Meaningful Learning

Situated Cognition & the Culture of Learning

            Mens et Manus. This is the motto of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From Latin it is translated ‘Mind and Hand’ and represents the founders of MIT’s educational ideals who promoted ‘education for practical application.’ I only know this because I noticed the phrase at the bottom of a colleague’s email signature last year and curiosity got the best of me, so I Googled it up.

            I think it fits in nicely with what we learned this week reading Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning. The paper stresses that many of our educational methods assume a separation of knowing and doing. Current educational practices treats knowledge as an independent object devoid of any context of the situations in which it is learned and used. Thus concluding that an education that ignores the situated nature of cognition has defeated its own goal of providing useable knowledge… knowledge with a practical application.

            We learned that our knowledge is constantly evolving with new occasions of use and that we are adding to the construction of our knowledge. To do this we explored the idea of conceptual knowledge as a set of tools, and we should use those tools actively in the culture in which they are used.

            We learned that enculturation, a very natural way in which we learn from the ambient culture around us rather than from explicit teaching, should be included in our practice of education. A way to achieve this is through authentic activity. Authentic activities are meaningful and purposeful activities that one would find in the ordinary practice of the culture. That is we should view teaching as such that, we are not teaching math but creating mathematicians, we are not teaching history but fostering historians, and so on with the various subjects. Knowing that they are not all going to become historians but providing authentic activities from the culture in which historians, et al occupy.

            The paper goes on to describe a method that reminds me of the vocational school that some of my classmates went to for half the day, when I was in high-school. The vocational school was a trade school where students learned various trades, like auto mechanics, carpentry, plumbing, electrical engineering. It was all hands-on learning and the learning was definitely in a culture that more resembled the culture they would encounter in the workplace. Somehow we’ve taken this model out of the more ‘academic’ subjects.

            We learned how modeling, coaching, and then fading is akin to apprenticeship and this approach to teaching will help push learning physical skills into gaining cognitive skills.

            We also learned about the importance of collaborative learning. How providing collective problem solving opportunities, offering multiple roles to students carrying out a cognitive task, drawing out and discussing misconceptions about problem solving strategies, and providing collaborative work skills can accommodate the paper’s authors  proposed new view of knowledge and learning. So in effort to bridge mind and hand there can be a dramatic improvement in learning and a new way to look at education.

            Next we learned about Knowledge of Structure, Process, and Discourse with Content as Vehicle. The emphasis on designing opportunities that help students develop knowledge rather than content descriptions of knowledge. To achieve this teachers must help students grasp the structure of a subject making it more understandable. Learning structural elements of a discipline will help with the retention and relation of content knowledge and therefore be more likely for the structure of knowledge to be transferred to other disciplines. Learning about process is a way for students to make sense of their experience. “Teaching the disciplines as ‘ways to think’ about experience has more lasting consequences than only teaching ‘about’ the disciplines.” (P.Norton) Different disciplines bring their own set of ‘lenses’ when surveying and processing facts. Learning disciplines from their lenses enhances student knowledge. Two ways to approach this is through narrative and expository discourse. Narrative tells the story that can be relatable and helps up develop our sense of self, where expository helps us develop procedures and test to form empirical proof and assure a verifiable reference.

            We also learned the ABCS of Activity – A Design Process. Authentic Activities, Building Knowledge Activities, Constructing Activities, and Sharing Activities are activities for students centered around problem solving learning. We as teachers (designers) should design learning anchored in a problem and these activities help students with their problem solving skills. Authentic means the ordinary practices of a culture, a way to hone emerging knowledge of a discipline. Building Knowledge supports a more meaningful understanding of the content. Constructing is moving knowledge to performance, a chance for students to show what they’re learning. Sharing allows students to receive feedback that may shape or solidify their understanding of a discipline.

            Finally AeCTS – A Lesson Design Process. An Authentic Problem should be a clear authentic situation. So that sustained explorations can prepare learners for what an expert may encounter and an introduction to the tools needed to solve the problem. E for the exit strategy, putting a ribbon on the final outcome, something happens. Clear outcome/product. Learners must understand the outcome or product that is produced from their problem solving. Thinking skills are the process skills needed for the activity that’s been chosen – teachers can model the appropriate thinking needed. Software skills are the tools that teachers can use in an activity that fits with what is needed for problem solving.

            Thinking about all of these things and how they will impact my practice of teaching is a lot to digest! One way it impacted my teaching was this week I ‘created’ the authentic problem of a new staff member at our school. Within the past year she moved to this area. My project for my students was to be able to provide, in written form, three places of interest for her to go and see. They could be places the students have been or places they would like to go. The goal of this project was to help my students craft a word document and to enhance their internet research skills as I requested what times these places of interest would be open, when is the best time to go, and if they cost anything. Walking around the room during this exercise gave me a sense of what things students were struggling with, either with coming up with somewhere to go, or with the Word program itself. The exit strategy for this project once they finish will be to print out their list of suggested sites to see and then I’ll give them to our new staff member. It will be up to her if she want to come in and thank the class. This has been my interpretation of all the knowledge that I’ve learned these past two weeks. Hopefully with this project I’m helping my learners gain knowledge for practical applications.