 'institutions of curricular authenticity' where familiar curricular practices, languages, norms and traditions are the Lingua franca. ...
... "This definition of authenticity correlates how well a learning activity matches a student's personal goal structures (Heath and McLaughlin, 1994) or the extent to which learners themselves problematize the elements that make up the context" ( Stein, et al, 2004, p. 240) In many of the case studies reported in this paper we can infer that learners were highly motivated and engaged in the mobile learning activities which are described but meaningfulness is a difficult construct to capture and few of the studies detail to what extent the mobile activity enabled learners to develop personal meanings, or indeed why. One exception is the pilot study for the Ecomobile project (Kamarainen et al, 2013). ...
Conventional accounts of authentic learning focus on contextual factors: tasks, processes, how situated the learning is and the extent to which learners engage in simulated or participative real-world activities. This paper theorises how ubiquitous mobile technologies are fracturing the boundaries that demarcate traditional accounts of authentic learning affording new opportunities to reconceptualise what authenticity means for learners when they use a boundary object such as a mobile device. Whilst some of this has been captured previously with terms like ?seamless?, ?contextualised? and ?agile? learning, this paper argues that the concept of authentic mobile learning is a highly fluid construct which will continue to change as the technologies develop and as the pedagogical affordances become better understood by educators and end-users. The paper offers a three-dimensional model of authentic mobile learning and argues that further empirical research is required to understand what is authentic mobile learning from the perception of learners.
... Specifically, programs that organize their activities in ways that amplify youth problems such as delinquency or drug use "too often only reinforce youths' views that they are somehow deficient and that they are problems" (McLaughlin, 1993, p. 59). Afterschool programs that promote learning put youths' strengths at the center of their activities and apprenticeship relationships (Heath & McLaughlin, 1994a, 1994b. ...
... For example, some arts organizations provide opportunities for youth to practice using professional artists' "vocabulary, techniques, strategies, and models of innovative practices" in their own work (Heath et al., 1998, p. 7). In such organizations, youth "learn to work and talk as practicing artists" (Heath et al., 1998, p. 7) and find multiple opportunities to take on various valued roles (Heath & McLaughlin, 1994a, 1994b. These relatively recent findings reinforce those of classic studies on extracurricular activities that found that such activities produce various benefits for youth when they "provide opportunities for acquiring, developing and rehearsing attitudes and skills from which status goals evolve and upon which future success is grounded" (Otto, 1976(Otto, , p. 1361see also Spady, 1970). ...
... CTCs have many of the features described by Heath and McLaughlin (1994) as characteristics of youth organizations: an inviting, friendly space for youth; a view of youth as resources; ample opportunities for participation; guidance from caring, supportive adults; and opportunities to master tools through authentic activity. These settings, moreover, are ones in which adults are more likely to position youth as resources than as problems to be solved or as targets of afterschool care. ...
... These adults show they respect and value the potential of youth through how they organize activities, space, and discussion in the programs. By employing youth's suggestions and supporting their initiative, adult leaders affirm young participants' experience of belonging in and having a voice in their organizations (Heath & McLaughlin, 1994;Seer, 2001). Seer (2001) gives explicit examples for ways that adult leaders can design programs to create "youth space" and support developmental needs of youth. ...
... Teacher preparation programs, along with professional development for inservice teachers, are beginning to leverage notions of knowledge building communities to influence rates of adoption and use (Heath and McLaughlin 1994). As technology proceeds to infuse classrooms as predicated by national policy (USDOE 2010), a more sophisticated approach to integration is sought. ...
... This observation forces us to consider the properties of knowing and doing in geographical and structural terms. An example is Heath and McLaughlin's (1994) geographical notion of pedagogical authenticity: the structure of tools and activities both current and historical that are thought of as participation in a specific community. The question becomes, if an act is located wherever it has consequences then what does this mean in regards to the geographical, cultural, and intellectual scope of IDT? Furthermore, what kinds of access, experiences or acts should we try to facilitate in the anticipated alternative pedagogy for technology integration? ...
Although providing an invigorating foundation for instructional design and technology theory and research, the postmodern
agenda would benefit from clearer articulation and further refinement of ontological, epistemological, and methodological
positions. Consequently, we reveal possible weaknesses in the radically constructivist-inspired position and, in the spirit
of scholarly dialogue, counter with a critical-realist perspective that presents a potentially more innovative and defensible
approach to the discovery of scientific knowledge about teaching and learning infused with technology. Without doubt, we concur
with postmodernists that issues of agency, identity, race, gender and ethnicity must be addressed and given a central position
in instructional design and technology research and practice. Under the critical-realist designator, case study, ethnographic,
arts-based, and phenomenological methodologies are appropriate and can co-exist. Our point of distinction is that as a scientific venture, instructional design and technology as a discipline must be more public and transparent in warrants, claims and discourse
for proposed change to take place. We conclude by indicating future lines of inquiry inspired by the critical-realist perspective,
detailing topics in technology integration and digital games.
... The second is a Stanford University-based study (1987–1997) 6 of youth learning and leadership in community-based organizations, which in 1995 began to focus on arts-based sites, given the especially notable contexts and outcomes for learning that these settings appeared to provide (Heath, , 2001 Heath & Ball, 1993; Heath & Soep, 1998; Soep, 1996 Soep, , 2000 Soep, , 2002 Soep, , 2004, in press). The organizational and interactive features linked to effective community-based youth organizations are well documented in the existing literature—for example, opportunities for intensifying youth participation and leadership, and sustained projects organized around cycles of planning, preparation, practice, and performance (Heath & McLaughlin, 1994a, 1994b). Some investigators urge schoolteachers to forge relationships with community projects, suggesting that classroom-based educators might profitably model some aspects of the kinds of learning environments that take hold more commonly beyond school walls. ...
... 5 For the following discussion of three ways to conceive of learning, I am indebted to Ray McDermott (personal communication, 2001). 6 That research investigated youth organizations primarily in working-class neighborhoods within urban centers, midsized towns, and rural areas—places ranging from tumbling teams and midnight basketball leagues to agriculture organizations, improv theater groups, and peer tutoring centers (Heath & McLaughlin, 1987, 1993, 1994a, 1994b). 7 Site selection for my in-depth research was based on five criteria: (1) these sites operated outside of schools, thereby illuminating learning beyond traditional classrooms; (2) they centered on the arts and thus featured projects that involved the negotiation of personal and collective meanings and the risk of disclosure; (3) they focused on sustained projects in which critique extended through periods of planning, preparation, practice, and performance— cycles associated with effective youth-based learning environments (Heath & McLaughlin, 1993); (4) they were tuition free and involved ethnically and economically diverse groups of youth and instructors who availed themselves to the generation of learning theory based on the lives of young people who bring a complex range of experiences to the work at hand and do not necessarily conform to habits of speech or development that mark learning environments comprising White middle-class learners and teachers; and (5) participants at these sites expressed interest in my observing, and in some cases joining, their activities. ...
Education researchers and classroom teachers have argued that the constant pressure to measure and rank students makes it difficult to shape assessment as an episode of learning. Yet we know little about how learning moves in and through assessment of any kind. Building on two national multisited studies, the research reported here uses ethnographic techniques to examine learning within critique. Critique is a form of assessment through which young people jointly judge their own work and that of their peers. The article focuses on episodes of critique within two nonschool sites for collaborative production involving ethnically and economically diverse groups of youth - a community-based video project and an organization in which young people create radio stories for local and national broadcast. Learning environments such as these draw voluntary youth participation and are organized around sustained projects released to outside audiences. Findings indicate that critique manifests itself as an episode of learning by engaging young people in joint assessment events that are improvisational, reciprocal, and oriented toward the future of the work under review. Intra- and cross-site comparisons suggest that critique is likely to arise within specific conditions: when stakes are intense, metastandards are subjected to review, account-ability is mutual and interactively sustained, and interdisciplinary practice is mandatory. The article reviews various ways to conceptualize learning and argues in the end for a theory of learning as production, a way of making. Implications include new ideas for research methodologies and new understandings of youth-adult collaborations in learning and production.
... CTCs have many of the features described by Heath and McLaughlin (1994) as characteristics of youth organizations: an inviting, friendly space for youth; a view of youth as resources; ample opportunities for participation; guidance from caring, supportive adults; and opportunities to master tools through authentic activity. These settings, moreover, are ones in which adults are more likely to position youth as resources than as problems to be solved or as targets of afterschool care. ...
... These adults show they respect and value the potential of youth through how they organize activities, space, and discussion in the programs. By employing youth's suggestions and supporting their initiative, adult leaders affirm young participants' experience of belonging in and having a voice in their organizations (Heath & McLaughlin, 1994;Seer, 2001). Seer (2001) gives explicit examples for ways that adult leaders can design programs to create "youth space" and support developmental needs of youth. ...
... Recent research that highlights the significance of the arts in education dovetails with the research coming from arts organisations and theatre companies with regard to Shakespeare in secondary schools. Research which highlights the power of theatre and other cultural activities to shape and provide the training ground for the empowering of vulnerable or marginalised people (Heath 1993a and b;Heath, 1994a and b;Paquette, 2007;Pitcher, 2007;Scher, 2007;Soep, 2005;Troustine, 2007). In the past decade, research on the impact of the arts on learning has also provided powerful documentation of the importance of the arts for students, teachers and the wider school community by increasing student motivation, engagement, attendance, creativity, understanding of English as a second language, personal skills such as self expression, trust and empathy, and entry into the workforce (Fisk, 1999;Haddon, 2006;Maher, 1984;Millard, 1984;Milner, 2002;Murfee, 1995;Paquette, 2007;Scher, 2007;Soep, 2005). ...
This book constitutes the proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Education (ICE), held in Samos, Greece, in July 2010.
... Lave and Winger (1991) describe authentic learning as learning by doing rather than from instructional teaching. Other researchers characterize authentic learning as learning from a discovery process (Schank et al., 1994), and that is gained through experience (Heath, & McLaughlin, 1994). ...
... 2. Literature review 2.1 Youth organization Youth organization plays an important role in the comprehensive growth of students. Heath and McLaughlin (1994) gave attention to explaining the importance of youth organizations for development by investigating learning and working opportunities provided by the youth organization. Some researchers found that youth organization will improve the students' college experience, and provide an overall improvement in their educational experience (e.g. ...
Purpose
Collaboration is significant but difficult for the development of youth organizations, this research aims to explore whether the online collaboration process is suitable for youth organizations' collaboration and improve their effectiveness and efficiency.
Design/methodology/approach
This research has applied a design approach using the collaboration engineering method, to design an online collaboration process for youth organizations to improve their effectiveness and efficiency. Using a self-developed group support systems (GSS) tool, the authors have tested the new collaboration process through an experiment among four youth organizations and conducted a survey afterwards.
Findings
The new process improves the collaboration effectiveness and efficiency. The research also identifies the detailed relationships among influencing factors in the online collaboration process.
Originality/value
There is little research in the context of computer mediated youth organization collaboration. This research designs an online collaboration process for the effective and efficient collaboration of youth organizations and has it tested among representative youth organizations, providing practical instructions for digital youth organization collaboration in the context of global pandemic.
... In Lave and Wenger's (1991) legitimate peripheral participation, authentic learning is students' apprenticeship in real communities of practice guided by mentors. Other researchers take a shift and connect the "reality" of the authenticity to the students' personal needs (Garneli et al., 2021;Heath & McLaughlin, 1994;Tochon, 2000). ...
When applying learning to cultural heritage using Information and Communication Technologies, more than developing knowledge and skills, it is a chance to develop sensitivities and values to learners. The present study will suggest “Project-Based Learning with Formative Interventions in Authentic Activities” as an approach in which students collaborate on authentic activities, developing at the same time aspects of their personality. To this end, two authentic activities were undertaken in an academic frame, to highlight local cultural heritage using new technologies.
... Their findings made clear that critical to these youth were organizations ranging from religious groups to libraries to Boys and Girls Clubs and Little League baseball teams. In these groupings, young people gathered voluntarily, practiced, organized projects, and they learned organizational skills, ways to plan for the future, and strong communication skills (Heath, 1991(Heath, , 1996Heath & Langman, 1994;Heath & McLaughlin, 1994;McLaughlin, Irby, & Langman, 1994). ...
This research asks the question: How does a public library contribute to the literate lives of a diverse community of adolescents? To explore this question, this article presents portraits of three young women, for whom a public library provided transformative opportunities. These portraits come from a larger ethnographic case study that examined a public library’s role in sparking and sustaining adolescent learning. Over 18 months, the author observed library activities involving youth, interviewed library staff and adolescent patrons, and led teen volunteers in a participatory research project. Data were analyzed in a constant comparative method within a sociocultural-historical framework. Through attention to the girls’ activities within the public library, two contributing elements— 1) a democratic space created by library practices, and 2), the diversity in discourse facilitated by the teen librarian—expanded the participants’ literacy practices and perspectives on reading. This article informs our understanding of diversity in adolescent literacy and highlights the practices that libraries and communities can use to foster the next generation of readers.
... We do not engage with such studies here because the programmes concerned with literacy that have been reported tend to be adjuncts to school literacy and, thus, fall outside the scope of our interest here. (Useful introductions to such studies can, for example, be found in Alvermann, 2001;Cole, 1996;Heath and McLaughlin, 1994;Hull and Schultz, 2002.) ...
... It has also featured in many studies of co-designing with children (Guha, Druin, Fails, Simms, & Farber, 2004;Katterfeld, Zeising, & Schellhowe, 2012). Educators have also expressed interest in co-design evident e.g. in the 1990s search for 'curriculum authenticity' and in the degree to which students, rather than teachers or curriculum designers, mapped their learning activities onto the external world (Heath & McLaughlin, 1994;Rudd, Colligan, & Naik, 2006). In the UK, the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education ran workshops in 2011 to develop curriculum principles which included developing 'a new curriculum for difficult times' based in part on co-designing the curriculum. ...
Contemporary discussion of the ‘crisis in democracy’ displays a tendency to see young people as the problem because they are ‘apolitical’, ‘apathetic’ and ‘disengaged’, or point to deficiencies in institutions deemed responsible for civic education. This discussion normally comes as a prelude to calls for more civics education. This article points to a renewal of politics at the hands of young people relying on new media, and draws on evidence like survey research, case studies and action research projects. This political renewal is occurring largely in response to the assumption of political elites that a ‘politics-as-usual’ will suffice to address the major political challenges of our time. Against the assumption that teachers, curriculum experts and policy-makers already know what kinds of knowledge and skills students need to become good citizens, we make a case for co-designing a contemporary citizenship curriculum with young people to be used for the professional development of policy-makers. We argue that such an intervention is likely to have a salutary educational effect on policy-makers, influence how they see young people’s political engagement and how they set policy agendas. The article also canvasses the protocols such a project might observe.
... Where the knowledge that students gain during schooling is insufficient to equip them to cope with the challenges presented by their future employment, the learning materials and environment presented in higher education should "correspond to the real world prior to the learner's interaction with them" (Petraglia, 1998, p. 53). Authentic learning experiences should enable students to match their personal major goal, in their research or future employment (Heath & Mclaughlin, 1994). ...
... It is quite another thing to appropriately use scientific knowledge in the absence of any kind of science prompt or cue. As noted by Heller and Finley (1992, p. 259), it is "important to understand when and how students apply their knowledge" (also see Heath & McLaughlin, 1994). It is also important to understand how their science teachers think about scientific knowledge. ...
Abstract If we may paraphrase and adapt from feminist scholars, there are voices of people that need to be heard if scholars intend to have a valid understanding of people and their behavior. The feminist scholars were of course seeking ways of making women’s voices heard but the importance of their work exceeds gender issues. It is important for restoring the image of people as persons rather than as objects of research. As we have undertaken it, the foundational perspective of worldview research is that one must hear from students and science teachers about themselves. We thus suggest it is important for science educators to understand the fundamental, culturally based beliefs about the world that students and teachers bring to class; because, science education is successful only to the extent that science can find a niche in the cognitive and cultural milieus of students. The purpose of this article is to present an new interpretive methodology,for exploring worldview,presuppositions about the natural world through the language and ideas voluntarily expressed by science teachers and students. The methodology addresses the broad question, What is it that people think about nature or the natural world? The research objective of the methodology,is to map the qualitatively different conceptualizations of nature held by people and thus to better understand the place science finds in those conceptualizations. The methodology is a modified naturalistic inquiry, interview technique. The audio taped interviews are semi-structured in that an interview involves elicitation devices designed to encourage a person to talk at length about nature. The findings are assertions based
... Following Colom Cañelas (1990) and Firenzi Alfieri (1990) we can argue that the new education movements of the beginning of the twentieth century tried to re-establish connections between the school and its surroundings; nevertheless, today, the complexity of our contemporary society leads to different perspectives, and 'as the school cannot realize what is happening in its surroundings, there has been no option but to make school space from the surroundings themselves' (Colom Cañelas, 1990, p. 115). In this context, Heath & McLaughlin (1994) developed a very interesting perspective extending the research about authenticity in the classroom -an attempt to bring the real out-of-school world to the classroom -to the out-of-school contexts, doing it in a curricular perspective with deprived people engaged in communities attached to clubs and other non-formal educational settings. Although this is extremely significant research, once again we highlight the fact that the studies of out-of-school education of children remain attached to underprivileged populations, contexts, families, or countries. ...
This article discusses preliminary findings of the author's doctoral research on children's educating networks in contemporary cities. The research problem is introduced in the theoretical framework composed by issues of formal, non-formal and informal education, contemporary children's studies, and contributions from the debate around the projects and characteristics of education in the city. The research design and methodology will be briefly presented — a case study, within the guidelines of the interpretative paradigm and with a participatory approach. This aims to frame the specific dimensions, techniques and instruments that constitute the main focus of the article. In this context, the preliminary findings focus on children's perspectives of their own educational processes and contexts taking place inside and outside school in the city of Lisbon. In conclusion, the article tries to establish some links between this particular case study and some contemporary educational policy options.
... Talk, as Heath and McLaughlin note, is central to the successful creation of such border zones: adult leaders of youth organizations provide space for youths to pace and shape conversational interactions, even as they attempt to guide youths into knowing and being able to participate in mainstream institutional roles, rights, and responsibilities. Discursive environments that may initially seem to constitute chaos -with 'young people of all ages running back and forth, shouting and singing, talking over each other and appearing never to settle into any identifiable task' (Heath and McLaughlin, 1994: 475) -may actually represent the successful working-together of individuals of different age, ethnic background, class, and gender. 3 The TeenTalk youth organization, which works out of a Boys and Girls Club in 320 ...
Over the last few decades in the US, a wide variety of community-based organizations (CBOs) has emerged in response to a sense of failure of mainstream institutions to work with a socially and linguistically diverse population. Discourse analysts have paid little attention to the discursive practices - which often bear little resemblance to conventional institutional discourse - found in CBOs. This article analyzes, as an example of the heterogeneous discourse of CBOs, an insulting routine between two teenagers - a white, upper middle-class female and a black, working-class male - working together in an inner-city youth theater group. The routine helped the teens accomplish some of the theater group's goals, but it also reinforced the gender inequality and signalled passive acceptance of the race prejudice the group was explicitly seeking to challenge. The contradictions within this routine are indicative of the challenges faced by CBOs attempting to embrace diversity.
... It is one thing to be able to give correct answers on a science exam; it is quite another to use scientific knowledge appropriately in the absence of any kind of science prompt or cue. As noted by Heller and Finley (1992, p. 259), it is "important to understand when and how students apply their knowledge" (also see Heath & McLaughlin, 1994). Thus, we intended our research to represent accurately the typical thoughts that students in our study had about Nature. ...
The research reported in this article sought to provide a broader understanding of high school science students as persons by describing the personal thoughts, or everyday thinking, about a ques- tion relevant to science: What is Nature? The purpose was to gain an understanding of students' funda- mental beliefs about the world on the basis that developing scientific literacy can be successful only to the extent that science finds a niche in the cognitive and cultural milieu of students. The theoretical background for this research came from cultural anthropology and the methodology was interpretive, involving student interviews. The assertions of the study in summary form were: (a) The ninth-grade students in the study tended to discuss Nature using several different perspectives (e.g., religious, aesthetic, scientific, conser- vationist). A rich breadth of perspectives typically characterized any one student's discussion of Nature. (b) After 9 years of schooling, however, the level of science integration within everyday thinking remained low for many of these ninth graders. In their discussions of Nature, most volunteered little school knowl- edge of science. They were aware of school science topics such as the ozone layer, rain forests, and the Big Bang theory. Such topics were voluntarily mentioned but usually without elaboration even when asked. (c) Science grade success was not correlated with the concepts these ninth graders typically chose to use in a discussion about the natural world. The students with the most grade success in science had not nec- essarily grasped fundamental concepts about Nature and science. (d) Regardless of school grade success, including school science grade success, most of the ninth graders attached considerable importance to per- sonal experiences with Nature. Their environmental inclinations were strong. The article ends with a dis- cussion of the implications. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 541- 564, 1999
... Researchers found that it was typically confined to a number of configurations . Historically prominent among these is the initiation–response–evaluation structure (Heath & McLaughlin, 1994), or IRE (Cazden, 1988; Mehan, 1979), which represents a closed system of meaning making in which the teacher poses a question, students attempt to respond to it, and this response is evaluated. This structure tends to constrain students' everyday mathematical register (Lemke, 1990), their mathematical conjectures (Wood, 1992 ), and the participation of lower socioeconomic groups of students (Heath, 1983). ...
In this theoretical essay, I argue that the normative sociality – i.e., a normative way of being together – for joint self-education is society based on pluralism and tolerance of culturally and educationally diverse communities and individual educatees, their synergy, voluntary participation, and acceptance of the final sovereignty of their educational decision-making. I rejected a widespread proposal that community (e.g., “community of learners”) should be the vision of this norm for such educational sociality. At the same time, I accept that an empirical community can be a very important part of a normative notion of society as applied to joint self-education. Balancing between communal, often centripetal, and societal, often centrifugal, processes is often necessary for maintaining a successful joint self-education endeavor.
It has become popular in recent years to talk about 'identity' as an aspect of engagement with technology - in virtual environments, in games, in social media and in our increasingly digital world. But what do we mean by identity and how do our theories and assumptions about identity affect the kinds of questions we ask about its relationship to technology and learning? Constructing the Self in a Digital World takes up this question explicitly, bringing together authors working from different models of identity but all examining the role of technology in the learning and lives of children and youth.
This volume offers a historical and critical analysis of the emerging field of the learning sciences, which takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and improving how children and adults learn. It features a wide range of authors, including established scholars who founded and guided the learning sciences through the initial turbulence of forming a new line of academic inquiry, as well as newcomers who are continuing to shape the field. This diversity allows for a broad yet selective perspective on what the learning sciences are, why they came to be, and how contributors conduct their work. Reflections on the Learning Sciences serves both as a starting point for discussion among scholars familiar with the discipline and as an introduction for those interested in learning more. It will benefit graduate students and researchers in computer science, educational psychology, instructional technology, science, engineering, and mathematics.
Extended reality technology are raising high hopes among researchers for its use to overcome the difficulties associated with spatial separation in collaborative learning. In this work, a systematic review of the research literature was conducted on the use of extended reality (XR) technology to support distance collaborative learning. We searched Web of Science to collect relevant articles. The articles were manually screened using the inclusion and exclusion criteria which refer to PRISMA [23]. By examining the relevant articles closely, we show the advantages of using XR technology in collaborative learning, such as increasing engagement, increasing students’ interest, and facilitating student interactions. We then analyse the challenges in the application of XR, such as skill requirements for teachers and students, lack of accessibility, and technical issues. Finally, we put forward suggestions for the future development of XR-supported distance collaborative learning environments.
Debates surrounding youth participation in governance have permeated a range of fields in the last two decades. This commentary is predominately situated in education and civic participation domains, with sporting domains remaining largely under researched. Indeed, this research becomes sparser when considered in school physical education and sport. In this paper, we consider the position of the student within decision-making processes in the physical education curriculum in English secondary state-schools. The paper reports on survey data from 288 English secondary state-schools exploring students' involvement in decision-making related to the PE curriculum. Findings show considerable numbers of the schools reported no contribution from students to the physical education curriculum (n=54), and processes that were in place were problematic. Drawing on the legal framework of The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, we argue that the lack of student voice in the physical education curriculum presents a contemporary policy concern within the English education system that requires further investigation.
Education researchers and classroom teachers have argued that the constant pressure to measure and rank students makes it difficult to shape assessment as an episode of learning. Yet we know little about how learning moves in and through assessment of any kind. Building on two national multisited studies, the research reported here uses ethnographic techniques to examine learning within critique. Critique is a form of assessment through which young people jointly judge their own work and that of their peers. The article focuses on episodes of critique within two nonschool sites for collaborative production involving ethnically and economically diverse groups of youth—a community-based video project and an organization in which young people create radio stories for local and national broadcast. Learning environments such as these draw voluntary youth participation and are organized around sustained projects released to outside audiences. Findings indicate that critique manifests itself as an episode of learning by engaging young people in joint assessment events that are improvisational, reciprocal, and oriented toward the future of the work under review. Intra- and cross-site comparisons suggest that critique is likely to arise within specific conditions: when stakes are intense, metastandards are subjected to review, accountability is mutual and interactively sustained, and interdisciplinary practice is mandatory. The article reviews various ways to conceptualize learning and argues in the end for a theory of learning as production, a way of making. Implications include new ideas for research methodologies and new understandings of youth-adult collaborations in learning and production.
Authenticity is defined as one of the ‘signature pedagogies’ of mobile learning in the iPAC Framework but existing accounts of authentic learning focus largely on contextual factors: tasks, processes, how situated the learning is and the extent to which learners engage in simulated or participative real-world activities. This chapter theorises how ubiquitous mobile technologies are fracturing the boundaries that demarcate traditional accounts of authentic learning, affording new opportunities to reconceptualise what authenticity means for learners when they use a boundary object such as a mobile device. While some of this has been captured previously with terms like ‘seamless’, ‘contextualised’ and ‘agile’ learning, this chapter argues that the concept of authentic mobile learning is a fluid construct which will continue to change as the technologies develop and as the pedagogical affordances become better understood by educators and end-users. The chapter scrutinises the authenticity dimension of our Mobile Pedagogical Framework, offering a three-dimensional model as a lens to consider authentic mobile learning. It argues that further empirical research is required to understand authentic mobile learning from the perspective of learners.
Adolescence is a liminal period between childhood and adulthood that marks a significant stage of growth and discovery. It is crucial to identify which leisure contexts provide adolescents with positive developmental experiences. Studies suggest that identity-related experiences and positive peer interactions during structured leisure participation are related to higher subjective well-being. This chapter suggests that involvement with a community art program can benefit adolescents in three broad ways: (a) explore and develop a positive identity, (b) develop skills and competencies, and (c) create a network of supportive peers and adults, which altogether have been linked to higher subjective well-being among adolescents, which leads them to make a positive contribution to their commnunity. The chapter provides a comprehensive model of community art program within the context of positive leisure and well-being.
Pushing forward research on emerging literacies and theoretical orientations, this book follows students from different tracks of high school English in a "failing" U.S. public school through their first two years in universities, colleges, and jobs. Analytical and methodological tools from new literacy and mobility studies are employed to investigate relations among patterns of movement and literacy practices across educational institutions, neighborhoods, cultures, and national borders. By following research participants' trajectories in and across scenes of literacy in school, college, home, online, in transit, and elsewhere, the work illustrates how students help constitute and connect one scene of literacy with others in their daily lives; how their mobile literacies produce, maintain, and disrupt social relations and identities with respect to race, gender, class, language, and nationality; and how they draw upon multiple literacies and linguistic resources to accommodate, resist, and transform dominant discourses.
Creating authentic learning opportunities in schools has been an important mission for educators and educational researchers, where ‘authentic’ is generally understood to mean connecting school education to students’ current and future identities, experiences and expertise. This article aims to problematise the taken-for-granted notion of authentic learning based on data from a study on media literacy education in Singapore. Thirty-two secondary students discussed their views on and experiences with school-based media/literacy education in focus group discussions with researchers. While the findings highlight students’ articulation of a disconnect between in-school learning and their everyday experiences, they also reveal youth’s expectations for school learning to aid their academic success. Authentic learning, from the points of view of students, thus encompasses opportunities for real-life connections as well as preparation for achievement valued by schools. The study has implications for contexts similar to Singapore where pressures to do well academically coexist with a heavy emphasis on measurable learning. More broadly, it advocates considering students’ perspectives on school and learning as a crucial aspect of designing authentic learning environments.
This article gives a critical analysis of a nursery school(kindergarten/pre-school) play performance, in which lyrics and movement set the stage for gender stereotyping and sexualised behaviour. Using extracts of lyrics, the reader is invited to participate as an outsider and ‘witness’ (in accordance with narrative therapy tradition) to the way in which young children are placed as objects of stereotyping, in roles determined by
the teacher play directors. To begin with the reader is introduced to socio-cultural psychology (specifically to the theory of childhood development) that focuses on the acquisition of gender roles. I argue that many school plays, especially at pre-school level, are developed for the entertainment of the (mostly) adult audience without considering what will be in the best interest of the young ‘actors’. I refer to this as an act of perversion, while arguing that this is an educationally careless and irresponsible activity that prevails in school stage performances across a variety of schools in South
Africa. I propose, rather, that a school play, as a cultural ritual should be employed as therapeutic tool to the aid of childhood development.
The tenuous relationship between school learning and one students everyday life is analyzed. Implications for teaching literacy are also included.
This study draws on queer theory, critical feminism, Critical Race Theory, and New Literacy Studies to explore the ways in which queer youth read and wrote words and worlds in ways that both challenged and reinforced power dynamics in and beyond a youth-run center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth. I conceive of literacy performances as a series of performances in which both worlds and words are read and written. Each performance is both similar to and different from others and both confirms and disrupts the others. I examine the literacy performances of youth who were a part of the Speakers' Bureau, a smaller group within the center who were educated as activists against heterosexism and homophobia. Through their efforts to interrogate and disrupt inequitable power dynamics outside the center, participants at times replicated such dynamics within it. By considering literacy broadly I was able to see the significant work these youth did to advocate for social change, and by recognizing literacy as series of performances I was able to see that in working for social change outside the center they both challenged and replicated inequitable power dynamics within the center. Possibilities for social change are thus situated in the perpetual interrogation of the relationships between literacy performances and power dynamics.
The significant increase in the number of working mothers over the last twenty years has led to widespread worries about the plight of "latchkey kids,"who return from school each day to empty homes. Concerned that unsupervised children might be at greater risk of delinquency, schools and communities across the nation began providing after-school activities. But many of these programs were hastily devised with little understanding of what constitutes a quality program that meets children's developmental needs. The Fifth Dimension explores and evaluates one of the country's most successful and innovative after-school programs, providing insightful and practical lessons about what works and doesn't work after-school. The Fifth Dimension program was established in the 1980s as a partnership between community centers and local colleges to establish an educational after-school program. With an emphasis on diversity and computer technology, the program incorporates the latest theories about child development and gives college students the opportunity to apply their textbook understanding of child development to real learning environments. The Fifth Dimension explores the design, implementation, and evaluation of this thriving program. The authors attribute the success of the Fifth Dimension to several factors. First, the program offers a balance of intellectually enriching exercises with development enhancing games. Second, by engaging undergraduates as active participants in both learning and social activities, the program gives local community organizations a large infusion of high-quality help for their educational efforts. Third, by rewarding children for their achievements and good behavior with greater flexibility in choosing their own schedules, the Fifth Dimension acts as a powerful, enduring motivator. The Fifth Dimension program serves as a model for what an enriching after-school program can be. The product of years of innovation and careful assessment, The Fifth Dimension is a valuable resource for all who are interested in developing successful community-based learning programs.
Researchers espouse that youth are learning differently than any other generation. Many researchers believe that because youth are leading the way with technology, their technology practices impact the way that they connect with the world around them. As a result, educators examine how to successfully engage youth in learning by understanding how to tap their technology practices. This study utilizes a sociotechnical framework to bring to light emergent structures of participation during student-teacher instant messaging interactions to support learning. Analysis illuminates three emergent and fluid participation structures. These structures reflect both pedagogical models and the most current literature on how people learn.
How do we make sense of educational strategies that stretch across decades and generations? Taking the case of elite bankers in the US, this article argues that part of the strength of their education is its ability to accumulate and protect learning over the long-term, through long-term education strategies and structures. Synthesizing key recent texts on banking, the article describes four of these strategies—institutional wormholes, biographically entrained field structures, quasi-school structures, and inter-generational folding. These are tentative identifications: the article is a conceptual foray, an effort to define a problematic of the long-term in elite schooling, with implications for education in general.
Zusammenfassung
Wie erklären wir uns Bildungsstrategien, welche Jahrzehnte und Generationen überspannen? Am Fall von Elitebankern in den USA zeigt dieser Artikel, dass die Stärke ihrer Ausbildung sich teils aus der Fähigkeit speist, durch langfristig angelegte Bildungsstrategien und -strukturen Bildung zu akkumulieren und auf Dauer zu sichern. In der Synthese neuerer Schlüsseltexte zum Bankwesen beschreibt der Artikel vier dieser Strategien: Institutionelle Wurmlöcher, biographisch eingekoppelte Feldstrukturen, quasi-schulische Strukturen und intergenerative Zusammenlegung. Es handelt sich hierbei um vorläufige Bestimmungen: Der Artikel ist ein konzeptioneller Streifzug, ein Versuch, die Problematik des Langfristigen in der Elitebildung samt der Implikationen für das Bildungswesen im Allgemeinen zu bestimmen.
The present paper is about the author’s current research on children’s education in urban contexts. It departs from the rising offer of programmes for school children in out-of-school contexts (e.g. museums, libraries, science centres). It asks what makes these practices educational (and not just interesting, entertaining and/or audience building). Based on Biesta (2006a, 2010) theory of education, the author frames and analyses the educational characteristics of, and possibilities of articulating, in and out-of-school educational practices. This paper aims at understanding if the occasional outing from primary school premises promotes interruptions in the humanist foundations of school. In order to analyse relations between different institutions and professionals (to be) engaged in educational activities and programmes, Nóvoa (2002, 2009) essays will be brought to the discussion, namely his conception of the ‘Public Space of Education’—as a space where culture, education, arts, sports and leisure are shared responsibilities, and where diverse institutions are networked aiming towards societal pluralism. I argue for the possibility of using cities’ public spaces as contexts with a worldly quality to complexify children’s education. Nevertheless, I draw attention to the unbearable educational lightness that these practices may carry if they do not go beyond the praise of chance; as well as to their unsustainable weight if they perpetually repeat school’s normal orders and add up rational discourses.
Non-formal learning for urban youth has a long history in the United States; it remains a source of innovation. This essay draws on literature about organizations that use community ties to encourage cognitive development and identity formation. It then describes how one youth organization in Camden, New Jersey uses presentations to the community of its in-house business projects as springboards into further development. Such non-formal learning structures can have wide application to other sites of learning.
This study examines the relationship between academic performance and a number of contextual factors for African American freshmen in an urban setting. Living arrangements, relatives and friends’ religiosity, exposure to academic success, and neighborhood perceptions were analyzed to investigate their impact on intention to complete school, grade point average (GPA), and number of suspensions. Results indicate that gender, church attendance by peers, and percentage of relatives completing high school were significant in predicting positive academic outcomes. Perception of neighborhood deterioration was inversely related to intention for school completion and GPA. School suspensions were positively related to perception of neighborhood deterioration. Implications for interventions are discussed.
This paper examines the organization and representation of time in certain kinds of undergraduate programs, here represented by a sociology program in a US university. Written requirements for the major are analyzed as constituting a ‘chart’ that defines academic time in terms of units of before–after relationships. The paper shows how students ‘reuse’ these temporal units when charting paths through the university and reckoning their academic work to specific futures.
Drawing on material from an ethnographic study, I examine transformations in the nature of public spaces for children, and the school's role in producing those spaces. Space is treated as a product of social practice, not simply a frame for it. I contend that, as young children are increasingly immobilized in urban landscapes, school field trips become critical occasions for introducing them to, and framing their participation in, public spaces. I focus primarily on a field trip to an art museum in a redeveloped downtown, and then look briefly at a different type of trip, illustrated by a visit to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello.
One learning environment that has gone largely unexamined in the communication field is the context of coaching. Athletic coaches bear some similarities and also some differences relative to classroom instruction. The present study examined the influence of coach experience on young athletes' preferences for, and perceptions of, coaches' leadership behaviors (autocratic, democratic, social support, positive feedback, and training and instruction) across an athletic season. Athletes from 17 high school wrestling teams completed surveys at the beginning, middle, and end of the athletic season. Players both perceived and preferred more autocratic coaching behaviors at the end of the season than at the beginning. Coaches and athletes alike recognized that less positive feedback was taking place at the end of the season. Experienced coaches regarded themselves as less autocratic at the end of the season than at the beginning, whereas their less experienced colleagues perceived the opposite pattern. In contrast with humanistic prescriptions for instructional communication, this study indicates that negative control strategies can be quite satisfactory at times, particularly if a positive instructional climate was constructed early on.
The publication of Kilpatrick's classic paper on the project method' sparked a lively theoretical debate in the USA about learner-directed projects in the curriculum. Boyd Bode's critique a decade later brought the American debate to a close, but projects have continued to play an important practical role. Recent trends in the US, including authentic assessment' and project-related work in the postindustrial economy, have stimulated renewed attention to learner projects.This paper reviews the earlier debate on project method and assesses its implications for postindustrial education.
This paper considers Labour's education policy portfolio in two loosely related ways. Firstly, I argue for the need to see the policy continuities between the Conservatives and Labour in an international context and to suggest that in a sense Labour's policies are not specific to Labour at all; they are local manifestations of global policy paradigms. Secondly, I begin to sketch out an argument which suggests that in one key respect Labour's policy thrust is contradictory in its own terms. That is, the over‐riding emphasis on education's role in contributing to economic competitiveness rests on a set of pedagogical strategies the effects of which are actually antithetical to the needs of a ‘high skills’ economy. This contradiction arises in part from an inherited, and ultimately self‐defeating, impoverished view of ‘learning’. I shall also point to some of the effects of performativity in relation to teaching and learning
Asserts that learning in arts programs outside of school can be instrumental in improving learning inside the classroom, examining a non-school site for learning (a video arts center) and discussing the interdisciplinary nature of such learning, negotiated versus high stakes learning in arts environments, and implications for school learning (e.g., community as curriculum resource and creating a culture of critique). (SM)
This article explores the use of audiences in preparation for public presentation by an urban youth organization in Camden, New Jersey (U.S.). Camden is an impoverished city with few opportunities for youth. The organization, a hybrid of youth development, technology, business, and college preparation, prepared youth for good jobs or college. Public presentations were a main participation structure. In preparing for them, youth used the imagined responses of audiences as a way of developing their work. They also used the real responses of previous audiences as they considered how best to represent their work and themselves. Absent audiences were deeply connected to their thought processes for their presentations in radio shows, to Web design clients, and to audiences for digital storytelling festivals. These audiences also influenced the ways in which the youth constructed their own identities, moving from the categories of victim or urban youth to expert.
This analytic essay draws on research about the effectiveness of current education policies as well as observations about developing policy systems in a number of states. The chapter begins with several observations about policy and school-level success, examines current barriers to school improvement and proposes a design for a systemic state structure that supports school-site efforts to improve classroom instruction and learning. The structure would be based on clear and challenging standards for student learning; policy components would be tied to the standards and reinforce one another in providing guidance to schools and teachers about instruction. Within the structure of coherent state leadership, schools would have the flexibility they need to develop strategies best suited to their students. The systemic school reform strategy combines the ‘waves’ of reform into a long-term improvement effort that puts coherence and direction into state reforms and content into the restructuring movement.
Two instructional studies directed at the comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring activities of seventh grade poor comprehenders are reported. The four study activities were summarizing (self-review), questioning, clarifying, and predicting. The training method was that of reciprocal teaching, where the tutor and students took turns leading a dialogue centered on pertinent features of the text. In Study 1, a comparison between the reciprocal teaching method and a second intervention modeled on typical classroom practice resulted in greater gains and maintenance over time for the reciprocal procedure. Reciprocal teaching, with an adult model guiding the student to interact with the text in more sophisticated ways, led to a significant improvement in the quality of the summaries and questions. It also led to sizable gains on criterion tests of comprehension, reliable maintenance over time, generalization to classroom comprehension tests, transfer to novel tasks that tapped the trained skills of summarizing, questioning, and clarifying, and improvement in standardized comprehension scores. Many of these results were replicated in Study 2. In contrast to Study 1, which was conducted by an experimenter, Study 2 examined group interventions conducted by volunteer teachers with their existing reading groups.
The idea of the reciting school passed down by our grandparents, and lives in our memories of school days, is no fair vision to guide us. The reciting school did not teach well a century ago and will not teach well tomorrow. There is only one escape. Teachers must lead the way. In classrooms here and there, even for an hour here or there, we must each work to change school culture so that it more reliably assists the performance of all, beginning with the teachers. This article describes a new definition of teaching and an example of teachers assisting teachers to improve instruction.
Teoría integral de educación que, ante el descrédito de la actual educación, ofrece la prescripción de reconstituir las escuelas como "sociedades educativas". Esta teoría tiene como base un desarrollo de sensibilización cultural ya integrados a los conceptos vigotskianos en desarrollo cognoscitivo, antropología y sociolingüística.
This book raises the idea of a distinct discipline of cultural psychology, the study of the ways that psyche and culture, subject and object, and person and world make up each other. Cultural Psychology is a collection of essays from leading scholars in anthropology, psychology, and linguistics who examine these relationships with special reference to core areas of human development: cognition, learning, self, personality dynamics, and gender. The chapters critically examine such questions as: Is there an intrinsic psychic unity to humankind? Can cultural traditions transform the human psyche, resulting less in psychic unity than in ethnic divergences in mind, self, and emotion? Are psychological processes local or specific to the sociocultural environments in which they are embedded? The volume is an outgrowth of the internationally known Chicago Symposia on Culture and Human Development. It will appeal to an interdisciplinary audience of anthropologists, psychologists, linguists, historians, philosophers and hermeneutists interested in the prospects for a distinct discipline of cultural psychology.
Our concern in this paper is with the validity of educational tests when they are employed as critical measures of educational outcomes within a dynamic system. The problem of validity arises if an educational system adapts itself to the characteristics of the outcome measures. We introduce the concept of systemically valid tests as ones that induce curricular and instructional changes in education systems (and learning strategy changes in students) that foster the development of the cognitive traits that the tests are designed to measure. We analyze some general characteristics that contribute to or detract from a testing system's systemic validity, such as the use of direct rather than indirect assessment. We then apply these characteristics in developing a set of design principles for creating testing systems that are systemically valid. Finally, we provide an illustration of the proposed principles, by applying them to the design of a student assessment system. This design example addresses not only specifications for the tests, but also the means of teaching the process of assessment to users of the system.
Most previous research on human cognition has focused on problem-solving, and has confined its investigations to the laboratory. As a result, it has been difficult to account for complex mental processes and their place in culture and history. In this startling - indeed, disco in forting - study, Jean Lave moves the analysis of one particular form of cognitive activity, - arithmetic problem-solving - out of the laboratory into the domain of everyday life. In so doing, she shows how mathematics in the 'real world', like all thinking, is shaped by the dynamic encounter between the culturally endowed mind and its total context, a subtle interaction that shapes 1) Both tile human subject and the world within which it acts. The study is focused on mundane daily, activities, such as grocery shopping for 'best buys' in the supermarket, dieting, and so on. Innovative in its method, fascinating in its findings, the research is above all significant in its theoretical contributions. Have offers a cogent critique of conventional cognitive theory, turning for an alternative to recent social theory, and weaving a compelling synthesis from elements of culture theory, theories of practice, and Marxist discourse. The result is a new way of understanding human thought processes, a vision of cognition as the dialectic between persons-acting, and the settings in which their activity is constituted. The book will appeal to anthropologists, for its novel theory of the relation of cognition to culture and context; to cognitive scientists and educational theorists; and to the 'plain folks' who form its subject, and who will recognize themselves in it, a rare accomplishment in the modern social sciences.
Our concern in this paper is with the validity of educational tests when they are employed as critical measures of educational outcomes within a dynamic system. The problem of validity arises if an educational system adapts itself to the characteristics of the outcome measures. We introduce the concept of systemically valid tests as ones that induce curricular and instructional changes in education systems (and learning strategy changes in students) that foster the development of the cognitive traits that the tests are designed to measure. We analyze some general characteristics that contribute to or detract from a testing system's systemic validity, such as the use of direct rather than indirect assessment. We then apply these characteristics in developing a set of design principles for creating testing systems that are systemically valid. Finally, we provide an illustration of the proposed principles, by applying them to the design of a student assessment system. This design example addresses not only specifications for the tests, but also the means of teaching the process of assessment to users of the system.
Sociology and psychology share an interest in the acquisition of knowledge. The two traditions, however, are relatively disconnected, and psychologists rarely take advantage of the insights offered by sociologists. The present paper brings out two aspects of development strongly emphasized in sociological accounts but relatively neglected in psychological accounts. One is the acquisition of values about knowledge and skill (e.g., ideas about important skills, trivial knowledge, elegant solutions, or proper ways to learn particular subjects). The other is the need to consider the social environment not as neutral, benign, or free-market in quality, but as often directive, controlling, and heavily invested in the individual’s acquiring some ideas and avoiding others. The presence of these two aspects is noted in the work of 4 sociologists (Berger, Habermas, Bourdieu, and Foucault). The paper outlines how ideas contributed by these sociologists can be added to psychological accounts, with an emphasis on additions that (a) extend an interest already present in psychological theory, or (b) combine a new question about the nature and conditions of development with a specific psychological study that could provide a feasible starting point for research.Copyright © 1990 S. Karger AG, Basel
Discusses the need to pay more attention to the type and nature of the content assessed. Provides five guidelines designed to help teachers select material that will contain important content, the heart of authentic assessment. (MG)
This April 2011 article is a reprint of the original May 1989 (V70N9) article and includes a new one-page introduction (on page 63 of this issue) by the author. The problem of assessment in education persists, the author maintains, because we have not yet properly framed the problem. We need to determine what are the actual performances we want students to be good at, he urges, define authentic standards and tasks to judge intellectual ability, and then design a test that measures the performance. The article focuses on the authentic test, which is a contextualized, complex intellectual challenge, rather than a collection of fragmented and static bits or tasks.
The past decade has seen the emergence of numerous new terms, research approaches, and evidence of the nature of learning. Some new concepts are authentic activity, apprenticeship learning, case-based research, conceptual change, constructivism, distributed knowledge, and socially shared cognition. Constructs underlying the new terms involve the forms, role, and social nature of knowledge and its acquisition. (29 references) (MLH)
the material covered in this chapter is organized around three central questions
why focus on the acquisition of values about ways of thinking and learning
what specific research does an emphasis on values—on good performances, appropriate knowledge, proper ways of learning—give rise to
how does attention to the acquisition of values and to nonneutral environments alter the way one regards some prevailing views of cognitive development / I refer briefly to theories with a Piagetian and with a Vygotskian base, and to the type of approach represented by sociologists such as Bourdieu and Foucault (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This chapter discusses planning as a process, focusing on the dynamic and evolving nature of planning as it unfolds during activity in individual, social, and historical time frames. Traditionally, the study of planning has focused on the possession of plans rather than their development. The development of skill in planning has been regarded as the cumulative acquisition of plans along with an increase in planning in advance of action. The chapter argues for the importance of viewing planning as a process of transformation of opportunities for upcoming events, with development involving learning to plan opportunistically-planning in advance of action or during action according to the circumstances, flexibly anticipating constraints and opportunities, and adapting to circumstances. It explores planning as an activity engaged in by individuals and groups embedded in sociocultural activity and characterizes the changes in planning processes over individual development in terms of developing plans over time according to the material and interpersonal circumstances of the sociocultural activity in which planning occurs. Planning by individuals often occurs with and develops in coordination with other individuals, and always occurs in the context of cultural activity. This is the case for planning in imaginary problems in the laboratory, planning real errands, and planning in play. Examples from each of these situations to develop the idea that planning is itself a developmental process and that the development of planning skill involves facility in managing sociocultural activity with flexibility, creativity, and foresight are provided.
Identity and Inner-city Youth: Beyond Ethnicity and Gender
- S B Heath
- M W Mclaughlin
HEATH, S. B. and MCLAUGHLIN, M. W. (1993) Identity and Inner-city Youth: Beyond Ethnicity and Gender (New York: Teachers College Press).
Linking restructing to authentic student achievement. Paper presented to Indiana University Education Conference
- F M Newmann
NEWMANN, F. M. (1990) Linking restructing to authentic student achievement. Paper presented to Indiana University Education Conference, Bloomington, IN (School of Education, University of Wisconsin, Madison).
Testing for Learning
- R Mitchell
MITCHELL, R. (1992) Testing for Learning (New York: Free Press).
- Stigler J. W.