Learning across Settings and Time in the Digital Age

Recent scholarship in the interdisciplinary field of the learning sciences has focused on the ways that young people use digital tools to connect learning experiences across different settings and over time. Two aspects stand out in this research: (i) the potency of youth agency in creating new activities, communities, and pathways for interest-related pursuits and (ii) the ways that peers, adults, and different sociocultural contexts afford and constrain opportunity. These contexts, or settings, include peer groups and families; schools, neighbourhoods and cities, and also nationwide infrastructures that foster connections between school-based and out-of-school learning. The articles in this special issue of Digital Education Review shed light on these topics and advance our understanding of the theories that deal with learning across various settings and times, and how to promote more equitable youth learning across these settings

Teachers, Tasks, and Tensions: Lessons From a Research-Practice Partnership

How teachers make sense of new academic standards significantly shapes the implementation of those standards. Professional development organized around the analysis of mathematical tasks has potential to prepare teachers for standards implementation by helping them develop common understandings of standards and how to help students meet ambitious new learning goals. In practice, however, designers and participants bring different goals to the professional development context, which becomes evident when teachers engage in task analysis. In this article, we use the design tensions framework (Tatar, 2007) to analyze these tensions within a research-practice partnership comprised of five university researchers, three district curriculum leaders from a large urban school district, 12 high school Algebra 1 teachers from nine schools in the district, and a small team of Web engineers. Primary data for the study consist of participant observation and field notes of meetings in which project stakeholders negotiated the design of the professional development, as well as interview and survey data. An analysis based on the design tensions framework helped our partnership surface, both in the moment and retrospectively, the need for designers of professional development focused on standards implementation to be adaptive and willing to evolve activities to satisfy multiple stakeholders\u27 goals for participation

Learning across settings and time in the digital age.

Recent scholarship in the interdisciplinary field of the learning sciences has focused on the ways that young people use digital tools to connect learning experiences across different settings and over time. Two aspects stand out in this research: (i) the potency of youth agency in creating new activities, communities, and pathways for interest-related pursuits and (ii) the ways that peers, adults, and different sociocultural contexts afford and constrain opportunity. These contexts, or settings, include peer groups and families; schools, neighbourhoods and cities, and also nationwide infrastructures that foster connections between school-based and out-of-school learning. The articles in this special issue of Digital Education Review shed light on these topics and advance our understanding of the theories that deal with learning across various settings and times, and how to promote more equitable youth learning across these settings

NEPC Review: Continued Progress: Promising Evidence on Personalized Learning

An evaluation report from RAND focused on school-wide initiatives funded by the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation to promote teaching approaches touted as personalized learning. These reforms generally rely on digital technology and encompass a range of strategies, such as developing learner profiles with individualized goals, and using data to provide personalized learning paths in which students have choice, get individualized support, and engage in learning outside school. The research, which includes many high-quality elements, suggests that some of the studied approaches are associated with higher scores on a common assessment (the MAP). Broad conclusions about the efficacy of technology-based personalized learning, however, are not warranted by the research. Limitations include a sample of treatment schools that is unrepresentative of the general population of schools, the lack of a threshold in the study for what qualified as implementing &ldquo;personalized learning&rdquo; in the treatment schools, and the reality that disruptive strategies such as competency-based progression, which require the largest departures from current practice, were rarely implemented in the studied schools.</p

A social practice theory of learning and becoming across contexts and time

This paper presents a social practice theory of learning and becoming across contexts and time. Our perspective is rooted in the Danish tradition of critical psychology (Dreier, 1997; Mørck &amp; Huniche, 2006; Nissen, 2005), and we use social practice theory to interpret the pathway of one adolescent whom we followed as part of a longitudinal study of interest-related learning. A social practice theory calls out the ways people pursue diverse concerns, become aware of new possibilities for action as they move across settings of practice, and learn as they adjust contributions to the flow of ongoing activity and to fit demands and structures of local institutions. It also highlights the ways that existing institutional structures of practice frame the choices people make about how and where to participate in activities. This perspective on learning is potentially transformative, in that it provides a way to promote equity by surfacing issues associated with linkages among settings of practice, networks of actors who support persons’ movement across settings, and diversities in structures of practices that shape opportunities to learn and become

Pursuing interests and getting involved: Exploring the conditions of sponsorship in youth learning

The phenomenon of “brokering”—or connecting youth to present or future opportunities—is now well known in the field of learning and youth development as an integral part of how and why youth pursue and remain in particular interest-related learning opportunities. More recently, the related term sponsorship refers to the multiple ways in which youth experience brokering-like moments related to their interests. This article aims to better understand how sponsorship functions in the everyday conduct of youths’ lives, as well as if and how sponsorship mediates young people’s sustained participation and planned future in relation to their interest(s). We leverage a longitudinal data set collected over three years of youth participation in interest-related activities to retrospectively understand sponsorship within the existing conditions of young people’s lives, including youth interest and access to program resources. Findings suggest that interest was often not the initial driver for youth entering an activity, but that youth joined activities based on other perceived benefits. Once involved, however, they found themselves developing skills, making friends, and seeing a possible future in the activity. We conclude with design principles intended to support young people in joining an activity, sustaining their participation, and seeing new possibilities for their futures. 

Research-Practice Partnerships in Education: The State of the Field

Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) are an important part of the educational ecosystem that connects research, policy, practice, and community work in the United States. They are a prime example of how long-term collaborative approaches to research can address persistent challenges and systemic inequities in our schools and communities.Research-Practice Partnerships in Education: The State of the Field expands on the 2013 white paper Research-Practice Partnerships: A Strategy for Leveraging Research for Educational Improvement in School Districts by scanning the current landscape of partnerships, identifying points of variation, and outlining shared principles

Understanding the Priorities and Practices of Rural Science Teachers: Implications for Designing Professional Learning

In order to design professional learning that supports rural science teachers to effectively implement standards-based “five-dimensional” (5D) instructional and assessment practices, a critical first step is to elicit their perspectives, prior experiences, concerns, and interests. Based on survey data from 87 rural science teachers in Colorado, along with focus group sessions with 18 of those teachers, this article investigates teachers’ perspectives on what makes rural science teaching unique, the degree to which they use 5D science instruction, their curricular and assessment resources, and their professional learning experiences and preferences. Overall, rural science teachers in Colorado reported using rich practices for engaging students’ interests and identities in the pursuit of high-quality engagement, and they expressed a need for more science-specific professional learning and materials distribution. Implications for designing professional learning opportunities for rural science teachers are offered

Creating a system of professional learning that meets teachers’ needs

State-level leaders face a difficult challenge of determining where to invest scarce professional learning dollars. To address this challenge, a team of researchers and state-level science educators surveyed teachers to learn more about their vision for science education and what kind of learning opportunities they preferred. The survey enabled the team to determine how well teachers&rsquo; ideas about science education aligned with the Framework for K-12 Science Education. They then set state-level aims for professional learning that took into account teacher preferences and any gaps between teacher visions and the vision of science education in the framework. Together, the researchers and state leaders created free learning resources that could help teachers achieve these aims. </div

Organizing Research and Development at the Intersection of Learning, Implementation, and Design

This paper describes elements of an approach to research and development called design-based implementation research. The approach represents a significant expansion of design research, which typically focuses on classrooms, to develop and test innovations that foster alignment and coordination of supports for improving teaching and learning in classrooms. As in policy research, policy and program implementation are key foci of theoretical development and analysis. What distinguishes the approach from both traditional design research and policy research is the presence of four key elements within a project: (1) a focus on persistent problems of practice from multiple stakeholders’ perspectives, (2) a commitment to iterative, collaborative design, (3) a concern with developing theory related to both classroom learning and implementation through systematic inquiry, and (4) a concern with developing capacity for sustaining change in systems.NOTE: A Full-Text Open Access version of the final version of this article is available at http://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/rbtfl/1TAxpRHapnMPs/full Penuel, William R., Barry J. Fishman, Britte Haugan Cheng, and Nora Sabelli. “Organizing Research and Development at the Intersection of Learning, Implementation, and Design.” Educational Researcher, October 1, 2011. doi:10.3102/0013189X11421826