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

Along with presenting at two of the 7th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) invited symposia, LIFE Center researchers and collaborators with present at a range of sessions at ICLS, which will be held from June 27 through July 1 in Bloomington, IN. At one such session, a symposium titled “At home with mathematics: Meanings and uses among families” on June 30, three research projects will be represented. The symposium focuses on mathematical practices in the context of families. The first project, titled “Money Matters: The Social and Material Organization of Consequential Financial Practices in Families,” takes an activity focus, examining mathematical practices in the context of a consequential context of family activity, money and its uses. The second project, titled “Problem Emergence, Problem Solving, and Mathematics in Family Life,” takes a topical focus, describing a wide range of practices in families that are seen as mathematical. The third paper, titled “Supporting Math Achievement at Home: Practices that Matter for the School Math Achievement of African-American Students,” focuses on a particular cultural group, attending to the meanings and uses of both informal and schooled mathematics in the family context. Together the papers provide a new perspective on qualities of mathematical practice outside of school and its actual, and potential, relations to school mathematics. Presenters for each paper are as follows:

Paper 1: Money Matters: The Social and Material Organization of Consequential Financial Practices in Families

Reed Stevens, Veronique Mertl, Sheldon Levias & Laurie McCarthy (University of Washington)

Paper 2: Problem Emergence, Problem Solving, and Mathematics in Family Life
Shelley Goldman, Lee Martin, Roy Pea, Angela Booker and Kristen Pilner Blair (Stanford University)

Paper 3: Supporting Math Achievement at Home: Practices that Matter for the School Math Achievement of African-American Students

Na’ilah Suad Nasir, Michael Heimlich, Grace Atukpawu, & Kathleen O’Connor (Stanford University)

A second LIFE session will discuss how children learn science across the social settings of their lives through a session on entitled “Understanding the cultural foundations of children’s biological knowledge: Insights from everyday cognition research.” The session will provide an overview of a program of research being conducted within the Everyday Science & Technology Group and describe the details of two ethnographic studies through the following three papers:

Paper 1: The everyday cultural foundations of children’s biological understanding in an urban high-poverty community

Philip Bell, Leah A. Bricker, Tiffany R. LSuzanne Reeve, & Heather Toomey Zimmerman (University of Washington)

Paper 2: Children’s everyday argumentation: Causal claim-making associated with everyday biological phenomena
Leah Bricker & Philip Bell (University of Washington)

Paper 3: Understanding images of biology: Shared family experiences as sense-making processes in a science center

Heather Toomey Zimmerman, Suzanne Reeve & Philip Bell (University of Washington)

Complete ICLS Schedule: http://www.isls.org/icls2006/program.pdf

Bell, P., Bricker, L. A., Lee, T. R., Reeve, S., & Zimmerman, H. T. (2006). Understanding the cultural foundations of children’s biological knowledge: Insights from everyday cognition research. In S. A. Barab, K. E. Hay & D. Hickey (Eds.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) (pp. 1029-1035). Mahwah, NJ: LEA.

This session explored the cultural foundations of children’s knowledge of the living world. Cognitive research on students’ conceptual understandings has overly relied upon sequestered tasks and structured interviews; we argue that participant observation can provide insight into important particulars of everyday life to answer fundamental questions about the nature of children’s learning of biology. These papers report on studies of the everyday cultural and social contexts in which children’s informal ideas about the living world develop and are applied. The research employs a learner-centered focus and a cognitive ethnographic approach to explore children’s knowledge as they utilize it in their homes, at school, and in an interactive science center. Research focuses on personally consequential biology topics including health, nutrition, and ecology. The papers report on the cultural experiences that shape children’s biological knowledge and decision-making, similarities and differences between cultural groups, and implications for coordinating home and school experiences.

As part of the International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS), the LIFE Center has been invited to present at two symposia. The first symposium, on June 29, titled “Projects that Made a Difference,” focuses on four specific projects that had a profound and lasting impact on the Learning Sciences. Per the ICLS Web site, “the esteemed leaders of these projects have been asked to discuss their project in light of the conference theme of ‘Making a Difference.’ Specifically, they will elaborate on why their projects were so successful in influenhcing theory, practices, policy, and research, what they might have done differently in this regard, and the advice they have for others.” From the LIFE Center, John Bransford will present a talk regarding ‘The Adventures of Jasper Woodbury Mathematical Problem Solving Series.’ The second symposium, on July 1, titled “The Science of the Learning Centers,” will highlight how each of four NSF-funded Science Learning Center is “extending the frontiers of knowledge on learning, and creating the intellectual, organizational, and physical infrastructure needed for the long-term advancement of learning research.” From the LIFE Center, Roy Pea and Nora Sabelli will “describe the center and its expected impact on knowledge, research, policy, and practice concerning the science of learning.”

Source: http://www.isls.org/icls2006/featpresent_symposium.html

The LIFE Center welcomes a new graduate student intern, Vanessa Svihla. Vanessa will be working on research related to the LIFE Center’s research Initiatives #1 and #3. In particular, she will be involved in Center research on adaptive expertise–work designed to understand the nature of adaptive expertise both in school and the workplace, as well as designs for formal learning that foster the development of adaptive expertise.

Before coming to the learning sciences, Vanessa was a geologist; she brings with her an interest in how people develop expertise in the understanding of spatial reasoning and deep time. Related to this, she is interested in how people form a concept for that which they cannot perceive. Vanessa has also been researching the development of adaptive expertise in bioengineering with the VanTH ERC, (http://www.vanth.org/) a cross-university community of bioengineers and learning scientists.

Michael (Mike) Cole, Professor of Communication and Psychology from the University of California at San Diego visited the LIFE Center at Stanford University’s College of Education on June 6, 2006. Cole was invited by the graduate students and post-doctoral fellows to be a speaker at the Center’s Invited Lecture Series, hosted by the LIFE Student Leadership Group.

Cole spent the morning with research groups consulting on LIFE projects. Cole then gave a public lecture on the future of the field of cultural psychology and the possible challenges, highlighting examples from his work with Fifth Dimension afterschool learning environments and Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition over the past 25 years. LIFE researchers at Washington and SRI attended the talk by videoconference. Cole conducted a videoconference after his talk with students and post-docs at both campuses where a lively discussion ensued on Cole’s work and conceptual interfaces with the work of LIFE.

Charles (Chuck) Goodwin, Professor of Applied Linguistics and Marjorie Harness (Candy) Goodwin, Professor of Anthropology from the University of California at Los Angeles visited the LIFE Center at the University of Washington’s College of Education on June 2, 2006. The Goodwins were invited by LIFE graduate students and post-doctoral fellows to be the first speakers at the Center’s Invited Lecture Series, hosted by the LIFE Student Leadership Group.

The Goodwins spent the morning with research groups, with individual students consulting on LIFE projects, and held a videoconference with graduate students from UW and Stanford. They then each gave a public lecture summarizing their years of language and interaction research. Chuck spoke on his ethnographic work on the interaction strategies of professional archeologists and of a family where one member has aphasia to illustrate how people work together to create shared settings for understanding and for meaning-making. Candy shared findings from her work with families UCLA’s Center on the Everyday Lives of Families (CELF) to illustrate how some everyday practices and routines allow for imaginative knowledge work and shared linguistic development. LIFE researchers at Stanford and SRI attended the talks by videoconference.