Bransford et al

Bransford et al ( for position chapter)

Quotes

P217

‘history & principles that animate each tradition’

‘look for conceptual collisions that shape, challenge and extend’

Synergy aims for next decade – bring together three separate strands -

1. Implicit learning & the brain
2. Informal
3. Formal

1. Implict learning and the brain

P210 ‘ refers to information that is required effortlessly (?KRO for CMC style) and sometimes without conscious recollection of the learned information or having acquired it’

P210 ‘ implicated in many types of learning that take place in both formal and informal educational settings’

P211 ‘occurs in many domains. For example it influences social attitudes and stereotypes regarding gender & race’….

‘young children’s imitative learning of tools/artefacts’…

‘media and technology’

‘evolutionary value….. enables organisms to adapt to new environments simply be being in them and observing and interecting with the people and objects encountered there ( Howard & Howard, 2001)

Focus on language learning & learning about people ( social cognition)

3 hypothesis

p211

• implicit learning plays an important role across the lifespan
• research on language has discovered principles of learning that emphasize the importance of patterned variation and the brain’s coding of these patterns and these findings may illuminate other cognitive and social domains.
• Curriculum implications

Interpreting brain data

P212 – things to note

‘valid inferences about brain processes often require a series of converging experiments rather than one or two’

‘learning induced changes in the brain involve biological processes that may have complicated and interacting pathways of regulation just like other biological processes ‘ ( KRO puts into context questions about how meaningful it is to know where brain activation occurs)

p213 - fact

In young children the brain ‘overproduces’ synapses.

‘the process of synaptic overproduction takes place at different rates in different part of the brain ( Huttenlocher & Dabholkar, 1997)’

Ideas

Kuhls ( language development specialist) ideas on ‘neural commitment’

e.g. p213 ‘ early neural commitment to phonetic units of a specific language supports the learning of more complex patterns, such as the words of a language. However, neural commitment to learned patterns also constrains future learning because neural networks dedicated to native language patterns are incompatible with non-native patterns’

i.e. interpretation ‘ critical period depends on experience as much as process’ – ‘ maturation may ‘open’ the period during which learning can occur, but learning itself may play a powerful part in closing the period’ ( KRO provides a fairly powerful explanation of the interaction between biology and the environment’)

p214

‘broadening the discussion the neural commitment concept can be thought of as a neural instantiation of important dimensions of expertise in any domain’ i.e. expertise a s filter to ‘ focus attention, structure perception, thought and emotions so that we work more efficiently’

frees up attention, perception, emotion for creative endeavour

raises a fundamental question ‘ how can the brain form neural commitments whilst maximising our ability to stay open to adaptive change?’

Focus on language learning & learning about people ( social cognition)

See previous hypothesis under this title

Focus in particular

Language learning

· Acquisition of language

· Second language learning

( KRO adds text based asynchronous online learning)

human interaction

· live – Kuhn seems to be advantaged in language learning ? why ? evolutionary preparadness.

· mediated

Implicit learning & its connection with imitation

p215

‘Children’s implicit learning from other people a case of imitative learning’ ( this a section heading and is quoted as it is quite explicit about the connection between implicit learning & imitation.

‘ubiquitous nature of imitation amongst humans across the lifespan’ ( eg Metzoff, 2005)

‘monkeys do not imitate. So imitative behaviour involves more than the presence of mirror units and neuroscientists are trying to determine the special, perhaps uniquely human abilities that support our proclivity for learning by observation ‘ ( review by Meltzoff & Decety, 2003)

‘one possibility is that even the simple act of Imitation is connected with perspective taking and therefore is a more social & collaborative activity than first appears ‘( Meltzoff, 2005)

2. Informal learning

(KRO links to communities of practice)

• During a lifetime over 90% of learning occurs outside of school
• There are divergent views on the value of informal learning and the quality of thinking involved
• This strand describes research from a wide range of settings were informal learning takes place eg dairy workers, Lebanese tailors.

two main settings

1. designed e.g. museums

2. emergent, often self organised e.g. playgrounds

( KRO how does CMC, online, social networks, digital native etc fit ? is it a mixture of the two?)

Historical perspective

P217

‘Traditionally mostly outside mainstream educational psychology’

two main strands

1. Anthropology 1900-1950, Mead ‘her version of the social actor ……. In constant need for guidance from others’

2. Sociological ethnography Becker, 1950s, full expression 160s, 1970s

e.g. becoming a marihuana user, 1953.

‘Becker argued against an exclusively skill based notion of learning, that has been characteristic of both behaviorism ( physical skills) and cognitivism ( mental skills). Becker’s critical addition was to show that learning also involved the development of particular meanings for a skill, which were learned among other community makers’

bearing in mind that marihurana is not necessarily nic –

‘Becker argues that becoming a marihurana user requires that one learns to experience the sensations of smoking as pleasurable, through the appropriation of a set of socially transmitted meanings of experience.’

The historical account just reviewed

Foreshadows Guided participation ( Rogoff, Matsusov & White)

Resonates with guiding and participating (Mead)

Locates the development of identity as a dimension of learning (e.g. Becker & Casper, 1956) – central to the understanding of informal learning n.b. Becker’s work – school is a lousy place to learn.

Contributions of this strand (2)

1. Context of learning

P219

‘ although studies of informal learning have been used to cast a critical eye on the traditional practices of schooling and to provide ideas for formulating alternative educational practices, the focal attention to context as a theoretical construct among informal learning researchers has led to a more general reinterpretation of school as a context, namely that it is one’ and just one so to look at some contrasts

p220

formal ( eg school) - apparatus of school ‘ intentional teaching, designed and sequenced curricula, regular individualised assessments

informal

1. apprenticeship – legitimate peripheral participation ( Lave and Wenger)
2. intent participation – Rogoff et al – ‘ learning happens through keen observation and listening, in anticipation of participation ……. ( children) observe and listen with intent concentration and initiative, and their collaborative participation is expected when they are ready to help in shared endeavours’ (Rogoff, 2003, p176)

‘understanding learning in this way attends to how individuals can learn without explicit teaching but through participation in a community’s ongoing activities’

2. learning as change - what changes?

Cognitivists – mental constructs

Informal learning

Forms of participation in ongoing cultural activities

Changes in identity

Tool mediated embodied skills

therefore

p221

‘suggest reframing in terms of context rather than informal/formal e.g. transitions are a context and we need ‘ a better understanding of what people bring to, take from, and adapt across different contexts may also have implications’

3. Designs for formal learning and beyond.

This section starts off by highlighting two important achievements so far

1. development of standards ( national & international)
2. learning from the cognitivists – expertise & noticing. (Noticing comes from what it takes to be an expert ). ‘If people fail to notice subtle examples that create disequilibrium, they do not experience the need to attempt to change their views’

how to teach expertise

it requires

• knowledge organisaiton
• identify enduring ideas
• important things to know and be able to do
• ideas worth mentioning
• connections

but it needs to be adaptive ( see innovation section) and effective it needs to be alert to considering implementation alongside the background of the teacher’s knowledge which may have moved from explicit to tacit. It also raises questions for assessment – eg how to assess adaptive expertise.

Considering expertise further raises the question of how to balance efficiency and innovation

to encourage efficiency. Cognitive psychology has been useful here in that scripts, schema, procedures are all ideas that are translatable into classroom practice.

to encourage innovation . p226 need to ‘help people resist assimilation’ e.g. be able to restructure out thinking in social situations’ Need to engage in knowledge building as well as knowledge telling ( Scardamelia & Bereiter, 1991) and encourage disconfirmation as well as knowledge building ( Karmiloff- Smith & Inhelder, 1774/1975)

Future synergies

Methodological

? Synergy between methodology i.e. neuroscience, ethnographic analysis of social interactions & classroom based approaches eg activity theory.

Theoretical

P227

‘researchers from all three of the strands are begining to explore the implications of the idea that people – from infancy to adulthood – seem to naturally pay attention to other people and learn from them’

Examples from each strand

S1 and imitation – ‘human children are socially attuned from birth ‘ in particular to faces, voices. Infants observe and imitate

Stimultated research as follows

A focus on higher order questions such as empathy, the neural basis of empathy and of competition and collaboration ( Decety et al , 2004)

S2 p227 ‘ groups where people know each other function differently from groups of relative strangers’

Collaboration leads to bettwr problem solving and groups outperform individuals

‘quality of conversations and nature of shared engagement mediates how much is learnt’

researching how to stimulate more and better collaborations.

S3 social cognitions ( scripts) . Stimulated talk about humaine learning ‘ let students learn about content whilst also learning about people’

Sharing research tools

P228

An example is Learnlab at the Pittsburg Centre.

‘Seven ‘ highly instrumented courses’ ……. Each available for use in real classrooms’ state of art ( technologically and pedagogically)

Searching for conceptual collisions.

(cf 3Cs of DSE212)

ps read this section again if using this resource in a different context.

There are pros and cons of trying to align conceptual collisions. Some examples of collisions are

• Preconceptions ( including expertise) & commitments ( including neural)
• Meaning and understanding
• metacognition . how does reflection play out across the three strands.

One way forward is to anchor collisions around phenomena

• We learn from experience; previous experience can involve different kinds of learning eg implicit, informal, formal all contribute.
• We need to think in terms of implicit and informal learning occurring alongside formal (curriculuar learning) sometimes simultaneously e.g. learning about the self, others, morality ( fishing trip example) i.e. multiple levels of simulutaneous learning. Does this clash (collide) with the idea that attention needs to be explicitly focused?
• Common to all three strands is the influence of social interactions therefore provide opportunity for a wide variety of distributed expertise. Think in terms of motivation coming from being able to contribute.