Curricular Complexity: Recognizing the sociocultural contexts of learning

1. Curricular Complexity:Recognizing the sociocultural contexts of learning Lisa R. Lattuca Center for the Study of Higher Education Penn State University July 8, 2004 Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

2. The CHEPS theme of innovation and governance: Higher education institutions play a crucial role in the knowledge society and economy. • What changes are needed to strengthen this role? • Themes from Day 1 • “Productive destruction” • What shall we keep? What shall we replace? • Innovation is cultural and social, as well as technical • Teaching as technical core – and cultural practice • From innovators to conditions for innovation • Need for conversation between macro and micro levels Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

3. Themes from Day 2 • Sedimented structures and patterns in institutional practices • Challenge is to cognitively and institutionally recombine • Themes from Day 3 • Shifts in discourses on higher education (learning) • Recent transformations represent change in social contract between society and higher education • Curriculum is a story about who we are – and is this even more necessary in a shifting global context? Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

4. Situating myself… The Academic Plan, Stark & Lattuca, 1997 Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

5. In the spirit of productive destruction… What should be salvaged and what should not? The Academic Plan, Stark & Lattuca, 1997 Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

6. Advantages • Promotes clarity – identifies potential influences, constraints, affordances • Applicable at course, program, institution-level • Provides a heuristic for curricular planning and research – elements of a plan and variables for investigation • Encourages attention to student learning • Suggests a dynamic curriculum development process – evaluation and adjustment process Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

7. Some tensions to resolve… Real versus ideal conceptualizations: “A plan for any endeavor incorporates a total blueprint for action, including purposes, activities, and ways of measuring success. A plan implies both intentions and rational choices among alternatives to achieve the intentions.” (Stark & Lattuca, 1997, p. 9) Critique: a rationalist perspective Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

8. A possible revision… • … any academic plan consists of choices made about seven elements: purposes, content, sequence, learners, instructional processes, resources, and assessment/evaluation. • In developing or revising a course or program, we make choices about these seven elements – sometimes intentionally, sometimes rationally, and sometimes unintentionally and irrationally. (for the revision of Lattuca & Stark, 2006?) Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

9. Advantage #4 revisited… Encourages explicit attention to student learning. • Inclusion of students as element in academic plan promotes thinking about how new curricular approaches and attention to student goals build on recent psychological understandings of how learners reconstruct their knowledge by meshing new information with old. (Stark & Lattuca, 1997, p. 14) Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

10. Psychological perspectives on learning are useful but incomplete • Interdisciplinary perspectives (including those of anthropology, cultural psychology, neuroscience, etc.) needed to further refine models of learning WHY? Because social contexts shape learners and learning. What are the implications of this statement for the academic plan concept and for curricular practices in higher education? Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

11. Advantage #5 revisited… • “Encourages a dynamic view of curriculum development. The assumption of a built-in adjustment mechanism encourages iterative change by making it an expected part of regular practice…Unlike the static definition of a curriculum as a set of courses, a plan implied vigorous strategic adjustment as conditions change because the process of creating a plan can also be examined and influenced.” (Stark & Lattuca, 1997, p. 14) Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

12. …we have considered curriculum…only in its noun form (a racecourse to be traversed), and not in its infinitive verb form (currere—to run, especially the course). In the latter, the emphasis is on the activity of running or, metaphorically, on the activity of our making meaning from the course… This currere view makes mind “a verb” (to use Dewey’s phrase: an active, meaning-seeking and meaning-making verb). (Doll, 1993, p. 278) Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

13. How would a revised model of curriculum portray • Fully contextualized understanding of learning • The idea that adjustments can be made as the course is being run – as well as after it is completed • The curricular goal of meaning-making • Mind as verb Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

14. So what’s wrong with this picture? Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

15. Sociocultural contexts • Organizational Influences • Program relationships • Resources • Leadership • Governance • Internal • Influences • Faculty • Discipline • Students • Peers • Program mission • Leadership Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

16. Further reconceptualization… Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

17. Learner in context? Educational Context Academic Plan Purpose If students uniquely experience a curriculum, where do “outcomes” go? Content Sequence Resources Materials Instructional Processes Evaluation Learners Outcomes Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

18. A new question arises… Educational Context Academic Plan Purpose If learner and learning are inseparable – what are the implications for quality assurance and accountability? Content Sequence Resources Materials Instructional Processes Evaluation Learners Outcomes Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

19. Where we’re going now… • An overview of learning theories • Contribution of social learning theories • Should learning theory inform curriculum theory? • What does it mean for policy and practice? Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

20. What’s “learning”? • Until 1950s, psychologists commonly defined learning as a change in behavior • Mind is subjective, not observable… • But behavior can be measured • Notion of change (or potential for change) still underlies many definitions of learning • Piaget – assimilation and accommodation • Dewey – solving problems • Vygotsky – zone of proximal development Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

21. Behaviorist perspectives • Learning is a process of forming connections between stimuli and responses • Environment shapes/controls behavior • contingencies of reinforcement • operant conditioning (rewards) • Drives -- hunger, rewards, fear -- motivate learning • Behavior that is not reinforced becomes less frequent and may disappear But whatabout “understanding”? Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

22. Woods (1987) found that in a four-year engineering program, students observed professors working more than 1,000 problems. The students themselves solved more than 3,000 homework problems and worked problems on the board. “Yet despite all this activity, they showed negligible improvements in problem-solving skills…what they did acquire was a set of memorized procedures for about 3,000 problem situations that they could, with varying degrees of success, recall.” (Bransford, 2000, p. 59) Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

23. Instruction in the behaviorist model • Increase frequency of correct answers and minimize errors • Drills and rewards prominent • Self-paced instruction • clear, specifiable outcomes (objectives) • easy to achieve steps • that in sequence complete a behavior • Criterion referencing: a clear standard for performance rather than norm referencing • Immediate feedback as to the correctness of a response Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

24. Cognitive perspectives Reaction to behaviorist perspectives on learning • The human mind is not passive exchange system where stimuli arrive and appropriate responses leave (Grippin & Peters, 1984) • Humans actively interpret sensations, manipulate things and ideas, make intellectual connections – and thereby give meaning to phenomena Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

25. Contributions: Piaget Locus of control is individual learner • Internal cognitive structures change as individuals mature and interact with environments • Stages of development shape learning and what can be learned • Child actively explores the environment, assembles, organizes material – that is, constructs understanding, in solitary play Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

26. Contributions:Information processing theories • Focus on mental associations – inferred from behavior • Environment important, but learner also considered • Prior knowledge, schemata • Early theories focus on restructuring of memory • Good instruction presents and organizes information in way that maximizes memory • Response from learner - is info correctly stored? • Use of key points, meaningful associations to connect new and old information • Encouraged active learning – check individual understanding, correct errors before they are stored Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

27. Contributions: Metacognition • Learning process becomes the responsibility of the learner • Instructors no longer direct learning process • Instructor supports metacognition (and uses some direct teaching strategies) • Learner-centered models of instruction • Constructivist theories, self-regulation, motivation important Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

28. Critiques • Cognitive theories portray the learner as “the lone investigator” • Theories don’t reflect on learners as members of social groups • Nor on how learners interact using the medium of language • Take prior knowledge and individual differences into account, but learner may still be passive • Metacognitive theories are an improvement, but focus largely on individual processing Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

29. In contrast…in context • Lev Vygotsky: • Less interested in what children can do alone than what they can do with aid from others • Proper challenges or stimulation might enable further learning–ability to profit from assistance • Learning process is similar in child & adult • John Dewey: • Individuals grow up in social environments that have accepted meanings and values; they learn these values and these values, in turn affect learning what and how they learn Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

30. Prospective assessment of development Zone of Proximal Development Actual Development Individual problem-solving Potential Development (problem-solving with guidance) Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

31. Constructivist perspectives Social constructivists • Capacity to think and learn is an adaptive feature • Enabling the individual to deal fruitfully with the environment • Learners actively explore and construct understandings of the world through their activities • Learning is a practical activity that occurs when people interact with their environments Individual constructivists Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

32. Social learning perspectives (situative perspectives) • Focus on social settings in which learning occurs • Learning occurs through observation of others in immediate environment and • Learning is a function of interaction of person-and or person-in environment • Not individual cognition (alone) Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

33. Individual Perspective Learning is an individual (internal) activity Individuals make meaning based on previous and current knowledge structures Emphasizes individual’s acquisition of knowledge and cognitive skills Social Perspective Learning is social (cultural) activity Meaning-making is a dialogic process of social interaction Learning is collective, participatory process Emphasizes context, interaction, and situatedness Varieties of constructivism Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

34. Foregrounding aspects of learning • Behaviorist perspective emphasizes activity • Growth = skill development • Cognitive perspective stresses information • Symbols, meaning, problem solving and reasoning • Growth = greater conceptual understanding • Situative perspectives emphasize • Participation in practices of inquiry, discourse, and sense-making of a community • Development of identities as thinkers and learners • Growth = more effective participation in practices (Greeno et al, 1997, 1998) Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

35. A rapprochement? • Each perspectives contributes something to our understanding of educational practices • The situative perspective can subsume cognitive and behaviorist perspective by including skill acquisition and conceptual understanding as aspects of students’ participation and their identities as learners and as knowers. (Greeno et al., 1998) Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

36. Situative perspectives • What looks like individual learning is rarely truly individual • Much of what we learn we learn from others • through observation and imitation afforded by participation in social settings • through dialogue about shared problems or tasks • through use of cultural tools invented by human societies • Language, signs, numbers, logic, etc. (Salomon and Perkins) Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

37. Social aspects of learning • If learning cannot be understood solely in terms of cognitive processes occurring in individual heads, then… • We must attend to • interactions among individuals • interactions among individuals & situations • and their impact of learning Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

38. Social mediation of learning • Zone of proximal development (Vygotsky) • Social processes, such as instruction, may raise cognitive performance to levels that could not be reached by the individual alone • Scaffolding (Scardamalia, Brown, Palincsar) • Active guidance, modeling, encouragement, mirroring, and feedback aid learning • Theories of intellectual development (Perry, Magolda, etc.) • Instructional activities can move students from lower to higher levels of intellectual/epistemological development Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

39. Participatory knowledge construction • Knowledge is jointly constructed in communities of practice • Interaction is vehicle for thought; learning products distributed over social (learning) system • Goal of instruction: social knowledge construction and distribution of knowledge, skills and understanding around a particular activity (apprenticeship) Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

40. Cultural artifacts • Social mediation by cultural artifacts • Books, languages, statistics, computers, etc. are culturally and historically situated tools • These shape learning in powerful ways • Can’t separate the individual from the context in which he learns – sociohistorical time and place shape learners and learning Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

41. Agency • Learning is culturally and socially situated. • What we learn is influenced by time (history) and place (context) • Instructional practices influence what and how we learn (or don’t) • but we can learn to learn better • Cultural tools influence how and what we learn • but we can adapt tools for our own purposes Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

42. Some questions… • Do current educational practices acknowledge the social contexts of learning? • Individual cultural & social background • Prior knowledge (misconceptions) – what students bring to the table • Social nature of learning • Impact of context on what is learned by whom Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

43. Educational Context Purpose Academic Plan Content Sequence Resources Materials Instructional Process Evaluation Learners Outcomes Do our curricula look like this? External influences Internal influences Organizational influences Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

44. What are the implications of a situated (or sociocultural) understanding of learning on curriculum? • Revisit Barnett’s question – what is the right analytical level for a model of curriculum and curriculum change? Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

45. National or system level: • What higher education policies encourage achievement of desired educational outcomes? • What social needs do we wish to serve – since those will determine the outcomes that must drive curricular choices? • How will we know if we’ve achieved our goals? What can we assess and how shall we assess it? Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

46. Institution and program level • How do we create learning environments that produce the desired outcomes? • Access policies • Faculty rewards • Instructional development • Flexible programs (entry points and standards) • Formative assessment of students and programs Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

47. Course level: • Can we ensure that all students learn? • What would facilitate learning? R • remediation, academic skills training, advising? • What kinds of feedback should students receive as they are learning? What do we do to improve “learning in progress”? • What pedagogical strategies do we use to promote learning? Do our pedagogies promote learning? Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

48. Final thoughts… Curricula are complex animals – • more than a set of courses or a program • a “living” – and somewhat unpredictable thing – enlivened students and faculty • embedded in social, cultural, political, and economic contexts that can shape what is learned Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004

49. Finally, the normative view… Every curriculum reflects a set of values • sometimes curricula don’t communicate what we truly value • rather theyreflect choices and decisions made out of habit, lack of attention, convenience, or compromise What we truly value – learning, ideas, ways of inquiry – should drive, and should be reflected in, our curricula. Lattuca - CHEPS Summer School July 2004