Education P571: ProSeminar in
Learning Sciences (fall 2008)

Fri. 11:15-12:15, ED 1255   Instructor: Sasha Barab, Ph.D. sbarab@indiana.Edu, (812) 856-8462 Eigenmann Hall, #543

Course Rationale

The rationale underlying the ProSeminar in Learning Science is that a central component of any graduate career is becoming a part of a community. While there are many different descriptions on what counts as community, in previous work I have described it as a persistent, sustained social network of individuals who share and develop an overlapping knowledge base, set of beliefs, values, history and experiences focused on a common practice and/or mutual enterprise. Speaking to the importance of community, the anthropologist Jean Lave presents the idea that “developing an identity as a member of a community and becoming knowledgeably skillful are part of the same process, with the former motivating, shaping, and giving meaning to the latter, which it subsumes” (Lave, 1993, p. 65). In contrast, most learning is treated as an acquisitional process in which the focus is on determining the most efficient methods for meaningfully transmitting information into one’s brain. Meaning making is downplayed, learners are treated as objects to be changed, knowing is considered a coldly cognitive act, and decontextualized information is emphasized.

Such assumptions lead to didactic pedagogical approaches in which the goal of instruction is for the all-knowing teacher or textbooks to transfer abstract and potentially generalizable content to the passive learner.  It is simply assumed that learners can and will apply these abstracted facts, concepts, principles, and skills when the relevant situations present themselves.  However, over the last 30 years, we have witnessed a move from claustrophilic theories that emphasize individual thinkers and their isolated minds to situativity theories that emphasize the reciprocal character of the individual and her social and material context. Knowledge is described as fundamentally situated (knowing about), emerging in context and spread across the relations among activity, content, and context.

Fundamentally, at least in terms of the Learning Sciences community, there has been a reformulation of what it means to known and learn, from a dualist representational theory separating knowing from that which is known to one that situates practice and meaning within context; suggesting reciprocal, as opposed to dualistic, relations among learner, practice, meaning, community, and context. Acquisitional metaphors have been replaced by participatory ones, and learning has come to be treated as a social act that is more about becoming a part of a community than about knowing particular ideas—and in functional learning communities the two should go hand-in-hand. The Learning Sciences program here at IU is based on such a view; one that emphasizes community participation over strict knowledge acquisition.

It is for this reason that the program emphasizes the apprenticeship, and becoming part of a research group. In Etienne Wenger’s book about Community of Practice, he argued for the reciprocal relations among meaning (learning as experience), practice (learning as doing), identity (learning as becoming), and community (learning as belonging). And it is the responsibility of the ProSem Course to get this process started, ensuring that your graduate career will involve aspects of each of these core elements.  There are no assigned readings for ProSem, instead, we will invite speakers and opportunistically engage their work, reflecting on their meanings, and coming to embrace the larger community of which we are all now a part. Together, we define the Learning Sciences community, so this course is designed to help you all connect to the works of other community members (both those on the periphery and those at the center), but most importantly to each other.

So, at its core, this course is about connections, and while I will help to situate the various presentations, and discuss the ideas in terms of my perspective of how they relate to Learning Sciences as a field, it is mostly about you coming to define the boundaries of your Learning Sciences community. You see, Learning Sciences has only recently become its own field. And while such alignment is valuable, in that it allows us to define ourselves and that which we do, it runs the risk of insulating us from the interdisciplinary work that has come to define who we are. Learning Sciences derives its strength from the theoretical and empirical works which have come to be associated with it, and, to some extent, each of us is going to have to make our own boundaries for what is our perspective of Learning Sciences. And it is my job, as instructor of this course, to share my experience, understandings, and commitments to help guide you in coming to terms with your own beliefs.

In this course, I will invite colleagues from other departments who are doing related work. I will invite senior graduate students and faculty from our own program to share on their work. And, I will invite some colleagues from other universities to come and share their work. It is your responsibility to read the articles they share with us; to come to class prepared, with questions, and with reflections, and with a passion for wanting to learn more. There will be a time for academic dueling, but this course is not that time. It is your responsibility to embrace your fellow students, approaching them with respect, with critique, and with a genuine commitment to help them understand at the same time you are struggling with your own ideas. We are a community for the next four years, and while we all have different strengths and will excel in different issues, it is important that we do our best to help each other. And, as the instructor of record, it is my job to ensure that the ProSem is a critical, productive, and safe place for you all to do that.

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Weekly Topic Outline

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Expectations

• Readings will be assigned the Week prior to seminar
  • highlight at least 3 blocks (1-3 sentences) that you found illuminative
  • come with at least 2 questions to ask
• You will be expected to participate in the seminar
• You will maintain a class journal, one page added every two weeks
• should provide critical reflection on conception of what is Learning Sciences,
• a reflection on some things you recently learned, and
• how you are becoming a part of a Learning Sciences Community
• they are due Friday the 12th and should be 5 pages or so ... is fine.

NOTE: I do not give incompletes except under extraordinary circumstances. Keep up with the reading and attend classes and you will have no trouble succeeding.

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