UNDERSTANDING: THE PURPOSE OF LEARNING
Gordon Wells and Tamara Ball
University of California, Santa Cruz
Introduction
Against the backdrop of education as typically practiced in the United States, this chapter
proposes a conception of learning and teaching, rooted in Vygotsky’s (1987) theory of
learning and development, that treats understanding as the goal of education. Through
dialogic inquiry, students at all levels are challenged and assisted to engage
collaboratively in a spiral of knowing with respect to the areas of life that are of interest
and concern to them; the aim is that, through the development of individual
understanding achieved in collective knowledge building, they will be empowered to act
and think effectively and responsibly, both alone and in collaboration with others. We
present two case studies of attempts to enact this model in practice at our own university
and extrapolate from them to argue for the pivotal role of higher education in the life
trajectories of individuals and in the development of society as a whole.
Learning for the Twenty-first Century
The last hundred years have seen radical changes in the demands of the workplace as
well as in understanding about learning and development, but rather little change has
occurred in the organization of schooling. In its early years, universal public education
was, in large part, a response to a demand for semi-skilled workers on the assembly lines
of industrial mass production and to the need to rapidly organize growing urban centers
by imposing standardized procedures (Tyack, 1974). It also coincided with the increasing
dominance of behaviorist theories of learning, the widespread acceptance of the construct
of IQ, and the belief that individuals’ potential for learning is largely determined by their
genetic inheritance (which was itself believed to be strongly determined by race and
class) (Bowles & Gintis, 1976). For all these reasons, therefore, schools were organized
on the model of an assembly line and on the belief that learning, to be activated, required
sequentially organized training through compartmentalized instruction, drill and practice.
To a large extent, this is still the basis on which most public schools are organized, but
now with much more attention to “quality assessment” of the output (Oakes & Lipton
2003).
In the meantime, many of those assumptions about human development, learning
and teaching have been challenged by both theoretical and empirical research, which has
led to a very different conception of the ways in which they are interrelated (Case, 1996).
Here, we want to focus on three. First is the active nature of learning. Far from being
overwhelmed by a confusing barrage of sensory input, from the beginning the newborn
infant actively works on constructing meaning of the events in which he or she is
involved. These early efforts are largely accomplished through face to face interaction
with a primary caregiver (Wells, 1986). Theorists vary in how far they attribute the
meanings that are made – the concepts or schemata that are constructed – to the innate
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organization of the mind and brain, but all are agreed that the infant’s learning is
dependent on acting into the world and gaining information through feedback that allows
“hypotheses” to be tested and, when necessary, revised. Thus, central to this
“constructivist” conception of learning (Piaget 1970) is the now very generally accepted
recognition, that, because new learning necessarily builds on previous experience and
understanding, no two individuals make sense of new information in exactly the same
way.
The second change is the growing recognition that, despite the insights it has
yielded, constructivism is inadequate as a basis for planning education, since it accords so
little importance to the part played by teaching. Furthermore, it limits attention to the
learner as an individual, with little concern for the embeddedness of her or his
experiences in the particular social and cultural situations in which s/he is growing up
(Nelson 2007). To understand the essentially social nature of human development, by
contrast, we turn to the work of Vygotsky and his colleagues.
What makes humans different from all other species, they argued, is that their
development is not simply a matter of biological maturation, including maturation of the
brain; it is also necessarily cultural. From the beginning, human infants are enmeshed in
an environment shaped by the continuing effect of the solutions that preceding
generations have found to the problems of surviving and prospering in a particular
ecological niche; their learning thus necessarily involves discovering and taking over
these cultural solutions so that they can participate effectively in family and community.
Unlike Piaget, therefore, Vygotsky (1978) argued that learning is not a matter of
autonomous development but, instead, a kind of “cultural apprenticeship” in which, by
taking part in activities with others, the learner encounters and appropriates the tools and
practices of the community and, in the process, transforms them into personal resources
for individual thinking, feeling and acting.
Two critical differences from other species underpin the unique nature of human
development. The first is the infant’s innate predisposition to treat others as intentional
agents and to seek to understand their intentions; this makes possible deliberate learning
through imitation of others’ modeling (Tomasello 1999). The second is the emergence of
speech, which makes possible the more precise coordination of intentions and shared
reflection on the consequences of action. Together, these human characteristics account
for the amazing cultural accumulation of skills, knowledge and values in every society
and the manner in which their individual members’ development is shaped and fostered
by the assistance they receive as they attempt to participate in community activities
(Wells 1986).
This view of learning and development also helps to resolve the conundrum of the
relationship between the individual and society, which can now be recognized as one of
interdependence. Since society pre-exists individual learners, it is from society that they
appropriate the values, practices and knowledgeable skills that shape who they become;
conversely, it is equally the case that society is maintained and transformed over time
through the active participation of its individual members. Nevertheless, the relationship
between individual and society is never direct; rather, it is necessarily mediated by the
situated, productive activities and interpersonal interactions with specific others, in which
individuals participate on particular occasions. It is from this socially situated perspective
that we need to think about the goals and means of education.
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The third key understanding about learning that has emerged in the last century is
the importance of interest and engagement (Herrera & Becht, this volume). When the
task we are working on or the problem we are trying to solve is of real personal interest,
learning becomes engaging and the desire to achieve one’s personally set goal provides
the motivation to sustain that engagement. Ensuring the learner’s interest is thus of prime
importance in the context of formal education. As Vygotsky (1978) wrote about teaching
literacy, "teaching should be organized in such a way that reading and writing are
necessary for something … Writing should be incorporated into a task that is relevant and
necessary for life" (pp. 117-118).
Addressing this issue at about the same time from a similar perspective, Dewey
(1938) argued that “inquiry” should be the driving force of education; this has led, in
recent years, to the proposal that learning activities should take as their object significant
and often problematic features of the students' experience and environment and have as
their intended outcome a growth in the students' understanding, where this is taken to
mean, not simply factual knowledge, but knowledge growing out of, and oriented to,
socially relevant and productive action (Cohen, McLaughlin et al. 1993).
In figure 1, we have attempted to represent schematically the way in which we see
the relationship between learning and teaching in the context of formal education.
Figure 1. A Model of the Relationship Between Learning and Teaching
(adapted from Wells, 1999)
Learning is at the center of the diagram. As Lave & Wenger (1991) point out,
learning can occur without deliberate teaching – as is the case in people’s participation in
the activities that make up family and community life and in many work situations. In
most countries, however, it is considered important to make provision in schools and
colleges for the more systematic, guided learning that is required to master the various
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disciplines that underpin activities in technologically advanced societies. In such formal
educational contexts, where learning is an intended outcome of activity, teaching has two
major functions: the first is to select and introduce the overall topic of inquiry, provide
access to the necessary resources, and negotiate with the learners the challenges they will
take on; the second is to monitor the progress of individuals and groups and to provide
guidance and assistance as appropriate. This latter responsibility includes engaging
individuals and the whole class in “metacognitively” reviewing the products and the
processes of their learning in order that they may take greater control over, and
responsibility for, their efforts to achieve understanding (Olson & Bruner, 1996).
At one level, a cycle through the four quadrants of the diagram represents what is
involved in carrying out a single challenging activity. On such an occasion, one starts
with a personal resource of interpreted past experience, which provides the initial
orientation for making sense of what is new in the situation. The new is encountered as
information, either through feedback from action into the world or from reading, viewing
and listening to representations of the experiences, explanations and reflections of others.
However, for this information to lead to an enhancement of understanding - which is the
goal of all useful learning – it must be actively transformed and articulated with personal
experience through knowledge building (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006). Understanding is
especially valuable in today’s globalized world in so far as it allows agents to engage
more strategically, purposefully and collaboratively in complex activity.
Knowledge building can take a variety of forms but all are essentially social and
interactional in nature. Most typically, it takes place through face-to-face oral discourse
(which may, of course, include reference to artifacts present in the situation, such as
material tools, diagrams, graphs and quotations from written texts of present or absent
authors). The aim is to participate in a common, or shared knowledge building process to
which all contribute, whether overtly or through responding internally to the
contributions of others in the dialogue of inner speech. While knowledge building
certainly occurs in problem-solving activities in everyday life, it is – or should be – a
focal activity in formal educational contexts; thus, one of the teacher’s most important
tasks is to help students to develop the skills required for participation and to use them in
a sustained and focused manner. When this is achieved, Bereiter (1994) describes the
resulting dialogue as “progressive,” arguing that, although the issue students are
grappling with may already have been understood by experts elsewhere, the
understandings that class members are generating are new to them and they recognize
them as superior to their previous understanding. This accords well with Popper &
Eccles’ statement:
We can grasp a theory only by trying to reinvent it or to reconstruct it, and by
trying out, with the help of our imagination, all the consequences of the theory
which seem to us to be interesting and important… One could say that the process
of understanding and the process of the actual production or discovery are very
much alike. (Popper & Eccles 1977)
As is implied by this quotation, knowledge building and understanding are, in an
important sense, two faces of the same process, the first being other-directed and
undertaken in collaboration with others, while the second is inner-directed in that the
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understanding collectively achieved is appropriated by the individual participants in the
form of enhancement of their potential for future action.
So far, in explicating figure 1, we have focused on a single opportunity for
learning. But the diagram can also be seen as a representation of the cumulative nature of
learning. For, while insights are frequently achieved on particular occasions of
knowledge building in relation to a particular problem or issue, a change in the situation
and/or the introduction of new information may expose the limits of what one thought
one understood and thus call for further knowledge building. At a second level, therefore,
the diagram can be seen as a continuing spiral of learning over time as new challenges set
in motion new cycles of knowing.
It is at this level that the “improvable object” takes on its full significance as both
goal and outcome of inquiry activity. In everyday life, major developments in
understanding typically occur when participants are faced by a challenge that requires the
creation of a new artifact or practice or the improvement of an existing one. Indeed, the
major developments in human history have occurred in precisely that way, for example,
in the invention of the wheel as a means of transporting heavy objects or of writing as a
means of preserving ideas for future development. In educational contexts, such an
object can take many forms, ranging from a functioning model, or a symbolic
representation (e.g. a map) to a work of art (e.g. a sculpture, poem or a musical
performance) and from a scientific explanation to a geometric proof or diagram. Such an
improvable object provides a clear focus for discussion, particularly if it is a
representation of its creators’ current understanding and a rationale has to be given for
proposing a change. It is also likely to motivate revision, since the effect of making a
change to the object can readily be judged for the improvement it brings or fails to bring
about. At this second level, then, figure 1. represents a spiral progression through many
cycles of “coming to understand.”
Not represented in the diagram, but equally important, are the wider institutional
and societal contexts within which all particular events occur. These create both
affordances for, and constraints on, what can be achieved. Thus, the events that constitute
both individual cycles and progressions through the spiral need to be viewed from
multiple perspectives, including those of the individuals involved, the classroom
community, and the wider society of which that community is a part (see Meier, this
volume and Mathiasen, this volume). However, these perspectives are not so much
alternatives as different foci on the same overall activity; all have to be taken into account
in order to understand the full complexity of any classroom event (Rogoff, 2003). In sum,
in this model, learning is envisaged as a continuing “spiral of knowing,” as learners
continually traverse through the four quadrants of the cycle of knowing in particular
places and times (Wells 1999).
With modifications to take account of the age of the learners, this model is
relevant at all stages of development. For example, Wells (2007) has described how it fits
the data from studies of children’s development from infancy to adolescence and
Northedge (2002) has applied it to various forms of adult education. Below, we show
how it can be brought to bear on learning situations in higher education.
Learning in Higher Education
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When education in HE or at any other stage has as its goal an increase in
understanding as just defined, decisions about the content that is taught and the methods
and modes of “instruction” to be employed should not be the starting point and certainly
cannot be the only consideration. Since learners always construct new understanding on
the basis of their past experience and current understanding, teaching must be based on
“where students are coming from” and equally on their currently envisaged futures. But it
must also look beyond the classroom to society at large and to the problems that today’s
learners should be preparing to address. To the extent possible, therefore, planning and
enacting the curriculum should be conducted collaboratively with the learners involved.
Unfortunately, this conception of learning as the pursuit of understanding through
collaborative inquiry is rarely enacted, either in public schools or in higher education. In
many countries, schools are increasingly dominated by transmissional teaching that
allows no place for inquiry and collaborative knowledge building, since teachers are
constrained by state and national assessments of performance and by the perceived need
to prepare their students to be successful in navigating the demands they will face in
college. And with the continuing expansion of HE and the concern for “throughput” of
students and for material efficiency, a comparable retreat to transmissional teaching has
become prevalent in colleges and universities. Because of the enormous size of many
introductory classes and the “delivery” mode in which most classes are organized, many
undergraduates continue to use the same strategies and tactics for “doing school” that
they used to gain good grades in high school. Lacking encouragement to explore how
their academic studies relate to their personal goals and interests, students are at risk of
failing to see how they could use their developing understanding to contribute to the
world beyond academia. As a result, both students and society at large are failing to
benefit from the full potential of higher education.
Nevertheless, despite this gloomy overall picture, there are teachers at all levels
who do their best to engage their students in the dialogue of knowledge building that
aims for deeper understanding of the topics and issues studied. In public schools, there is
a growing number of teacher leaders who, conducting research on their own teaching, are
inspiring colleagues to join with them, for example in trying to find ways of ensuring that
all students, whatever their ethnic or class background or their command of the language
of instruction, are provided with the support they need to achieve their full potential
(Wells 2001; Gonzalez, Moll et al. 2005). And in colleges and universities there are those
who are attempting to engage their students, in some cases through action in the local
community, in exploring the broader implications of the knowledge they are encountering
in class (Cole 2006). In addition, some universities have created various forms of
“outreach” that aim to provide opportunities for students from minority and other
historically underserved groups to overcome the barriers that have excluded them from
higher education and from the careers for which this is a requirement.
In its founding mission statement, our own university gave high priority to
undergraduate education and, over the last half century, has attempted to honor that
commitment. However, as at other universities, growing enrollment at the graduate as
well as the undergraduate level, without the necessary matching additional financial
resources, together with the increasing pressure on faculty to conduct large-scale research
and to secure external funding to do so, has diluted the realization of the initial
commitment to high quality undergraduate education. Nevertheless, there continue to be
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initiatives of the kinds described above and in the remainder of this chapter we shall
present two illustrative examples, in which we have been personally involved.
Enacting Theories of Education in Practice
Five years ago, the first author of this chapter was given the assignment of teaching
Education 92B, “Introduction to Theories of Education,” a required course in our
departmental program and also one designated as meeting the university’s General
Education requirements. This course regularly enrolls 300 students and was, at that time,
taught through three 70 minute lectures each week with an additional 70 minute meeting
in sections of 30, each led by a graduate teaching assistant (TA). His first response was to
refuse, on the grounds that in its organization and manner of “delivery” the course was a
travesty of the educational principles that the department espoused. As he wrote:
What is particularly challenging about teaching this course is that, when students
are encountering theory about how teaching may best support learning, they
should do so in a context that enacts that theory. In other words, the instructor
should practice what s/he preaches. Following a CHAT (cultural-historicalactivity theory) approach to learning and teaching, I believe that learning-andteaching are interdependent processes, wherein teaching is seen as both leading
and supporting learning and where the teacher is also a learner with and from the
students.
Pressured to take on the course, he agreed to do so provided that it could be
redesigned to “practice what it preached.” At this point, the second author agreed to be
the lead TA and, together, we attempted to design a course that would indeed enact the
model described above. In other words, in addition to introducing students to the work of
educational theorists, we wanted to encourage them to adopt a reflective stance to their
own learning by challenging them to explore and critique their own learning practices,
their role in educational institutions, and their assumptions about how people learn. At
the same time, we wanted to make it possible for them to engage more directly and
critically with their peers by providing opportunities for small groups to connect, relate
and compare the diversity of their own previous learning experiences with their
experience and understanding of the topics presented in this course. Finally we wanted
the format of the course to foster a sense of agency and ownership among the students, a
design that would position them as both protagonists and authors of knowledge-building
activities rather than as conscripted information-processors with regard to the ideas of
acknowledged experts in the field.
Briefly, the design we settled on retained the three meetings per week but changed
their function. Key to the new organization was that, within the ten sections of 30
students, they would work in self-selected “study groups” of four to six students. In each
week, the three meetings were as follows: on Monday there was a lecture for all the
students and TAs; then, at some time during the remainder of the week, each study group
met for one to one-and-a-half hours on their own and reported on their work at their
following section meeting; finally, at the section meetings, the TAs encouraged their
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students to make connections between their group activities and the readings for the
week.
In the first half of the course, the study groups were presented with a variety of
tasks that highlighted different forms of intellectual challenge that might be incorporated
into curricular units in schools. Then, having completed the task for the week, they were
encouraged to adopt a “metacognitive stance” to the processes in which they had engaged
and to relate them to the theories they were encountering in the required readings.
Building on these earlier activities, the final challenge presented to each group was to
design a grade-appropriate curriculum unit, using those theoretical principles that they
had appropriated from the course. One of the main intentions for these study-groups was
that they would foster a more intimate peer-network, a “safe-space” in which, in the
absence of authority figures, students would be more likely to engage in knowledge
building and less likely to assume a passive role.
The large weekly lecture session, in contrast to the more student-centered
orientation of the other aspects of the course, provided an introduction to each new topic
and an overview of the principles and ideas that it involved. At the same time, in keeping
with CHAT theory, each lecture also incorporated more interactive episodes in which
video-clips, demonstrations, and open-ended questions were used to stimulate interaction
between students, followed by more general discussion, in an attempt to involve them
more actively in collaborative knowledge building and thereby to sustain their interest
and engagement. Finally, within the overall organizational framework, section meetings
were intended to provide an arena in which the different levels and aspects of the course
could be mediated and integrated.
A further – and, for many, a disconcerting – feature of the new course
organization was the absence of tests and exams. In their place, students were required to
submit a substantial portfolio at the end of the course, in which they demonstrated their
understanding and engagement with the theories presented in two written assignments
and in regular journal entries. Students were informed on the first day of class that they
would not be receiving formal grades for individual assignments but that the final grade
would be based on these portfolios and on their participation week by week. In this way
we hoped to move students away from the traditional paradigm, in which engagement
with course material tends to be motivated by external incentives. As we knew from
experience, test questions that elicit single correct answers can lead students to package
and memorize information with little regard for how it functions in a system or relates to
their own purposes. Instead, our intention was for them to take ownership of, and
responsibility for, their own learning and to devote their time and effort to developing
lines of inquiry that they perceived to be personally and socially relevant rather than
detached from their lives and interests.
At the end of the course each year, the students were asked to complete a
questionnaire that sought their reactions to the different aspects of the course format as
well as its content; they were also invited to offer their ideas about how the course could
better meet their needs. Many took up this latter opportunity and their suggestions helped
us to make several significant improvements, as we shall discuss below.
Reviewing the responses received over the years, it is clear that some
undergraduates were disconcerted – at least initially – by our efforts to grant them greater
agency as inquiring learners. Here is a comment from the first year.
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I have found myself struggling to create my own structure in this class, but despite
what I create as a structure… there are still expectations…. Usually the
expectations of the teacher create the goals of the student, especially in this
university setting. And this is where I am faltering… I don’t know the expectations
of the teacher (except that I have to turn in a portfolio at the end) and so my goals
concerning the class aren’t forming well.
A major reason for the difficulty that such students experienced was insightfully
expressed by another member of the class.
Our current educational system takes the structured aspect … to such an extreme
that this approach ends up arresting the student’s ability to function in and take
advantage of the other approach. People seem to have such a hard time accepting
Education 92B’s philosophy and expectations and this is only because their
previous school learning developed certain modes of operation, habits,
approaches to problem solving, ways of thinking that stand in stark contrast to
the 92B approach. Their acquired skills lose their meaning and capacity for use
in this new setting. Undoubtedly it must prove perturbing for students to find
themselves in a context where they are unable to use the habits and skills they
have refined through their years in school.
However, from the outset, there were also many students who did understand and
appreciate the value of having to collaborate in constructing both questions and answers
rather than simply accepting a teacher’s protocol. The following comment also shows
that the emphasis we placed on creating opportunities for students to reflect
metacognitively on their experiences during the course enabled some students to gain a
better understanding of themselves as learners.
As with all aspects of life, diversity is key. When a problem has a definite
answer, once it is found, the learning essentially stops. I feel therefore the acts in
which we all shared and took in the strategies and thought processes of our group
members was more beneficial. Listening to what they are doing may make your
mind in turn start looking at new strategies which would not have been considered
on an individual basis.
Furthermore, it was clear that the majority of students really enjoyed the
opportunity to work in small groups without an instructor – although some were initially
skeptical about how the work would be distributed among them and the value or
feasibility of being given responsibility for deciding how to use that time. However,
despite appreciating this novel opportunity, a substantial proportion remained unclear
about how the group activities they were asked to carry out were related to the central
topics of the course.
This led us to make several changes. The first was to consolidate the group
activities under a single inquiry theme that runs throughout the course. In the most recent
offering, we chose the theme of “sustainability” because of its current importance not
only for them but for the global community as a whole. In the first half of the term,
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groups chose a particular aspect of the theme to research in preparation for a mid-term
forum at which they presented their findings to their peers; then, in the second half, they
drew on the same material to construct a curriculum unit for a grade level of their choice.
The second step we took was to be more explicit about our reasons for organizing
the course into two phases with respect to this theme. We explained our conviction of the
value of an “improvable object” as a focus for group inquiry and pointed out that the
forum presentation and the curriculum unit were, together, intended to serve this
function. We also emphasized that the various activities they undertook in creating and
improving these objects would provide a solid basis for their metacognitive reflection on
their own and others’ learning. In sum, we tried to explain how the processes in which
they engaged in relation to this inquiry theme would allow them, as active learners, to
experience, in practice, the theories of learning-and-teaching that the course was about.
On the evidence from the most recent students’ evaluations, these changes seem
to have been successful. Many more students than in previous years came to value their
experiences during the course, reporting that, for the first time during their undergraduate
careers, they had learned to work toward their own personal goals and, as a result, felt a
new sense of empowerment around their education and their work. The positive tone of
the following, fairly representative, quotations suggests that these students are now
“getting the point” and enjoying as well as benefiting from the experience.
It has been a real rewarding experience taking this course. I signed up for it at the
last minute to satisfy a [General Education requirement], yet it has transpired into
so much more than that. I applaud and am inspired by the dedication, willingness,
and desire people have shown (TA's included) to change our education system for
the better. I have learned a great deal about what needs to change not only in the
classroom, but in the public's eye as well, when in comes to assessment, teaching,
and understanding. If I ever go into teaching in the future, I will look back on this
course as one of the cornerstones that sparked my interests in informing society of
not only how to teach, but how to enlighten the public on the many issues that we
are facing in our warming world.
I really appreciated [the] method of teaching. It inspired me to want to learn new
ways of learning.
Our group project on sustainability was a welcome twist to how to teach a course. I
did not like it at first, but as the course progressed, I found it to be very effective.
Preparing a curriculum unit was difficult but it really hammered home everything
we had done up to that point and all of the effective teaching methods we learned.
Honestly our project and the ones I saw in my section were better than most
activities I’ve ever done in classes I’ve taken in elementary or secondary school!
I felt that by having to develop our own curriculum we were carried to a better
understanding of specific theories. This class was amazing.
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These comments suggest that, as a result of the form as much as the content of the
course, many students had not only changed their perceptions of learning and teaching,
but had also achieved a better understanding of themselves as learners and of their
responsibility as well as their potential to contribute to the improvement of the world
around them.
While the undergraduate course just described was explicitly designed to enact
the model of learning-and-teaching represented by the model in figure 1, the second case
study concerns a program that already existed on our campus. Nevertheless, as will be
seen, its underlying aims were very much in conformity with the same model.
Learning and Teaching in a Science & Technology Research Center
Since the year 2000, our campus has been home to the headquarters of the Center
for Adaptive Optics (CfAO), one of eleven interdisciplinary Science & Technology
Centers supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation; its charge is to develop and
implement advances in educational practice and broaden student participation. In the
opening years of its operation, the NSF officers, reviewing the progress of CfAO towards
the above objectives, challenged CfAO leaders to be bolder in the development of
educational initiatives. At the same time, members of the organization recognized the
continuing need to develop structures and programs that would address apparent
inequities involving the race/ethnicity, class and gender of those working in advanced
science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). In response to these
challenges, the incoming Director of Education and Human Resources at CfAO, Lisa
Hunter, worked with center leaders and members to strategize a framework for new
educational initiatives.
In both academia and in industry, those who play the most critical roles as mentors and
instructors have rarely trained as educators and so have had little exposure to learning theory
or research in the social sciences. So, while these mentors have developed expert knowledge
and skill in their respective fields, they have typically spent less time thinking about how to
effectively facilitate the entry of newcomers into the profession. The lack of preparation of
member researchers to teach in higher education was recognized by the educational leaders of
CfAO, as was the organization’s ability to take the initiative in this respect, given its strategic
position and resources.
To this end, striving to develop research-based practices grounded in the learning
sciences, a core group of CfAO members embraced the principle of “inquiry” as a
pedagogical strategy and, working with staff at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, began to
develop curriculum that would serve the professional development of current and future
science and engineering faculty, while creating advancement opportunities for undergraduate
students from non-dominant backgrounds who might otherwise not have had access to
advanced research in STEM fields. One of the most substantial outcomes of these efforts was
the concurrent development of two interdependent strands: an annual Professional
Development Program (PDP) and an internship program specifically designed to increase
access to college for students from non-dominant backgrounds.
In the first strand, the professional development program, current and future science
and engineering faculty are re-positioned as “the learners” who, with partners of their choice,
complete several inquiry activities that have been carefully designed to contrast different
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pedagogical strategies. These activities enable PDP participants to investigate and reflect on
their experiences as learners (or as “shadow” facilitators if they are returning participants)
while concurrently exploring and discussing literature on educational practice. PDP
participants spend the last few days of this immersion workshop in “design teams,” creating
sets of learner-centered content, process, attitudinal, and community goals and then working
“backwards” from these goals to create lab activities tailored to specific venues. Members of
these curriculum design teams are then responsible for trying out their planned activities on
site in order to develop their skills as facilitators and to explore the outcomes of the resulting
learning activities. This iterative process of experiencing inquiry-oriented learning, reflecting
on that experience in light of new information about learning theory, and then implementing
the designs they have created, promotes a sense of “ownership” and thus a conscious
investment in understanding contingencies and intersections between learning and teaching
that they might otherwise take for granted.
The second strand of the initiative integrates college-level students into the research
environment through a thoughtfully designed internship program. Each summer, before going
to their respective research sites, CfAO interns spend an intensive introductory week together,
learning about ongoing research in the world of adaptive optics and preparing to participate in
cutting-edge research projects. This “Short Course” includes a range of “self-guided” yet
highly structured lab activities that are designed by PDP participants to encourage CfAO
interns to practice valued research skills while gaining confidence as scientists and engineers.
The Short Course thus not only serves as an intensive transition into CfAO research for
students who might not otherwise have access to this elite community, but it also serves as a
“teaching lab” for the graduate student mentors.
All eight of the interns interviewed by the second author of this chapter spoke about
how strikingly different the Short Course learning activities felt in comparison to the many
“lab” exercises they had completed at school. One of the biggest differences, they said, was
that they did not start the activity already knowing the “answer” they were “supposed to get.”
Several noted discovering that what they initially ignored as “mistakes” often later proved to
be important sources of information that led to the resolution of the problem or question they
were investigating. One intern confided her realization during the Short Course that not only
could she not “differentiate between [her] findings and [her] conclusions” but that she had
never previously thought to “look for the difference in the first place.” In addition, they all felt
that Short Course activities were critical for building the confidence necessary to be able to
work on problems or questions that at first they found incomprehensible. Indeed in an
interview midway through the summer program in 2006, one intern specifically credited Short
Course activities for helping him move past pre-existing fears of feeling incapable when
uncertain about how to begin work on a research problem:
“Remember how I told you – what’s the worst possible scenario? I told you: if I have
no idea about how to approach the problem? Well it happened! ‘Cause like for the –
ummm – for the color one, for the filter one that I did the presentation on, I had no
idea how to approach it and I was tripping out… And my interpretation of the question
was way different than [my partner’s]….I was like, what kind of question are we
trying to answer?! …But in the end, I liked it… I knew then I could have that feeling
and get through it, and that helps for the internship for sure.”
12
Finally, five interns confessed that whereas in school they were unwilling to share
their work and felt competitive with other individuals, during this course, because the
activities explicitly required innovation and creativity, they unequivocally felt they benefited
from working with others.
As facilitators during Short Course activities, graduate students are encouraged to
draw on their PDP training in the effort to counter certain tendencies they understand to be
common to classrooms and other instructional settings. In typical classrooms, students
working within a “fixed” set of parameters may come to expect that the “answers” they
produce have also been “fixed” and will be evaluated by an authority. The goal then becomes
to “finish” rather than to work on knowledge-building. Consequently little initiative or effort
is required on the students’ own part to determine the validity or limitations of their
conclusions or how the issue could be explored further. Such assumptions are evident in the
following exchanges between two interns, Abu and Keri, who were using hand-held
spectrometers, colored filters, an adjustable resistor and a selection of different light bulbs to
investigate whether changing the brightness of a light source affects the spectrum. This
activity had been scheduled to occupy the better part of two days, but after only ten or fifteen
minutes of peering through spectrometers at their station, Abu and Keri decided “they were
done”:
Abu
Keri
Abu
Keri
Abu
Keri
Abu
Its not changing the color it's just making it More brighter or not. But so,
But we can look at it directly [rather than through the
plastic filter]
oh yeah
((looks through the spectrometer again, this time bypassing
the blue filter)) Yeah it just gets dark. It’s still not
really changing
Yeah I know its not changing at all! Well…. we're done!
Well, but that’s sort of boring.
The graduate students facilitating this pair of interns were responsible for noticing
these moments and finding ways to motivate and sustain further problem-solving activity. So
when Abu, who was confused about how they were expected to spend the remainder of the
allotted time, approached Jan, one of the facilitators, asking if they were really expected to
continue the same investigation into the next day, Jan responded with an attempt to kindle the
spirit of inquiry by suggesting that scientists are never done: “There's always more questions.
You can always push it farther. You can understand everything: the whole universe comes
together.”
Subsequently, turning back to his station, where Keri was writing down their
conclusion (“it doesn’t change it just makes it more defined”) in her notebook, Abu ventured a
way they might explore further (“we can try to explain WHY it doesn’t change”), then offered
his own “theory”. However, he was again persuaded by Keri that a basic statement would be
sufficient to satisfy their instructors.
Abu
Yeah we're not changing the color too much - my theory is we're not
changing the xxxxx wavelength
Keri
Ooooohhh (laughs)
- there you go
13
Abu
Keri
(laughing) Ah, we just need to use xxx wavelength or xxxx
words
Yeah exactly, big words. So we're done.
A fundamental challenge for all instructors who are leading knowledge-building
activities involves balancing attention to curricular or pedagogical goals with moves that elicit
action and contributions from learners. Often, when instructors see that a student is confused
or straying from a course of action that will lead to the expected or normative result/outcome,
their instinct is to step in and offer “help” in the form of a clarifying explanation or
demonstration, or by authoritatively redirecting the learner’s actions without pausing
sufficiently to first ascertain more about the learner’s perspective and focus. Indeed this was
true of many of the mentor-intern interactions we observed in the CfAO internship program,
and especially those of mentors who had not participated in the PDP. To combat this
tendency, CfAO graduates facilitating Short Course activities are constantly encouraged,
before stepping in, to draw on their skills as researchers to actively seek out evidence of how
the interns are making sense of new information. And if and when they do step in, their
challenge is to offer suggestions that are responsive to the learner’s focus rather than narrowly
prescriptive of how they should act or think. This is important because, for knowledgebuilding to be collaborative and productive, it is important for learners and instructors to share
a joint focus.
For example, noticing that Abu and Keri, having decided they were “done” with their
investigation, had drifted into a conversation about their nightlife, Eben, another facilitator,
approached the pair and, drawing on his PDP training, asked them about the question they
were investigating. This was a way for Eben to give interns the “floor”, by opening up the
dialogue and thereby learning more about what they had understood up to that point. Eben’s
own understanding was that light sources with a higher luminosity emit a greater proportion
of light at frequencies that appear blue in color. However, Eben refrained from immediately
evaluating their conclusion or indicating that it was in need of revision – as often happens in
classrooms (Cazden,1988; Mehan, 1979; Nystrand, 1997) – and instead offered a way in
which they could expand their investigation and gather more information. In so doing, he
continued to position the interns as the decision makers and instigators of further problem
solving action:
Eben
Keri
Have you looked at any other bulbs? Because you can
actually unplug that bulb.
Oh, and try different ones? That's a good idea. OK.
Nevertheless, mastering the creativity and discipline required to maintain learnercentered assistance and guidance while aiming to satisfy content and process goals planned
for the activity remained challenging for the graduate facilitators. At times, in their struggle to
find that balance, they sometimes slipped into more didactic “explainer” roles. At other times,
their own understanding of the phenomena at stake seemed to prevent them from
understanding the full relevance or potential of the connections the interns were making and
this led, in turn, to breakdowns in communication or other impasses. For instance, the
following day, after they had had the opportunity to use more sensitive instruments, Abu and
Keri became invested in understanding the differences between the spectra produced by a
fluorescent bulb and those produced by incandescent bulbs. Excited about their discovery,
14
Abu eventually articulated a fairly sophisticated hypothesis to explain the differences they had
noticed:
Abu
…something that I think that is exciting: all these- all these how do you
call these bulbs?
Jan
Incandescent
Abu
- these incandescent bulbs - they all had the same kind of spectra lines
irrespective of the watts. This one is different, it has-
Jan
Oh, interesting.
Abu
- like discrete lines
Keri (to Abu) Non-continuous, is that what you said?
Abu
I'm just guessing that the reason for that [the “continuous” spectra] is due
to electro magnetic radiation and that [the “discrete” spectra] is due to the
pressure of the gas
Jan
Abu
So they are different things?
This one [spectrum produced by the fluorescent bulb] is
electrons that move from one electron level to another, so
it jumps, so you are going to have that gap
Jan
This [spectrum produced by incandescent bulb] is due to
something else?
Abu
This one [incandescent spectrum] is just due to the heat,
Jan
ahhhh
Abu
- so it’s just continuous.
Abu’s hypothesis was the product of a divergent line of inquiry that he had initiated with
his partner, fairly independently of input or assistance from the instructors. Indeed this was
part of what made it interesting and “exciting” to him. On this occasion, Jan interpreted Abu’s
account as explaining an “interesting” but “sort of tangential effect” and then went on to make
suggestions that drew attention away from comparisons of the two kinds of bulbs and back to
the narrower relationship between temperature and blue light. However, still interested in their
own discovery, Abu and Keri treated her repeated references to making use of the available
thermometers as more a distraction than a helpful hint.
As it was, the learners’ own agenda, namely to come up with something “new,” and the
instructor’s commitment to curricular objectives impeded the coordination of the kind of joint
focus, necessary to establish and sustain collaborative work on an “improvable object”. With a
different facilitation strategy at this phase of investigation – one which further pursued the
line of inquiry initiated by Abu, Jan might ultimately have led these interns to grasp the
relationships between heat, intensity, and the frequency of wavelengths at the “blue” end of
the visible spectrum – as intended by the designers of the activity. Thus, through even more
sensitive, precise and responsive facilitation moves it could have been possible for Jan to help
combine the partially divergent agendas that surfaced on this occasion.
Short Course activities are intended to use strategic timing and careful selection of
materials rather than direct instruction to scaffold activity, allowing the interns to retain a
sense of initiative and control of their own learning so that later activities can build on
earlier ones incrementally. Throughout the Short Course a range of different skills is
introduced in sequence while procedural supports are deliberately withdrawn. The aim is
to enable the interns to become more confident in and aware of their ability to manage
15
their own investigations. But, as this example shows, it is often a challenge to manage
this transition. Facilitating this kind of learning is a significant departure from more
traditional teaching approaches, and it requires skill, guidance and practice.
As is clear from this brief account of the CfAO initiative, enacting what we have
called “dialogic inquiry” is a challenge for teachers and students alike, even when, as in
this case, conditions are favorable – a small group of specially selected interns working
with prepared mentors and facilitators in a self-contained program. In the Short Course,
both teachers and learners are struggling with a lifetime of classroom instruction in
science that encourages the teacher to explain and the learner to expect to be given the
“answer.”
Reflections on the Case Studies
While there are obviously important differences between the two cases we have briefly
described, they share some important commonalities. One, unexpected, feature common
to both cases was the “culture shock” that interns and undergraduates experienced when
they were challenged to embark on self-directed inquiries that required them to formulate
and attempt to evaluate answers to their own questions rather than accept the questions
asked and answers expected by the experts. Many of the students and interns who
contributed their perspectives commented on how different their experiences were from
what they had encountered in school; indeed, some of the undergraduates were aggrieved
as well as disoriented by the unfamiliarity of the new approach that they were suddenly
expected to adopt. Although most were eventually able to take steps in this direction, we
learned how important it is to employ explicit structures to ease the transition.
As we noted in the introduction, a – perhaps unintended – result of the imposed
emphasis on coverage and the importance of the economy of grades is that schools tend
to inculcate learning strategies that, once acquired and found effective for success in
“doing school,” are hard for students to give up. This was particularly the case for the
undergraduates in 92B, since their familiar strategies continued to be successful for many
of the courses they were taking concurrently. What we have realized, therefore, is that it
is not sufficient simply to explain to students why the “banking” model of education
(Freire, 1970) is not appropriate for life in the 21st century. Nor is it enough to emphasize
the need to understand rather than merely become acquainted with the material that is
presented in lectures and in the accompanying reading. We recognize that our attempt to
explain our expectations and create opportunities for inquiry and wait for the students to
take up the invitation must be accompanied by a great deal more structured support. If
you can’t swim, it is scary to be pushed in at the deep end along with many other novice
swimmers if there is only one lifeguard on duty.
In this respect, the intensive short course that launches the CfAO internship is
much more successful. As the vignette presented above makes clear, such success
depends to a considerable extent on the ready availability of teachers and mentors who
are attuned to the interns’ perspectives and skilled in providing appropriate guidance and
assistance. Here, in addition to the carefully planned exploratory activities that encourage
interns to ask and attempt to answer their own questions, there are also multiple
opportunities for them to reflect on and explain their developing understanding with peers
and teachers who are interested in what they are doing and thinking. For this reason,
16
although it will be more challenging in the case of the large undergraduate class, we have
become even more convinced of the importance of carefully planned opportunities to
support them in the transition to self-directed learning.
As the model of learning presented above predicts, the inclusion of “improvable
objects” significantly mediated the creation of new understandings in both the case
studies. CfAO interns, working on problems posed during different Short Course inquiry
activities, were continually producing and improving explanations of the outcomes of
their investigations. As they gradually took responsibility for inventing, sharing and
improving their public explanations of the (albeit partly staged) discoveries they were
making, the interns came to a deeper understanding of the processes and phenomena at
stake in their investigations. Similarly, in the large undergraduate class, the task of
designing a curriculum unit and defining a focal theme together with a group of peers
challenged the students to apply the information they had encountered in the readings and
in lectures, as they made decisions about what to include and how to justify those
decisions. This was also true for the graduate students participating in the PDP, and those
who served as Teaching Assistants for 92B, many of whom were encountering learning
theory for the first time. PDP participants drew on reflective discussions about their
shared experience of learning activities that took place in the earlier workshop as they
grappled with team members over elements of the design they were working on; and in
our regular planning meetings the Teaching Assistants were participating in forms of
learning that they were simultaneously trying to facilitate in the section meetings for
which they were responsible.
We firmly believe that it is largely through the sustained and “dialogic” effort of
creating and improving their curriculum units and their constituent activities that both the
undergraduates and the PDP graduate student participants transformed and synthesized
their understanding of how people learn and how teaching can best support learning. In
both cases, the designing of a curriculum unit functioned as an “improvable object” that
motivated a spiral of cycles of action and knowledge-building. In addition, we found that,
because work on an improvable object sustained and focused their engagement, the
learners became more ready to ask pertinent questions and to voluntarily contribute their
emerging understandings during public knowledge-building events.
Thus far, we have emphasized the importance of providing opportunities for work
on an improvable object in supporting students’ learning. However, the concept of an
improvable object applies equally to the teachers and mentors who are responsible for
planning opportunities for productive learning over successive years. In both examples,
for those who were involved in planning and implementing a curricular design, the
improvable object was the course itself. At this level, the undergraduates’ and interns’
situated actions and written reflections in each iteration provided the information that
spurred those responsible to engage in the kind of knowledge-building that enabled them
to better understand how to improve their respective program or course. And for our own
part, the writing of this chapter has also involved a spiral of knowing, as successive drafts
have been improved by the comments and suggestions we have received from each other
and from our fellow contributors to this volume.
Conclusion
17
In contributing to this timely volume, we are in agreement with our fellow authors that
there is a pressing need to find ways to improve the quality of the learning opportunities
that students encounter in Higher Education. However, we contend that it is not sufficient
to focus on HE in isolation from the wider society of which it is a part, for colleges and
universities play a pivotal role not only in shaping the lifelong learning of all individuals
but also – albeit less directly – in channeling the development of society as a whole.
Here, we should like to draw attention to three “levels” that we think are important.
First, the designation “higher education” implies that students entering college or
university have already completed a basic education and have excelled in the course of it;
indeed, the extent of their excellence is the chief criterion for admission. However, since
entry to higher education is increasingly the goal to which all young people are
encouraged to aspire, the entry criteria have a powerful impact on the organization of the
preceding stages. One baleful effect, in schools in the U.S. and elsewhere, is the early
tracking of students according to their apparent ability to meet these criteria and the
generally restricted learning opportunities provided for those who do not (Oakes 1990).
An equally serious issue is the use of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and Grade Point
Average (GPA) in high school as the metrics of success and the influence these have on
the way in which learning is conceptualized and assessed. When reception and
memorization of mainly factual information is what counts, as this is what can be
measured by multiple-choice tests, and when breadth of coverage rather than depth is
emphasized, educational institutions imply and students learn that being successful is
more about developing strategies for doing well on tests than attempting to understand
the implications or applications of what is being learned.
A second way in which universities and colleges impact education in the
preceding years is through their role in preparing future educators. This has the potential
to be an important means of improving public education. By equipping those who will
teach children and administer schools with a more critical and reflective understanding of
what should be the goals of schooling and of effective ways of achieving them,
university-based professional development can significantly affect educational practice at
the local level. It can also fire teachers and administrators with a commitment to social
justice and to the eradication of inequitable treatment of non-dominant groups. Similar
arguments hold for professional preparation programs in other fields. Since HE is
responsible for preparing students for a wide variety of professional careers, it has a
strong influence on the values and the kinds of knowledge that shape the various
professions and organize the world of business and industry.
But most important, in our view, is that the majority of students entering HE in
the U.S. and in other countries are at the point where they are exploring and establishing
the goals and values for their future lives. Clearly, advanced academic study in the
discipline(s) relevant to their personal interests and envisaged careers should be an
essential part of their undergraduate learning. But, in addition, it is important that they
develop a wider understanding of the social, cultural and political contexts in which the
knowledge they are gaining will be put to use. In other words, HE should not only focus
on the development of individual expertise in a specific discipline or professional field
but should also contribute to the creation of a more just and democratic society by
providing opportunities for students to develop understanding of contemporary issues and
18
the disposition to participate critically and collaboratively in public discussion in order to
take effective action (Dewey, 1966).
We are not suggesting that institutions of HE fail to recognize their
responsibilities to students and society at large. But we are suggesting that they tend to
respond administratively and in a piecemeal fashion: deciding what courses need to be
taught, what content they should include and who should be responsible for teaching and
assessing them. While organizational issues of this kind need to be resolved, to give them
priority runs the risk of short-circuiting broader consideration by teachers and students of
the more fundamental questions about the kind of learning experiences that would be
most appropriate in fulfilling these responsibilities.
The two case studies that we have presented in this chapter are attempting to
fulfill these responsibilities within the limits of their brief duration. The scientists who
attend the PDP workshop are preparing to mentor the CfAO interns, while many of the
undergraduates who take the Theories of Education course are seriously thinking about a
career as public school teachers. For this reason, it is essential that these courses enact as
well as present a theory of learning-and-teaching that is appropriate for the challenges
facing the global citizens of today. Unfortunately, most educational institutions are still
locked in an out-of-date, mechanical conception of learning and teaching that will be
perpetuated at all levels unless the educational leaders of tomorrow themselves
experience and learn to enact a conception of learning that has as its goal the
development of understanding as a basis for effective and responsible action. This is the
challenge that Higher Education must take up if it is to meet its responsibilities as the
pivot in the system.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all those who made this chapter possible, including the
participants in the two case studies, our editors, and the other authors contributing to this
anthology. Special thanks go to Lisa Hunter, Director of Education and Human
Resources at the Center For Adaptive Optics, for her substantial contributions to the
preparation of this chapter and helpful suggestions during the revision process. This work
was supported in part by the National Science Foundation Science and Technology
Center for Adaptive Optics, managed by the University of California at Santa Cruz under
cooperative agreement AST 98-76783. We are also grateful for the support offered by the
Center for Teaching Excellence, University of California at Santa Cruz.
21