Studying science and engineering learning in practice

Abstract

A key goal of science and engineering education is to provide opportunities for people to access, interpret, and make use of science and engineering to address practical human needs. Most education research, however, focuses on how best to prepare students in schools to participate in forms of science and engineering practices that resemble those of disciplinary experts. In this paper, I argue that education research is needed that focuses on how people use science and engineering in social practices as part of collective efforts to transform cultural and economic production. Drawing on social practice theory, I argue that learning inheres in such activities, not only because people access and make use of science knowledge and develop repertoires for participating in science and engineering practices, but also because participation in such activities transforms the ways that people imagine themselves and expands their possibilities for action. Research can inform and support these efforts, both directly and indirectly, by giving an account of the conditions for science and engineering learning and by diagnosing inequities in access to science and engineering for addressing pressing human needs.

A Social Practice Theory of Learning and Becoming Across Contexts and Time

“…Participation is neither constant nor bound to a particular place: people "participate for longer or shorter stretches of time, on a regular or occasional basis and for various reasons in several contexts" (Dreier, 2008, p. 38). The name pathway captures the ideas that movement and direction are both important aspects of the temporal and spatial dimensions of participation in practice (Dreier), though social practice theory views these pathways in concrete, social, and material terms and not as idealized progressions (Penuel, 2016). Similarly, a learning pathway can be described in terms of how people move across borders between the familiar and the unfamiliar (Gutiérrez, 2008) and in terms of a telos, that is, the direction of movement or change (Lave, 1996).…”

“…For example, many studies of learning in neuroscience and psychology focus on brief experiments that take place in a single setting (e.g., McDaniel, Agarwal, Huelser, McDermott, & Roediger III, 2011). In education, where there is more research on complex classroom processes that unfold over time, few learning researchers have studied how these processes are embedded within changing social and political structures of schools and societies (Lave & McDermott, 2002;Penuel, 2016). There is limited attention to how inequities are reproduced within educational systems through the production of failure, that is, by making educational success into a scarce resource and disproportionately identifying individuals from disenfranchised groups "disabled" or "failures" who should be held to account for their own plight (Lave, 1996;Varenne & McDermott, 1998).…”

Learning High School Biology in a Social Context

“…Moreover, the content was taught in isolation from the social contexts which give it relevance. Thus, the students often didn't make connections between theory (concepts) and real-life situations (Penuel, 2016;Leonard & Chandler, 2003). In order to reduce the disconnect between biology content and student interest and understanding, we discussed learning objectives, lack of improvement of test scores and the other key aspects for improvements with the students.…”

“…These techniques lacked the transformative experience assisting students to apply disparate and ordinarily intangible molecular and logical concepts to the tangible living world. We combined three independent ideas to enable students to read, comprehend, and express the scientific concepts in written format (Grant & Diana, 2011), learn biological concepts with "Inquiry learning" due to its close similarity with the "scientific method" (NRC, 2000(NRC, , 1996Kaufmann, 1959;Dewey, 1938) and organize them insocial context (Penuel, 2016). The problem with inquiry is acquiring conceptual knowledge from direct observations by using deductive questions (Oguz-Unver & Arabacioglu, 2014) and appropriate hypothesis (NRC, 2000).…”

Preservice teacher mobile investigation and interpretation of everyday mathematics across settings

“…Garcia, 2014) or scientific practices (e.g. Penuel, 2014), however, appear less developed in mathematics education. A persistent disconnect -evident in student problem solving, tool use, and evaluation -exists among how school mathematics is conceptualized and taught, if it connects to so-called real world mathematics, and whether new pedagogies can bridge this gap (Civil, 2014;Martin & Gourley-Delaney, 2014).…”