Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-p2v8j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-01T00:27:54.530Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Foundations of the Learning Sciences

from Part I - Foundations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

By
Mitchell J. Nathan  and
R. Keith Sawyer
Edited by
R. Keith Sawyer
R. Keith Sawyer
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Get access

Summary

This chapter describes the intellectual foundations that have influenced the learning sciences (LS) from its beginning, and identifies the core elements that unify many chapters of this handbook. Its theoretical influences include pragmatism, constructivism, sociocultural theory, situated learning, and distributed cognition. The chapter organizes LS research into two levels of analysis: the individual or elemental, and the sociocultural or systemic. The chapter reviews the methodologies that have been used to study each level of analysis and summarizes research findings at each level. LS research bridges research and practice and combines elemental and systemic perspectives on learning across a range of timescales of human behavior.

Keywords

intellectual foundationstheoretical influencesuse-inspired researchlearning engineeringconstructivismsocioculturalepistemologylevels of analysismethodology
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences , pp. 27 - 52
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrahamson, D., & Sánchez-García, R. (2016). Learning is moving in new ways: The ecological dynamics of mathematics education. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 25(2), 203–239.Google Scholar
Alibali, M. W., & Nathan, M. J. (2012). Embodiment in mathematics teaching and learning: Evidence from learners’ and teachers’ gestures. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 21(2), 247–286.Google Scholar
Anderson, J. R. (2005). Cognitive psychology and its implications. New York, NY: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Anderson, J. R., Greeno, J. G., Reder, L. M., & Simon, H. A. (2000). Perspectives on learning, thinking, and activity. Educational Researcher, 29(4), 11–13.Google Scholar
Azmitia, M. (1996). Peer interactive minds: Developmental, theoretical, and methodological issues. In Baltes, P. B. & Staudinger, U. M. (Eds.), Interactive minds: Life-span perspectives on the social foundation of cognition (pp. 133–162). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Barab, S., Thomas, M., Dodge, T., Carteaux, R., & Tuzun, H. (2005). Making learning fun: Quest Atlantis, a game without guns. Educational Technology Research and Development, 53(1), 86–107.Google Scholar
Barron, B. (2003). When smart groups fail. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 12(3), 307–359.Google Scholar
Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 617–645.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Biswas, G., Leelawong, K., Schwartz, D., Vye, N., & The Teachable Agents Group at Vanderbilt. (2005). Learning by teaching: A new agent paradigm for educational software. Applied Artificial Intelligence, 19(3–4), 363–392.Google Scholar
Brown, A. L., & Campione, J. C. (1994). Guided discovery in a community of learners. In McGilly, K. (Ed.), Classroom lessons: Integrating cognitive theory and classroom practice (pp. 229–270). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books.Google Scholar
Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32–42.Google Scholar
Chi, M. T., & Wylie, R. (2014). The ICAP framework: Linking cognitive engagement to active learning outcomes. Educational Psychologist, 49(4), 219–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. Analysis, 58(1), 7–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt. (1997). The Jasper Project: Lessons in curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Cohen, E. G. (1994). Restructuring the classroom: Conditions for productive small groups. Review of Educational Research, 64(1), 1–35.Google Scholar
Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Davenport, J. L., Kao, Y. S., Matlen, B. J., & Schneider, S. A. (2020). Cognition research in practice: Engineering and evaluating a middle school math curriculum. The Journal of Experimental Education, 88(4), 516–535.Google Scholar
Dede, C. (2006). Evolving innovations beyond ideal settings to challenging contexts of practice. In Sawyer, R. K. (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 551–566). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Design-Based Research Collective. (2003). Design-based research: An emerging paradigm for educational inquiry. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 5–8.Google Scholar
Dillenbourg, P. (1999). What do you mean by collaborative learning?. In Dillenbourg, P. (Ed.), Collaborative learning: Cognitive and computational approaches (pp. 1–19). Oxford, England: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Dillenbourg, P., & Self, J. (1992). People power: A human-computer collaborative learning system. In Frasson, C., Gauthier, G., & McCalla, G. (Eds.), The 2nd International Conference of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 608, pp. 651–660). London, England: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Dreyfus, H. L. (2002). Intelligence without representation – Merleau-Ponty’s critique of mental representation: The relevance of phenomenology to scientific explanation. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 1(4), 367–383.Google Scholar
Dunlosky, J., & Rawson, K. A. (Eds.). (2019). The Cambridge handbook of cognition and education. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Edelson, D. C., & Reiser, B. J. (2006). Making authentic practices accessible to learners: Design challenges and strategies. In Sawyer, R. K. (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 335–354). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Enyedy, N., Danish, J. A., Delacruz, G., & Kumar, M. (2012). Learning physics through play in an augmented reality environment. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 7(3), 347–378.Google Scholar
Fernandez-Duque, D., Baird, J. A., & Posner, M. I. (2000). Executive attention and metacognitive regulation. Consciousness and Cognition, 9(2), 288–307.Google Scholar
Flavell, J. H. (1963). The developmental psychology of Jean Piaget (Vol. 1). Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand.Google Scholar
Furtak, E. M., Seidel, T., Iverson, H., & Briggs, D. C. (2012). Experimental and quasi-experimental studies of inquiry-based science teaching: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 82(3), 300–329.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Gibson, J. J. (1977). The concept of affordances. In Shaw, R. and Bransford, J. (Eds.), Perceiving, acting, and knowing: Toward an ecological psychology (pp. 67–82). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Glenberg, A. M. (1997). What memory is for: Creating meaning in the service of action. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 20(1), 41–50.Google Scholar
Glenberg, A. M., Gutiérrez, T., Levin, J. R., Japuntich, S., & Kaschak, M. P. (2004). Activity and imagined activity can enhance young children’s reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96(3), 424–436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greeno, J. G. (1997). On claims that answer the wrong questions. Educational Researcher, 26(1), 5–17.Google Scholar
Heath, C., & Luff, P. (1991). Collaborative activity and technological design: Task coordination in the London Underground control rooms. Paper presented at the Proceedings of ECSCW’91.Google Scholar
Hmelo-Silver, C. E., Duncan, R. G., & Chinn, C. A. (2007). Scaffolding and achievement in problem-based and inquiry learning: A response to Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006). Educational Psychologist, 42(2), 99–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hughes, J. A., Shapiro, D. Z., Sharrock, W. W., Anderson, R. J., & Gibbons, S. C. (1988). The automation of air traffic control (Final Report SERC/ESRC Grant no. GR/D/86257). Lancaster, England: Department of Sociology, Lancaster University.Google Scholar
Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jacobson, M. J., Levin, J. A., & Kapur, M. (2019). Education as a complex system: Conceptual and methodological implications. Educational Researcher, 48(2), 112–119.Google Scholar
Jessen, F., Heun, R., Erb, M., et al. (2000). The concreteness effect: Evidence for dual coding and context availability. Brain and Language, 74(1), 103–112.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jordan, B., & Henderson, A. (1995). Interaction analysis: Foundations and practice. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 4(1), 39–103.Google Scholar
Klahr, D. (2019). Learning sciences research and Pasteur’s quadrant. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 28(2), 153–159.Google Scholar
Koedinger, K. R., Aleven, V., Roll, I., & Baker, R. (2009). In vivo experiments on whether supporting metacognition in intelligent tutoring systems yields robust learning. In Hacker, D. J., Dunlosky, J., & Graesser, A. C. (Eds.), Handbook of metacognition in education (pp. 383–412). New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Koedinger, K. R., & Corbett, A. T. (2006). Cognitive tutors: Technology bringing learning science to the classroom. In Sawyer, R. K. (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 61–77). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kolodner, J. L. (1991). The Journal of the Learning Sciences: Effecting changes in education. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 1(1), 1–6.Google Scholar
Krajcik, J., Czerniak, C., & Berger, C. (2002). Teaching science in elementary and middle school classrooms: A project-based approach (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Lamon, M., Secules, T., Petrosino, A. J., Hackett, R., Bransford, J. D., & Goldman, S. R. (1996). Schools for Thought: Overview of the project and lessons learned from one of the sites. In Schauble, L. and Glaser, R. (Eds.), Innovation in learning: New environments for education (pp. 243–288). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Larkin, M., Eatough, V., & Osborn, M. (2011). Interpretative phenomenological analysis and embodied, active, situated cognition. Theory & Psychology, 21(3), 318–337.Google Scholar
Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in practice: Mind, mathematics and culture in everyday life. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lehrer, R., Kim, M. J., Ayers, E., & Wilson, M. (2014). Toward establishing a learning progression to support the development of statistical reasoning. In Mahoney, A. P., Confrey, J., & Nyugen, K. H. (Eds.), Learning over time: Learning trajectories in mathematics education (pp. 31–60). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishers.Google Scholar
Lemke, J. L. (2000). Across the scales of time: Artifacts, activities, and meanings in ecosocial systems. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 7(4), 273–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindgren, R., & Johnson-Glenberg, M. (2013). Emboldened by embodiment: Six precepts for research on embodied learning and mixed reality. Educational Researcher, 42(8), 445–452.Google Scholar
Linn, M. C., & Slotta, J. D. (2000). WISE science. Educational Leadership, 58(2), 29–32.Google Scholar
Marx, R. W., Blumenfeld, P. C., Krajcik, J. S., et al. (2004). Inquiry-based science in the middle grades: Assessment of learning in urban systemic reform. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 41(10), 1063–1080.Google Scholar
McNamara, D. S., Kintsch, E., Songer, N. B., & Kintsch, W. (1996). Are good texts always better? Interactions of text coherence, background knowledge, and levels of understanding in learning from text. Cognition and Instruction, 14(1), 1–43.Google Scholar
Nathan, M. J. (2012). Rethinking formalisms in formal education. Educational Psychologist, 47(2), 125–148.Google Scholar
Nathan, M. J. (2014). Grounded mathematical reasoning. In Shapiro, L. (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of embodied cognition (pp. 171–183). New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Nathan, M. J. (2021). Foundations of embodied learning: A paradigm for education. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Nathan, M. J., & Alibali, M. W. (2010). Learning sciences. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 1(3), 329–345.Google Scholar
Nathan, M. J., & Swart, M. I. (2021). Materialist epistemology lends design wings: Educational design as an embodied process. Educational Technology Research and Development, 69(4), 1925–1954.Google Scholar
Nathan, M. J., & Walkington, C. (2017). Grounded and embodied mathematical cognition: Promoting mathematical insight and proof using action and language. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 2(1), 9.Google Scholar
Newell, A. (1990). Unified theories of cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ochs, E., Jacoby, S., & Gonzales, P. (1994). Interpretive journeys: How physicists talk and travel through graphic space. Configurations, 2(1), 151–171.Google Scholar
Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms: Children, computers, and powerful ideas. New York, NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Pashler, H., Bain, P. M., Bottge, B. A., et al. (2007). Organizing instruction and study to improve student learning [IES Practice Guide; NCER 2007–2004]. National Center for Education Research.Google Scholar
Penuel, W. R., Fishman, B. J., Cheng, B. H., & Sabelli, N. (2011). Organizing research and development at the intersection of learning, implementation, and design. Educational Researcher, 40(7), 331–337.Google Scholar
Perfetti, C. A. (1989). There are generalized abilities and one of them is reading. In Resnick, L. (Ed.), Knowing, learning, and instruction: Essays in honor of Robert Glaser (pp. 307–335). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Resnick, M., Maloney, J., Monroy-Hernández, A., et al. (2009). Scratch: Programming for all. Communications of the ACM, 52(11), 60–67.Google Scholar
Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rummel, N., Spada, H., & Hauser, S. (2009). Learning to collaborate while being scripted or by observing a model. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 4(1), 69–92.Google Scholar
Salomon, G. (Ed.). (1993). Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sawyer, R. K. (2005). Social emergence: Societies as complex systems. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Saxe, G. B. (1991). Culture and cognitive development: Studies in mathematical understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Sfard, A. (1998). On two metaphors for learning and the dangers of choosing just one. Educational Researcher, 27(2), 4–13.Google Scholar
Shaffer, D. W. (2017). Quantitative ethnography. Lulu.com.Google Scholar
Simon, H. A. (1996). The sciences of the artificial. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Songer, N. B. (1996). Exploring learning opportunities in coordinated network-enhanced classrooms: A case of kids as global scientists. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 5(4), 297–327.Google Scholar
Spillane, J. P., Reiser, B. J., & Reimer, T. (2002). Policy implementation and cognition: Reframing and refocusing implementation research. Review of Educational Research, 72(3), 387–431.Google Scholar
Stokes, D. E. (1997). Pasteur's quadrant: Basic science and technological innovation. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. M. (1997). Grounded theory in practice. London, England: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Suchman, L. A. (1987). Plans and situated actions: The problem of human-machine communication. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tatar, D., Roschelle, J., Knudsen, J., Shechtman, N., Kaput, J., & Hopkins, B. (2008). Scaling up innovative technology-based mathematics. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 17(2), 248–286.Google Scholar
Ur, S., & VanLehn, K. (1995). Steps: A simulated, tutorable physics student!. Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 6(4), 405–437.Google Scholar
Van den Broek, G., Takashima, A., Wiklund-Hörnqvist, C., et al. (2016). Neurocognitive mechanisms of the “testing effect”: A review. Trends in Neuroscience and Education, 5(2), 52–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Von Glasersfeld, E. (1989). Cognition, construction of knowledge, and teaching. Synthese, 80(1), 121–140.Google Scholar
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher mental process. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Yoon, S. A., & Hmelo-Silver, C. E. (2017). What do learning scientists do? A survey of the ISLS membership. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 26(2), 167–183.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×