Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE) Center an NSF Science of Learning Center

The National Research Council held a workshop in October 2005 about issues of information technology (IT) fluency in high school. Specifically, the workshop explored what is known, and what remains unknown, in the world of IT fluency in terms of exit skills for high school graduates. Phil Bell, a LIFE Strand Leader in Informal Learning, wrote and presented a “think piece“ as part of the workshop focused on the cognitive and social foundations of IT fluency. He highlighted theorizing and research underway in the LIFE Center in the paper.

The LIFE Center’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington spearheaded the nomination of renowned neuroscientist Bill Greenough for a visit to the University of Washington campus, where he delivered the Walker-Ames Lecture entitled Brain Structure: Development, Ability, and Disorders throughout the Lifespan. Professor Greenough is a member of LIFE’s Science & Technology Review Board and spent time consulting with LIFE researchers about ongoing studies while in Seattle.

Through a series of laboratory experiments Jennifer Amsterlaw, Postdoctoral Fellow, and Andrew Meltzoff, a LIFE Strand Leader in Implicit Learning and the Brain, are studying the development of children’s metacognitive knowledge. This work has been investigating such phenomena as what counts as a good decision and the role of evidence in evaluating claims. Many children do develop such metacognitive knowledge over the course of elementary school. But, where does such thinking come from in the everyday experiences of children? Is it shaped family decision-making and discourse? Does school curricula help students learn about such thinking?

Graduate students Tiffany Lee and Suzanne Reeve with Philip Bell, A LIFE Strand Leader in Informal Learning, have been analyzing the laboratory data to identify the everyday experiences that influences such metacognitive reasoning. Results were presented at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Development Society. The data and analyses from this interdisciplinary research are summarized in a poster presented at the conference. The analysis will inform subsequent research that couples experimental methods with ethnographic research.

Jennifer Amsterlaw, LIFE Postdoctoral Fellow, collaborating with Andrew Meltzoff, a LIFE Strand Leader in Implicit Learning & Brain, reported results connecting developmental psychology with formal schooling. They explored children’s beliefs about whether own emotional and physical states influence their performance at school. Do children think it makes a difference whether they take a math test on an empty stomach or without a good night’s sleep? Or don’t they know their own mind that well? This work is part of a cluster of LIFE projects conducted in the laboratories at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences that move beyond traditional disciplinary lines and illustrate the kind of cross-cutting studies engendered by LIFE. The work was presented at the biennial meeting of the Cognitive Development Society in October, 2005. You can download the poster at:  Amsterlaw, et al. poster (PDF file format).

Andrew Meltzoff addressed a community meeting attended by over 125 people concerning early learning and getting children “school ready.” The meeting was sponsored by the 26^th Legislative District in Bremerton, Washington, and included K-12 educators, museum directors, preschool teachers, and daycare providers.

On September 20, 2005, the Everyday Science and Technology Group presented results from LIFE research studies at the First Congress of the International Society for Cultural and Activity Research (ISCAR) in Sevilla, Spain. The papers included the following…

• Philip Bell - Mapping arguments in the science classroom: Insights from instructional scaffolding studies [PRESENTATION]
• Leah Bricker - Riding the concrete wave: Urban skateboarders’ argumentation [PRESENTATION]
• Heather Toomey Zimmerman - ‘If your blog doesn’t look good, no one will read it:’ Adolescent peer groups’ argumentation in online spaces [PRESENTATION]
• Philip Bell, Leah Bricker & Heather Toomey Zimmerman - Comparative study of adolescents’ argumentation across contexts and purposes [PRESENTATION]

The research presented in this session is part of a broader research agenda focused on understanding the relationship between childrens’ everyday argumentation and learning.

The purpose of the LIFE Center is to identify and investigate key research questions that draw on neurobiological, cognitive, developmental, and sociocultural theories and their related methodologies to advance the sciences of human learning and guide the design of learning technologies and environments.

LIFE researchers believe that the fields associated with the sciences of learning are entering a decade of synthesis. That is, through the pursuit of conceptual collisions and synergies it is possible to coordinate, juxtapose, and possibly coalesce our theoretical accounts of human learning. We are attempting to do precisely this through our interdisciplinary research studies. We have authored two handbook chapters that detail possible areas of focus for this decade of synthesis:

• Bransford, J. D., Vye, N., Stevens, R., Kuhl, P., Schwartz, D., Bell, P., Meltzoff, A., Barron, B., Pea, R., Reeves, B., Roschelle, J. & Sabelli, N. (in press). Learning theories and education: Toward a decade of synergy. In P. Alexander & P. Winne (Eds.), Handbook of Educational Psychology (Second Edition). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Bransford, J.D., Barron, B., Pea, R., Meltzoff, A., Kuhl, P. Bell, P., Stevens, R., Schwartz, D., Vye, N., Reeves, B., Roschelle, J. & Sabelli, N. (in press).Foundations and opportunities for an interdisciplinary science of learning. In K. Sawyer (Ed) The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences.