This morning in E1, the teachers were doing calculations, and Abby and Virginia got bored watching them. They asked Rachel about what to do about it on the chat, and a fascinating discussion ensued (copied here with irrelevant parts edited out):
10:53 Virginia Flood: Is it just me or is watching people interact with calculators kinda lame?
10:54 Abby Daane: I feel like they should just use one as an example now and be done with this but I know this is just me being greedy as a researcher
10:55 Virginia Flood: I guess they seem to like doing this.
10:55 Abby Daane: Is Rachel around?
10:55 Abby Daane: I was just wondering what she thought about this
10:55 Abby Daane: Is there something we can look for or listen for?
10:56 Abby Daane: I really don't have any interest
10:56 Virginia Flood: I think just type up interesting action stuff.
10:57 Virginia Flood: Like every now and then my guys show each other something.
10:59 Rachel Scherr: Hi, I just tuned in. What's up?
10:59 Abby Daane: well - my group is calculating....
10:59 Rachel Scherr: You're bored?
11:00 Abby Daane: well
11:00 Abby Daane: kinda
11:00 Virginia Flood: My group is calculating.
11:00 Abby Daane: just wondering if there is something I should be looking at that would help during calculations
11:01 Rachel Scherr: The first year that I observed this class, there was so much that was so exciting, and then there were parts that were utterly dull to observe. Since during the dull parts I had a lot of time to think, I really did some introspection about WHY it was so dull to watch, and what I thought that meant about teaching and learning.
11:01 Abby Daane: ooooooo I like it!
11:02 Rachel Scherr: For me it was actually huge. Because the dull parts were... how I had been teaching for ten years.
11:03 Abby Daane: I feel like this part is sort of important though - the math part of physics is important right?
11:04 Abby Daane: I mean - not for understanding the conceptual part - but for problem solving
11:04 Abby Daane: but that is not conceptual at all - more like just math
11:05 Rachel Scherr: Right, and maybe there's stuff going on inside people's heads that would be really great if only we could know about it. because the problem is, you're not really getting access to what they're doing, correct? since they are working kind of privately?
11:05 Abby Daane: yes.
11:05 Abby Daane: or at least they are doing a lot of math that doesn't translate well
11:05 Abby Daane: (on head phones at least)
11:07 Rachel Scherr: and here we are at a learning theory question. or at least i am. because if there is nothing for you to observe, there is nothing for them to observe about each other, and there isn't any (or not much) social construction of knowledge.
11:07 Abby Daane: true so they probably aren't learning new stuff - they are back to practicing
11:08 Abby Daane: (but at the same time - this skill can be important - but it is more skill-building and not knowledge gaining
11:08 Rachel Scherr: so if you have a social-construction theory of learning, then there can't be much learning happening right now.
11:09 Rachel Scherr: but if you have a private-cognition model of learning, you can think of this as being time well spent.
11:09 Abby Daane: can you have both?
11:10 Rachel Scherr: This is a hot area in learning sciences. The two theories have very different research questions, standards of evidence, etc
11:10 Rachel Scherr: so it is hard to "have both"
11:10 Rachel Scherr: and very interesting to try to find data and research questions that explore the shared areas
11:10 Abby Daane: hm. I mean - do both within a classroom at different times
11:12 Rachel Scherr: Can you alternate talking with private work time? i mean, of course you can, so i must not be understanding your question yet. say more?
11:13 Abby Daane: I mean to ask if the two theories exclude the other theory or do they both think you can learn in different ways?
11:14 Abby Daane: can you have different models for different times in the class?
11:14 Abby Daane: and do each "side" think that their way is the only way?
11:14 Rachel Scherr: the social-construction people (which by now includes me) say that since there is no way to get *evidence* of private cognition, there's not really anything to talk about.
11:15 Abby Daane: but there still could be learning going on
11:15 Rachel Scherr: The private-cognition people say that obviously there IS private cognition, since we all feel ourselves doing it, so let's attempt to model it.
11:15 Abby Daane: it's just boring because you can't do anything with it
11:15 Abby Daane: I see
11:15 Abby Daane: so neither are "against" the other, just not interested in it
11:17 Rachel Scherr: Right. I would say it's a little antagonistic sometimes, because one side's data is the other side's noise. It's hard for each to get their minds around the other way of thinking.
11:17 Abby Daane: hm
11:17 Abby Daane: this is fascinating
11:18 Rachel Scherr: More fascinating than calculations
Rachel told me about it at lunch, and we reminisced about 2009 when we first found ourselves in Abby and Virginia's position. We've talked a lot about what it means about instruction and our values when we're bored watching instruction, and I think we have a lot of similar values around this.
So I was surprised when I read the chat and found myself strongly disagreeing with something Rachel said. I was excited to discuss it with her, and figured hey, why not do so semi-publicly?
When Abby said, "Can you have both?" Rachel said not really, and identified herself with the social-construction side of the debate. My answer to this question would be very different: "You have to do both! Either one by itself is inadequate and only tells part of the story." I agree that it would be difficult for any individual researcher to try to do both at the same time, and that it makes sense to focus on one or the other, but I feel strongly that for our community (or any community) to tell a complete story about learning, that story ultimately has to include both.
"so if you have a social-construction theory of learning, then there can't be much learning happening right now."
ReplyDeleteBut I think Vygotsky would disagree - "Any function in the child's cultural development appears twice or on two planes...First it appears between people as an interpsychological category, and then within the child as an intrapsychological category" (Vygotsky, 1981, p.163) - so there could be learning happening when you're alone with your thoughts, practicing using the cultural tools of physics and making them your own.
Yes? Social-constructivists wouldn't claim that learning does not happen when you're working silently, but that you cannot ignore the social aspects of what's going on, even in quiet, "intrapsychological" type activities. (such as thinking before talking.)
So I'd say you don't necessarily need both - both the internal and the external are considered by social-constructivists. It's just easier to study the external.
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ReplyDeleteI think that to say "We need both!" is probably to sweep the important and thought-provoking distinctions between the two theories under the rug. Sort of like if someone says, “Light is both a wave and a particle!” there is a fair likelihood that they’re not appreciating what’s really going on with that.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we all have individual brains (well, I'm pretty sure I do, anyway) and we all learn by interacting. So yes, we need an account of learning that encompasses those situations. Leslie is arguing that a social-constructivist account can do that job. There’s probably someone who’d make the same claim for the private-cognition account (probably a better term would be information processing, or possibly knowledge analysis). but I bet they wouldn’t use video data.
Leslie’s right that not all social-constructivist learning need be externalized; I was being overdramatic on that one. Were I being more careful I would have said: when people are boring to watch on video, it usually means that the opportunities for co-construction and proximal formative assessment are limited.
ReplyDeleteThe calculator episode definitely made me notice that after two weeks of taking field notes I've developed a sort of "taste" in observation. My favorite thing to watch is when people don't know the textbook answer to something and are working it out as they defend their ideas to the group. Less appealing to me is when people are sharing their already fully-developed ideas (which seems to happen a lot in full-classroom discussions) and, well, the dreaded quiet calculating. It's the moments when people are persuading each other and debating something out together that I feel like I can get to the closest to the process of actual thinking as a researcher.
ReplyDeleteI remember Brian Frank asking about how much we do in a classroom is because it's good for learning v. good for researching. I definitely prefer the things that Virginia does-- and I wonder if it's because of my researcher hat?
ReplyDeleteBut light *is* both a wave and a particle. Or more precisely, both the wave model and the particle model are useful to describe certain aspects of what's happening with light, but both are partial, and you need both to fully explain what's going on.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's what I think about cognitive theory and social-construction theory. Each one is partial, and each brings an important part of the puzzle. It's easy to get enamored with social-construction theory because it came later and explicitly addressed what was missing in cognitive theory: the way that understanding is constructed by communities of people working together. But it really doesn't get at the interior experience of the individual, which I think is real and important.
I don't buy that there's no way to get evidence of private cognition. I have the experience of my own private cognition, and I can report that to you, and you basically understand what I'm talking about because you have your own experience of your own cognition and what I'm saying reminds you of that. And of course there are problems with self-reporting and cultural assumptions and misunderstandings, and social-construction theory points out all these problems and offers a way of looking at things that doesn't have these problems. But it's thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Just because there are problems with studying individual cognition doesn't mean it isn't useful; rather, it means that you need to be aware of the limitations and not try to claim that it tells you things it can't. And ideally, you look at the both the individual and the social and put them together to get a more complete picture.
Sam, the wave-particle thing that you just said is exactly what Valerie reported in 2003 (http://spot.colorado.edu/~otero/OTERO_2_MEDIATED_ACTION.pdf) that Sfard said in 1998 (SFARD, A., Educational Reesearcher, 27(2) (1998) 13). Not that it's not worth saying again! I am finding myself disappointed in how little awareness *I* have of people having already talked about many of these issues. I want to catch up. Dang it! It's hard to read and remember everything!
ReplyDeleteOops, should have re-read the thread again. It's not just Sam saying it, and it's not as simple as someone saying it. Maybe Rachel is arguing against Sfard's complementarity attitude? Which makes me think someone probably argued against Sfard in the same fashion back then, or since then.
ReplyDeleteShoot! As I read Valerie's paper (linked above), she is taking this exactly where I am thinking it should go. So, I will shut up and read now.
ReplyDeleteI just found a paper that goes back to the original question around boredom. What is boredom? How can we observe boredom/communicate about boredom? OK, these questions are a little different from the original question because they concern the researcher, not so much the "researchees." Nevertheless, I'd like to reference the newly found paper here because it's concerned with the questions "Is boredom to be understood as merely an 'inner' mental state that finds its 'expression' or can a communicative or social function be ascribed to boredom?" - "Is it possible that the state of boredom develops its own dynamic? How would this take place?" - "What could perhaps be gained from (the presentation of) boredom?" and, finally, "What is 'boredom' in itself?"
ReplyDeleteThe paper appeared in the 2007(1) issue of Ethnography and Education, here is a link to the paper on the journal webpage.
Sorry, the original question concerned the researcher, not the researchees. I phrased that wrong.
ReplyDelete