Learning Communities in Learning Communities in Classrooms: Classrooms:

A Re-conceptualization of A Re-conceptualization of Educational PracticeEducational Practice

Learning CommunityLearning Community

• Classrooms and Schools = Communities of Classrooms and Schools = Communities of Learners?Learners?

• Communities of Learners = Learning CommCommunities of Learners = Learning Communities?unities?

• Tension: Collaboration vs. CompetitionTension: Collaboration vs. Competition

Learning CommunityLearning Community

Goal:Goal:• to advance the collective knowledge and in t

hat way to support the growth of individual knowledge (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994).

Why Learning Community?Why Learning Community?

Learning-to-learn argumentLearning-to-learn argument • increasing knowledge, such that no one can

absorb in school everything they will need to know in life

• the changing demands of work, where technology can carry out low-level tasks, requiring workers who can think abstractly and learn new skills

Why Learning Community?Why Learning Community?

Multi-cultural argumentMulti-cultural argument• Societies are becoming increasingly diverse

through mixing of people from different cultures. • This requires people to interact and work with

people from different backgrounds.

Why Learning Community?Why Learning Community?

Social-constructivist argumentSocial-constructivist argument• Knowledge Building Community Model – (Berieter

and Scardamalia)• Situated Cognition & Cognitive Apprenticeship Mo

del (Collins and Brown)

Situated Cognition & Cognitive Situated Cognition & Cognitive Apprenticeship Model ArgumentsApprenticeship Model Arguments

• Problem (inert knowledge) observed in school learning:– Many school practices reduce the likelihood

that children will transfer the skills they learn to later problem solving that requires those skills

– It is common for students to acquire algorithms, routines, and definitions that they cannot use and apply them in solving realistic problems. (Collins et al.)

Situated Cognition & Cognitive Situated Cognition & Cognitive Apprenticeship Model ArgumentsApprenticeship Model Arguments

What makes many school What makes many school learning situations so learning situations so ineffective?ineffective?

Situated Cognition & Cognitive Situated Cognition & Cognitive Apprenticeship Model ArgumentsApprenticeship Model Arguments

• Wrong assumptions about knowledge and knowledge acquisition:– knowledge is a set of sentences or

symbolic structures specifying the properties and relationships that match with the properties and relationships in the external world

Situated Cognition & Cognitive Situated Cognition & Cognitive Apprenticeship Model ArgumentsApprenticeship Model Arguments

theories, rules,

operators, heuristics

theories, rules,

operators, heuristics

Problem Solving

initial state:

a set of symbolsgoal state

Situated Cognition & Cognitive Situated Cognition & Cognitive Apprenticeship Model ArgumentsApprenticeship Model Arguments

• Wrong assumptions about knowledge and knowledge acquisition:– thinking is often conceived as something

that goes on in the head without intimate physical interaction with the environments

– seeing, thinking and action are not tightly linked

Cognition as SituatedCognition as Situated

• Perception and action are mutually shaping. Perception is altered by actively moving and manipulating things, just as action is controlled by properly coordinated perception. (Dewey 1958)

• Learning is a process that takes place in a participation framework, not in an individual mind. (Lave and Wenger 1991)

What are the clues for What are the clues for designing effective learning designing effective learning

environments?environments?

Community-buildingCommunity-building

• Does opening of a chat room or Does opening of a chat room or discussion forum imply building of a discussion forum imply building of a virtual a community?virtual a community?

Clues for design effective Clues for design effective learning environmentslearning environments

• Traditional Apprenticeship Learning

Clues for design effective Clues for design effective learning environmentslearning environments

• What are the features of traditional apprenticeship?

Clues for design effective Clues for design effective learning environmentslearning environments

• Characteristics of apprenticeship – Tangibility: learners engage in learning a

physical, tangible activity – Visibility: the master makes the target

process visible– Methodology: learners are being coached

through modeling, scaffolding and fading– Community: learners are being immersed in

a community of practice

Clues for design effective Clues for design effective learning environmentslearning environments

• Community of practice/learning community provides– a variety of models of expertise– multiple perspectives in accomplishing a task– recognition of the distributive nature of expertise

and knowledge– opportunity to observe other learners with various

degrees of skill, thus providing benchmarks for one’s own progress

– a sense of ownership

Translating traditional apprenticeship Translating traditional apprenticeship into cognitive apprenticeshipinto cognitive apprenticeship

• Teachers need to provide scaffolding in both cognitive and social dimensions– cognitive scaffolding + fading– social scaffolding + fading

Translating traditional apprenticeship Translating traditional apprenticeship into cognitive apprenticeshipinto cognitive apprenticeship

• Teachers need to – Identify the processes of the task and make

them visible to students– Situate abstract tasks in authentic contexts, so

that students understand the relevance of the work

– Vary the diversity of situations and articulate the common aspects so that students can transfer what they learn

(Collins et. al)

ReflectionsReflections

Where are we now?

Where we should go?

How we could get there?