How People Learn II Learners, Contexts, and Cultures (2018) / Chapter Skim
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7 Implications for Learning in School
7 Implications for Learning in School
Pages 135-162
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From page 135... ...
In previous chapters, we discussed the cultural nature of learning and the growing recognition that culture fundamentally shapes all aspects of learning, from the wiring of the brain to the way that communities and societies organize learning opportunities. We saw that there are many types of learning, which are supported by a suite of cognitive processes that the learner needs to coordinate and organize.
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From page 136... ...
If taken seriously, these ideas can influence education practice in very specific ways. Ideally, educators play a key role in determining the nature of the learning experiences available to their students, and they can also shape their students' inclination and capacity to take advantage of their learning environments.
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From page 137... ...
. School and Classroom Contexts Culture shapes every learning environment and the experience of each learner within that environment: learners who find the classroom environment unfamiliar, confusing, unwelcoming, or unsupportive will be at a disadvantage.
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From page 138... ...
These features of the learning environment are shaped by the broader culture in which educators are prepared and policy decisions are made -- and those factors, in turn, are shaped by even broader cultural influences. Learning Environments A learning environment is structured to promote particular ways of engag ing in a specific set of activities, and the features of every learning environment reflect the cultural context in which it is situated.
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From page 139... ...
A European American goal might be, "I want my children to know they must respect nature and have a responsibility to take care of it," whereas a Native American goal might be, "I want my children to realize that they are a part of nature." Cultural differences like these can have consequences for students who do not come from European American backgrounds and encounter a classroom that implicitly endorses European American perspectives. There are also rules, explicit and implicit, to be followed in classrooms.
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. This effect of cultural differences may be extremely negative.
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. For example, researchers have found that many African American students prefer communal learning contexts (Dill and Boykin, 2000; Hurley et al., 2005)
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. An ethnographic study of students in a middle school science classroom showed not only that students' funds of knowledge can be valuable resources for making sense of school texts but also how often students needed to be prompted and encouraged to draw on these funds in classroom contexts (Moje et al., 2004)
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. Similarly, when learning science in a discipline-specific manner, students might generate and test explanations for scientific phenomena through investigations in which they collect and analyze data or interpret data collected by others
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. These variations across subject areas in the structure of knowledge, epistemologies, and disciplinary practices are as important to the design of effective learning experiences for students as the general principles of learning discussed in previous chapters.
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. This kind of approach is reflected in the "Guided Inquiry Supporting Multiple Literacies" model, which engages early elementary school students in scientific inquiry and the use of scientific practices (Hapgood et al., 2004)
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. They found that second-grade students taught with this approach improved their ability to use data as evidence, to interpret multiple representations, and to model scientific phenomena (e.g., the relationship between mass and momentum)
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After 3 weeks, students were assessed on their content knowledge and ability to apply discipline-specific approaches to reading in history. The researchers found that students using multiple documents (interventions 3 and 4)
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ENGAGING AND EMPOWERING LEARNERS A part of what is accomplished when educators attend to the culture of the classroom environment and the cultural perspectives students bring to their learning is that learners are better supported in taking charge of their own learning. The authors of HPL I touched on the importance of empowering learners.
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Even before HPL I was published, researchers had identified strategies that appear to support students in pursuing learning goals. These are ways in which learners process the content to be learned and the skills associated with learning to learn.
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The idea of teaching self-regulation is appealing to parents and educators, and numerous sources offer practical tips for doing this.4 A review article that examined research on teachers' roles in teaching self-regulation concluded that active involvement in one's learning is associated with positive academic outcomes and that teachers can promote this involvement by such measures as guiding students toward meaningful goals and strategies, monitoring their motivation, and providing useful feedback (Moos and Ringdal, 2012)
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From page 151... ...
This propensity has the potential to be a powerful engine for learning if it is directed at suitable tasks and activities. On the other hand, if students are asked to engage in artificial, decontextualized tasks, they will develop coping strategies that make sense for those situations, but such strategies will simply amount to "doing school." In this section, the committee looks briefly at ways to make school activities an "invitation to thinking." Two instructional approaches intended to engage and challenge learners in the ways we have discussed -- problem- and project-based learning and collaborative learning -- have received considerable attention from researchers.
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From page 152... ...
. Collaborative Learning Recognition that learning is not an isolated process that occurs solely in the individual learner's mind has focused a number of researchers' attention on the classroom environment as a learning community, and on how students' interactions among themselves and with their teachers influence learning (see, e.g., Brown and Campione, 1995; McCaslin and Burross, 2011)
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Students need information about whether they are learning intended subject matter and skills. Teachers want to know whether their pedagogical approaches are helping individual students learn and helping their classes progress.
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It does so by providing teachers with diagnostic information about student misunderstandings and thus guiding teachers' decisions about how to adjust instruction and students' decisions about how to revise their work and adjust their learning processes. An overall positive association between formative assessment and student learning has been found in both early influential reviews (Bangert-Drowns et
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. Effective formative assessment articulates the learning targets, provides feedback to teachers and students about where they are in relation to those targets, and prompts adjustments to instruction by teachers, as well as changes to learning processes and revision of work products by students (Andrade, 2016)
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From page 156... ...
Assessments Based on Learning Progressions Also known as a learning trajectory, construct map, or construct model, a learning progression is a model of successively more sophisticated ways of thinking about a topic, typically demonstrated by children as they learn, from naïve to expert (National Research Council, 2007)
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the Student may believe that the Sun moves around the Earth. COMMON ERROR: All motion in the sky is due to the Earth spinning on its axis.
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For example, at a particular point in a unit on the Earth and the solar system, a teacher can ask questions designed to reveal student thinking in relation to a specific learning goal in a progression, such as "How long does it take the Earth to go around the sun, and how do you know? " The students' responses to the questions provide insight into their learning and can guide the teacher's next pedagogical steps.
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Assessment experts believe "tests based on such learning science research can better flag when students are successful in engaging in such learning processes, and when they are engaging in counterproductive practices"(Yarnall and Haertel, 2016, p.
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Conclusion 7-1: Effective instruction depends on understand ing the complex interplay among learners' prior knowledge, experiences, motivations, interests, and language and cognitive skills; educators' own experiences and cultural influences; and the cultural, social, cognitive, and emotional characteristics of the learning environment. CONCLUSION 7-2: A disparate body of research points to the importance of engaging the learner in directing his own learn ing by, for example, providing targeted feedback and support in developing metacognitive skills, challenges that are well matched to the learner's current capacities, and support in setting and pursuing meaningful goals.
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From page 161... ...
CONCLUSION 7-5: Assessment is a critical tool for advancing and monitoring students' learning in school. When grounded in well-defined models of learning, assessment information can be used to identify and subsequently narrow the gap between current and desired levels of students' learning and performance.
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