1. Learning Communities in Classrooms: A Re-conceptualization of Educational Practice

2. Learning Community Classrooms and Schools = Communities of Learners?Classrooms and Schools = Communities of Learners? Communities of Learners = Learning Communities?Communities of Learners = Learning Communities? Tension: Collaboration vs. CompetitionTension: Collaboration vs. Competition

3. Learning Community Goal: to advance the collective knowledge and in that way to support the growth of individual knowledge (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994).

4. Why Learning Community? Learning-to-learn argument increasing knowledge, such that no one can absorb in school everything they will need to know in life the changing demands of work, where technology can carry out low-level tasks, requiring workers who can think abstractly and learn new skills

5. Why Learning Community? Multi-cultural argument Societies are becoming increasingly diverse through mixing of people from different cultures. This requires people to interact and work with people from different backgrounds.

6. Why Learning Community? Social-constructivist argument Knowledge Building Community Model – (Berieter and Scardamalia) Situated Cognition & Cognitive Apprenticeship Model (Collins and Brown)

7. Situated Cognition & Cognitive Apprenticeship Model Arguments Problem (inert knowledge) observed in school learning: –Many school practices reduce the likelihood that children will transfer the skills they learn to later problem solving that requires those skills –It is common for students to acquire algorithms, routines, and definitions that they cannot use and apply them in solving realistic problems. (Collins et al.)

8. Situated Cognition & Cognitive Apprenticeship Model Arguments What makes many school learning situations so ineffective? What makes many school learning situations so ineffective?

9. Situated Cognition & Cognitive Apprenticeship Model Arguments Wrong assumptions about knowledge and knowledge acquisition: –knowledge is a set of sentences or symbolic structures specifying the properties and relationships that match with the properties and relationships in the external world

10. Situated Cognition & Cognitive Apprenticeship Model Arguments theories, rules, operators, heuristics Problem Solving initial state: a set of symbols goal state

11. Situated Cognition & Cognitive Apprenticeship Model Arguments Wrong assumptions about knowledge and knowledge acquisition: –thinking is often conceived as something that goes on in the head without intimate physical interaction with the environments –seeing, thinking and action are not tightly linked

12. Cognition as Situated Perception and action are mutually shaping. Perception is altered by actively moving and manipulating things, just as action is controlled by properly coordinated perception. (Dewey 1958) Learning is a process that takes place in a participation framework, not in an individual mind. (Lave and Wenger 1991)

13. What are the clues for designing effective learning environments? What are the clues for designing effective learning environments?

14. Community-building Does opening of a chat room or discussion forum imply building of a virtual a community?Does opening of a chat room or discussion forum imply building of a virtual a community?

15. Clues for design effective learning environments Traditional Apprenticeship Learning

16. Clues for design effective learning environments What are the features of traditional apprenticeship?

17. Clues for design effective learning environments Characteristics of apprenticeship –Tangibility: learners engage in learning a physical, tangible activity –Visibility: the master makes the target process visible –Methodology: learners are being coached through modeling, scaffolding and fading –Community: learners are being immersed in a community of practice

18. Clues for design effective learning environments Community of practice/learning community provides –a variety of models of expertise –multiple perspectives in accomplishing a task –recognition of the distributive nature of expertise and knowledge –opportunity to observe other learners with various degrees of skill, thus providing benchmarks for one’s own progress –a sense of ownership

19. Translating traditional apprenticeship into cognitive apprenticeship Teachers need to provide scaffolding in both cognitive and social dimensions –cognitive scaffolding + fading –social scaffolding + fading

20. Translating traditional apprenticeship into cognitive apprenticeship Teachers need to –Identify the processes of the task and make them visible to students –Situate abstract tasks in authentic contexts, so that students understand the relevance of the work –Vary the diversity of situations and articulate the common aspects so that students can transfer what they learn (Collins et. al)

21. Reflections Where are we now? Where we should go? How we could get there?