Many teaching practices implicitly assume that conceptual knowledge can be abstracted from the situations in which it is learned and used. This article argues that this assumption inevitably limits the effectiveness of such practices. Drawing on recent research into cognition as it is manifest in everyday activity, the authors argue that knowledge is situated, being in part a product of the activity, context, and culture in which it is developed and used. They discuss how this view of knowledge affects our understanding of learning, and they note that conventional schooling too often ignores the influence of school culture on what is learned in school. As an alternative to conventional practices, they propose cognitive apprenticeship (Collins, Brown, & Newman, in press), which honors the situated nature of knowledge. They examine two examples of mathematics instruction that exhibit certain key features of this approach to teaching.

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Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning

New developments in the science of learning science of learning overview mind and brain how experts differ from novices how children learn learning and transfer the learning environment curriculum, instruction and commnity effective teaching - examples in history, mathematics and science teacher learning technology to support learning conclusions from new developments in the science of learning.

How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school.

Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

Research in the area of educational technology has often been critiqued for a lack of theoretical grounding. In this article we propose a conceptual framework for educational technology by building on Shulman’s formulation of ‘‘pedagogical content knowledge’’ and extend it to the phenomenon of teachers integrating technology into their pedagogy. This framework is the result of 5 years of work on a program of research focused on teacher professional development and faculty development in higher education. It attempts to capture some of the essential qualities of teacher knowledge required for technology integration in teaching, while addressing the complex, multifaceted, and situated nature of this knowledge. We argue, briefly, that thoughtful pedagogical uses of technology require the development of a complex, situated form of knowledge that we call Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK). In doing so, we posit the complex roles of, and interplay among, three main components of learning environments: content, pedagogy, and technology. We argue that this model has much to offer to discussions of technology integration at multiple levels: theoretical, pedagogical, and methodological. In this article, we describe the theory behind our framework, provide examples of our teaching approach based upon the framework, and illustrate the methodological contributions that have resulted from this work.

/pdf/technological-pedagogical-content-knowledge-a-framework-for-4g4dquqx44.pdf

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A Framework for Teacher Knowledge

Two instructional studies directed at the comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring activities of seventh grade poor comprehenders are reported. The four study activities were summarizing (self-review), questioning, clarifying, and predicting. The training method was that of reciprocal teaching, where the tutor and students took turns leading a dialogue centered on pertinent features of the text. In Study 1, a comparison between the reciprocal teaching method and a second intervention modeled on typical classroom practice resulted in greater gains and maintenance over time for the reciprocal procedure. Reciprocal teaching, with an adult model guiding the student to interact with the text in more sophisticated ways, led to a significant improvement in the quality of the summaries and questions. It also led to sizable gains on criterion tests of comprehension, reliable maintenance over time, generalization to classroom comprehension tests, transfer to novel tasks that tapped the trained skills of...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3233567.pdf

Reciprocal Teaching of Comprehension-Fostering and Comprehension-Monitoring Activities

Project-based learning is a comprehensive approach to classroom teaching and learning that is designed to engage students in investigation of authentic problems. In this article, we present an argument for why projects have the potential to help people learn; indicate factors in project design that affect motivation and thought; examine difficulties that students and teachers may encounter with projects; and describe how technology can support students and teachers as they work on projects, so that motivation and thought are sustained.

Motivating Project-Based Learning: Sustaining the Doing, Supporting the Learning

Social constructivist perspectives focus on the interdependence of social and individual processes in the co-construction of knowledge. After the impetus for understanding the influence of social and cultural factors on cognition is reviewed, mechanisms hypothesized to account for learning from this perspective are identified, drawing from Piagetian and Vygotskian accounts. The empirical research reviewed illustrates (a) the application of institutional analyses to investigate schooling as a cultural process, (b) the application of interpersonal analyses to examine how interactions promote cognition and learning, and (c) discursive analyses examining and manipulating the patterns and opportunities in instructional conversation. The review concludes with a discussion of the application of this perspective to selected contemporary issues, including: acquiring expertise across domains, assessment, educational equity, and educational reform.

Social constructivist perspectives on teaching and learning

This chapter discusses theoretical claims concerning a variety of group–learning procedures and the evidence for the efficacy. Learning is a term with more meanings than there are theorists; however, most would agree on some basic distinctions. In the extreme, the position holds that all "meaningful" conceptual change is self–directs. The opposite extreme from theories of self–directed learning are theories of cognitive development that emphasize other–direction almost exclusively. According to such theories, conceptual development has an essentially social genesis. The term, cooperative learning, is most closely associated with research in educational psychology concerned with alternatives to traditional classroom organizational structure. The support and conflict aspects of cooperative learning settings can be gradually removed from the social plane as they are individualized, internalized, or adopted as independent cognition. It remains to be seen whether children can also benefit from systematic instruction, such as a form of reciprocal teaching, in which modeling and support is given for the acquisition of complex argument rules.

Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar

Papers

Reciprocal Teaching of Comprehension-Fostering and Comprehension-Monitoring Activities

Motivating Project-Based Learning: Sustaining the Doing, Supporting the Learning

Social constructivist perspectives on teaching and learning

Guided, Cooperative Learning and Individual Knowledge Acquisition

Group processes in the classroom.