Week+7+questions

Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989) mention that "activity, concept, and culture are interdependent...Learning must involve all three" (p. 33, right column). Given our discussions over the last couple of weeks, are all three of these pieces also components of learning in radical constructivism? of learning in weak constructivism? of learning in social constructivism? (JE, 2/22)

Agree or disagree with Brown, Collins, and Duguid's (1989) claim that authentic activities are defined as the ordinary practices of the culture (see pg. 34) (JE, 2/22).

The JPFs and practitioners do not require qualitative changes from what they normally do and this transitions them better to what they are aimed at. How can qualitative constancy be assured for students as they go to school so that the transition into school culture is smooth? (NA)

Beach's (1995) analysis cited by Cobb and Bowers (1999) generates more questions. In this study, the shopkeepers did better in arithmetic reasoning compared to students because their goals in the adult education classes was to generate more interests. Should learners become apprentices before going to school, so that the goals of learning will be in harmony with career goals? Should learners who want to become doctors first own a clinic or hospital before going to school? (NA).

Palinscar (1989) believes that the thesis of Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989) was that "by ignoring the situated nature of cognition, education defeats its own goal of providing useable, robust knowledge" (p. 32, of Brown, et al., p. 5 of Palinscar). Do you agree that this was the thesis? If no, what do you believe is the real thesis? (JE, 2/22)

How well do the four claims of Anderson, Reder, and Simon (1996) mesh with the situated cognition of Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989)? (JE, 2/22)

This is a fishing expedition for comments: How do you feel about Greeno's (1997) rewording of Anderson, Reder, and Simon's (1996) questions? Do you agree or disagree with their response (Anderson, Reder, and Simon, 1997)? (JE, 2/22)

In Cobb (2007) four theoretical perspectives were delineated: experimental psychology, cognitive psychology, sociocultural theory, and distributed cognition. It seems to me that situative theories (e.g., Anderson et al., 1996; Brown et al., 1989) would be classified as a sociocultural theory. I then question what is the real difference between situative learning theory and distributed cognition? [Is it even useful to spend time categorizing theories in this way? What does it add to our understanding of the big ideas?] (NF, 2/22)

What epsitemological assumptions underly situative and cognitive theories of learning? What is the assumed nature of "knowledge" in each theory? Maybe this an easy question to answer, but I feel a little uncertain about it. Is it correct to say that cognitive theories assume a constructivist epistemology? What about situative theories? Is there a particular epistemological perspective associated with situative theories of learning? (RK, 2/23)

In Simon (1995), he quotes Ball (1991) as distinguishing between "knowledge of" and "knowledge about" mathematics (see p. 116 in Simon). It strikes me that a situated theory of learning lends itself to a focus on acquiring knowledge //about// mathematics (e.g. what it means to do mathematics, how truth is established in mathematics, etc). A cognitive approach seems to lend itself to a focus on acquiring knowledge //of// mathematics (e.g. facts, procedures, and algorithms). Is this a fair characterization? Can we make an argument for the reverse? That is, can we argue that situative theories are able to focus on knowledge of mathematics? (RK, 2/23)

In Brown et al. (1989a), students' progress from embedded activity to generality involves apprenticeship, collaboration, and reflection. Is the role of reflection here (in figure 3, p. 40) akin to reflective abstraction as in Piaget's work? (NF, 2/22)

In Brown et al. (1989a) three procedures are given as being characteristic of cognitive apprenticeship (p. 38). It is then said that "Shoenfeld's approach differs principally in its strong emphasis on exposing students to the authentic ways of thinking of a culture and its conceptual viewpoint, as much as to its subject matter" (p. 38). The distinction made here is not clear to me. (NF, 2/22).

On page 5, Palincsar claims that "one hears echoes that go unacknowledged of John Dewey" in the work by Brown et al (1989a). Further, Wineburg recalls the work of the Committee of Ten on page 8 as they had struggled with some of the same issues in 1893. It seems that these two critics are in agreement that historically there has been a "wide gulf between school subjects and their disciplinary referents" (Wineburg, p. 8). Wineburg asks, "What do we do about it?" That is also my question here. It seems that cognitive apprenticeship is an excellent idea, but implementation into real classrooms is another. There is a fine line between giving students the practical tools of JPF's and shortchanging their knowledge of mathematics as a discipline. How can we balance the two? (CZ, 2/23)

Last week Simon made and analogy between education theories and physics theories on page 116 that I found particularly useful. He drew the connection specifically between cognative (by which I think he was specifically refering constuctivist) and social dimensions. Could we extend this analogy to include situated cognition? Are there "horses for courses" as far as education theory goes? Or should one pick a school of thought and stick with it? I see arguments for both sides. (JDS)

I am confused about the term indexical representation. Did Brown, et al. (1989) explicitly define this? (JH)

In Anderson, Reder and Simon (1996), they gave an example of evidence that training by abstraction can be very effective in teaching algebra because the abstract training group was shown to have demonstrated better performance in problems with analogous mathematical relationships---I wonder what these problems look like? Also, were they presented the same kind of tabular representations for these analogous problems? (JH)

Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989a). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. //Educational researcher, 18//(1), 32-42.