UNDERSTANDING: THE PURPOSE OF LEARNING

Gordon Wells and Tamara BallUniversity of California, Santa Cruz

Introduction

Against the backdrop of education as typically practiced in the United States, this chapter proposes a conception of learning and teaching, rooted in Vygotsky’s (1987) theory of learning and development, that treats understanding as the goal of education. Through dialogic inquiry, students at all levels are challenged and assisted to engage collaboratively in a spiral of knowing with respect to the areas of life that are of interest and concern to them; the aim is that, through the development of individual understanding achieved in collective knowledge building, they will be empowered to act and think effectively and responsibly, both alone and in collaboration with others. We present two case studies of attempts to enact this model in practice at our own university and extrapolate from them to argue for the pivotal role of higher education in the life trajectories of individuals and in the development of society as a whole.

Learning for the Twenty-first Century

The last hundred years have seen radical changes in the demands of the workplace as well as in understanding about learning and development, but rather little change has occurred in the organization of schooling. In its early years, universal public education was, in large part, a response to a demand for semi-skilled workers on the assembly lines of industrial mass production and to the need to rapidly organize growing urban centers by imposing standardized procedures (Tyack, 1974). It also coincided with the increasing dominance of behaviorist theories of learning, the widespread acceptance of the construct of IQ, and the belief that individuals’ potential for learning is largely determined by their genetic inheritance (which was itself believed to be strongly determined by race and class) (Bowles & Gintis, 1976). For all these reasons, therefore, schools were organized on the model of an assembly line and on the belief that learning, to be activated, required sequentially organized training through compartmentalized instruction, drill and practice. To a large extent, this is still the basis on which most public schools are organized, but now with much more attention to “quality assessment” of the output (Oakes & Lipton 2003).

In the meantime, many of those assumptions about human development, learning and teaching have been challenged by both theoretical and empirical research, which has led to a very different conception of the ways in which they are interrelated (Case, 1996). Here, we want to focus on three. First is the active nature of learning. Far from being overwhelmed by a confusing barrage of sensory input, from the beginning the newborn infant actively works on constructing meaning of the events in which he or she is involved. These early efforts are largely accomplished through face to face interaction with a primary caregiver (Wells, 1986). Theorists vary in how far they attribute the meanings that are made – the concepts or schemata that are constructed – to the innate

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organization of the mind and brain, but all are agreed that the infant’s learning is dependent on acting into the world and gaining information through feedback that allows “hypotheses” to be tested and, when necessary, revised. Thus, central to this “constructivist” conception of learning (Piaget 1970) is the now very generally accepted recognition, that, because new learning necessarily builds on previous experience and understanding, no two individuals make sense of new information in exactly the same way.

The second change is the growing recognition that, despite the insights it has yielded, constructivism is inadequate as a basis for planning education, since it accords so little importance to the part played by teaching. Furthermore, it limits attention to the learner as an individual, with little concern for the embeddedness of her or his experiences in the particular social and cultural situations in which s/he is growing up (Nelson 2007). To understand the essentially social nature of human development, by contrast, we turn to the work of Vygotsky and his colleagues.

What makes humans different from all other species, they argued, is that their development is not simply a matter of biological maturation, including maturation of the brain; it is also necessarily cultural. From the beginning, human infants are enmeshed in an environment shaped by the continuing effect of the solutions that preceding generations have found to the problems of surviving and prospering in a particular ecological niche; their learning thus necessarily involves discovering and taking over these cultural solutions so that they can participate effectively in family and community. Unlike Piaget, therefore, Vygotsky (1978) argued that learning is not a matter of autonomous development but, instead, a kind of “cultural apprenticeship” in which, by taking part in activities with others, the learner encounters and appropriates the tools and practices of the community and, in the process, transforms them into personal resources for individual thinking, feeling and acting.

Two critical differences from other species underpin the unique nature of human development. The first is the infant’s innate predisposition to treat others as intentional agents and to seek to understand their intentions; this makes possible deliberate learning through imitation of others’ modeling (Tomasello 1999). The second is the emergence of speech, which makes possible the more precise coordination of intentions and shared reflection on the consequences of action. Together, these human characteristics account for the amazing cultural accumulation of skills, knowledge and values in every society and the manner in which their individual members’ development is shaped and fostered by the assistance they receive as they attempt to participate in community activities (Wells 1986).

This view of learning and development also helps to resolve the conundrum of the relationship between the individual and society, which can now be recognized as one of interdependence. Since society pre-exists individual learners, it is from society that they appropriate the values, practices and knowledgeable skills that shape who they become; conversely, it is equally the case that society is maintained and transformed over time through the active participation of its individual members. Nevertheless, the relationship between individual and society is never direct; rather, it is necessarily mediated by the situated, productive activities and interpersonal interactions with specific others, in which individuals participate on particular occasions. It is from this socially situated perspective that we need to think about the goals and means of education.

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The third key understanding about learning that has emerged in the last century is the importance of interest and engagement (Herrera & Becht, this volume). When the task we are working on or the problem we are trying to solve is of real personal interest, learning becomes engaging and the desire to achieve one’s personally set goal provides the motivation to sustain that engagement. Ensuring the learner’s interest is thus of prime importance in the context of formal education. As Vygotsky (1978) wrote about teaching literacy, "teaching should be organized in such a way that reading and writing are necessary for something … Writing should be incorporated into a task that is relevant and necessary for life" (pp. 117-118).

Addressing this issue at about the same time from a similar perspective, Dewey (1938) argued that “inquiry” should be the driving force of education; this has led, in recent years, to the proposal that learning activities should take as their object significant and often problematic features of the students' experience and environment and have as their intended outcome a growth in the students' understanding, where this is taken to mean, not simply factual knowledge, but knowledge growing out of, and oriented to, socially relevant and productive action (Cohen, McLaughlin et al. 1993).

In figure 1, we have attempted to represent schematically the way in which we see the relationship between learning and teaching in the context of formal education.

Figure 1. A Model of the Relationship Between Learning and Teaching

(adapted from Wells, 1999)

Learning is at the center of the diagram. As Lave & Wenger (1991) point out, learning can occur without deliberate teaching – as is the case in people’s participation in the activities that make up family and community life and in many work situations. In most countries, however, it is considered important to make provision in schools and colleges for the more systematic, guided learning that is required to master the various

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disciplines that underpin activities in technologically advanced societies. In such formal educational contexts, where learning is an intended outcome of activity, teaching has two major functions: the first is to select and introduce the overall topic of inquiry, provide access to the necessary resources, and negotiate with the learners the challenges they will take on; the second is to monitor the progress of individuals and groups and to provide guidance and assistance as appropriate. This latter responsibility includes engaging individuals and the whole class in “metacognitively” reviewing the products and the processes of their learning in order that they may take greater control over, and responsibility for, their efforts to achieve understanding (Olson & Bruner, 1996).

At one level, a cycle through the four quadrants of the diagram represents what is involved in carrying out a single challenging activity. On such an occasion, one starts with a personal resource of interpreted past experience, which provides the initial orientation for making sense of what is new in the situation. The new is encountered as information, either through feedback from action into the world or from reading, viewing and listening to representations of the experiences, explanations and reflections of others. However, for this information to lead to an enhancement of understanding - which is the goal of all useful learning – it must be actively transformed and articulated with personal experience through knowledge building (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006). Understanding is especially valuable in today’s globalized world in so far as it allows agents to engage more strategically, purposefully and collaboratively in complex activity.

Knowledge building can take a variety of forms but all are essentially social and interactional in nature. Most typically, it takes place through face-to-face oral discourse (which may, of course, include reference to artifacts present in the situation, such as material tools, diagrams, graphs and quotations from written texts of present or absent authors). The aim is to participate in a common, or shared knowledge building process to which all contribute, whether overtly or through responding internally to the contributions of others in the dialogue of inner speech. While knowledge building certainly occurs in problem-solving activities in everyday life, it is – or should be – a focal activity in formal educational contexts; thus, one of the teacher’s most important tasks is to help students to develop the skills required for participation and to use them in a sustained and focused manner. When this is achieved, Bereiter (1994) describes the resulting dialogue as “progressive,” arguing that, although the issue students are grappling with may already have been understood by experts elsewhere, the understandings that class members are generating are new to them and they recognize them as superior to their previous understanding. This accords well with Popper & Eccles’ statement:

We can grasp a theory only by trying to reinvent it or to reconstruct it, and by trying out, with the help of our imagination, all the consequences of the theory which seem to us to be interesting and important… One could say that the process of understanding and the process of the actual production or discovery are very much alike. (Popper & Eccles 1977)

As is implied by this quotation, knowledge building and understanding are, in an important sense, two faces of the same process, the first

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being other-directed and undertaken in collaboration with others, while the second is inner-directed in that the understanding collectively achieved is appropriated by the individual participants in the form of enhancement of their potential for future action.

So far, in explicating figure 1, we have focused on a single opportunity for learning. But the diagram can also be seen as a representation of the cumulative nature of learning. For, while insights are frequently achieved on particular occasions of knowledge building in relation to a particular problem or issue, a change in the situation and/or the introduction of new information may expose the limits of what one thought one understood and thus call for further knowledge building. At a second level, therefore, the diagram can be seen as a continuing spiral of learning over time as new challenges set in motion new cycles of knowing.

It is at this level that the “improvable object” takes on its full significance as both goal and outcome of inquiry activity. In everyday life, major developments in understanding typically occur when participants are faced by a challenge that requires the creation of a new artifact or practice or the improvement of an existing one. Indeed, the major developments in human history have occurred in precisely that way, for example, in the invention of the wheel as a means of transporting heavy objects or of writing as a means of preserving ideas for future development. In educational contexts, such an object can take many forms, ranging from a functioning model, or a symbolic representation (e.g. a map) to a work of art (e.g. a sculpture, poem or a musical performance) and from a scientific explanation to a geometric proof or diagram. Such an improvable object provides a clear focus for discussion, particularly if it is a representation of its creators’ current understanding and a rationale has to be given for proposing a change. It is also likely to motivate revision, since the effect of making a change to the object can readily be judged for the improvement it brings or fails to bring about. At this second level, then, figure 1. represents a spiral progression through many cycles of “coming to understand.”

Not represented in the diagram, but equally important, are the wider institutional and societal contexts within which all particular events occur. These create both affordances for, and constraints on, what can be achieved. Thus, the events that constitute both individual cycles and progressions through the spiral need to be viewed from multiple perspectives, including those of the individuals involved, the classroom community, and the wider society of which that community is a part (see Meier, this volume and Mathiasen, this volume). However, these perspectives are not so much alternatives as different foci on the same overall activity; all have to be taken into account in order to understand the full complexity of any classroom event (Rogoff, 2003). In sum, in this model, learning is envisaged as a continuing “spiral of knowing,” as learners continually traverse through the four quadrants of the cycle of knowing in particular places and times (Wells 1999).

With modifications to take account of the age of the learners, this model is relevant at all stages of development. For example, Wells (2007) has described how it fits the data from studies of children’s development from infancy to adolescence and Northedge (2002) has applied it to various forms of adult education. Below, we show how it can be brought to bear on learning situations in higher education.

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Learning in Higher Education

When education in HE or at any other stage has as its goal an increase in understanding as just defined, decisions about the content that is taught and the methods and modes of “instruction” to be employed should not be the starting point and certainly cannot be the only consideration. Since learners always construct new understanding on the basis of their past experience and current understanding, teaching must be based on “where students are coming from” and equally on their currently envisaged futures. But it must also look beyond the classroom to society at large and to the problems that today’s learners should be preparing to address. To the extent possible, therefore, planning and enacting the curriculum should be conducted collaboratively with the learners involved.

Unfortunately, this conception of learning as the pursuit of understanding through collaborative inquiry is rarely enacted, either in public schools or in higher education. In many countries, schools are increasingly dominated by transmissional teaching that allows no place for inquiry and collaborative knowledge building, since teachers are constrained by state and national assessments of performance and by the perceived need to prepare their students to be successful in navigating the demands they will face in college. And with the continuing expansion of HE and the concern for “throughput” of students and for material efficiency, a comparable retreat to transmissional teaching has become prevalent in colleges and universities. Because of the enormous size of many introductory classes and the “delivery” mode in which most classes are organized, many undergraduates continue to use the same strategies and tactics for “doing school” that they used to gain good grades in high school. Lacking encouragement to explore how their academic studies relate to their personal goals and interests, students are at risk of failing to see how they could use their developing understanding to contribute to the world beyond academia. As a result, both students and society at large are failing to benefit from the full potential of higher education.

Nevertheless, despite this gloomy overall picture, there are teachers at all levels who do their best to engage their students in the dialogue of knowledge building that aims for deeper understanding of the topics and issues studied. In public schools, there is a growing number of teacher leaders who, conducting research on their own teaching, are inspiring colleagues to join with them, for example in trying to find ways of ensuring that all students, whatever their ethnic or class background or their command of the language of instruction, are provided with the support they need to achieve their full potential (Wells 2001; Gonzalez, Moll et al. 2005). And in colleges and universities there are those who are attempting to engage their students, in some cases through action in the local community, in exploring the broader implications of the knowledge they are encountering in class (Cole 2006). In addition, some universities have created various forms of “outreach” that aim to provide opportunities for students from minority and other historically underserved groups to overcome the barriers that have excluded them from higher education and from the careers for which this is a requirement.

In its founding mission statement, our own university gave high priority to undergraduate education and, over the last half century, has attempted to honor that commitment. However, as at other universities, growing enrollment at the graduate as well as the undergraduate level, without the necessary matching additional financial resources, together with the increasing pressure on faculty to conduct large-scale research

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and to secure external funding to do so, has diluted the realization of the initial commitment to high quality undergraduate education. Nevertheless, there continue to be initiatives of the kinds described above and in the remainder of this chapter we shall present two illustrative examples, in which we have been personally involved.

Enacting Theories of Education in Practice

Five years ago, the first author of this chapter was given the assignment of teaching Education 92B, “Introduction to Theories of Education,” a required course in our departmental program and also one designated as meeting the university’s General Education requirements. This course regularly enrolls 300 students and was, at that time, taught through three 70 minute lectures each week with an additional 70 minute meeting in sections of 30, each led by a graduate teaching assistant (TA). His first response was to refuse, on the grounds that in its organization and manner of “delivery” the course was a travesty of the educational principles that the department espoused. As he wrote:

What is particularly challenging about teaching this course is that, when students are encountering theory about how teaching may best support learning, they should do so in a context that enacts that theory. In other words, the instructor should practice what s/he preaches. Following a CHAT (cultural-historical-activity theory) approach to learning and teaching, I believe that learning-and-teaching are interdependent processes, wherein teaching is seen as both leading and supporting learning and where the teacher is also a learner with and from the students.

Pressured to take on the course, he agreed to do so provided that it could be redesigned to “practice what it preached.” At this point, the second author agreed to be the lead TA and, together, we attempted to design a course that would indeed enact the model described above. In other words, in addition to introducing students to the work of educational theorists, we wanted to encourage them to adopt a reflective stance to their own learning by challenging them to explore and critique their own learning practices, their role in educational institutions, and their assumptions about how people learn. At the same time, we wanted to make it possible for them to engage more directly and critically with their peers by providing opportunities for small groups to connect, relate and compare the diversity of their own previous learning experiences with their experience and understanding of the topics presented in this course. Finally we wanted the format of the course to foster a sense of agency and ownership among the students, a design that would position them as both protagonists and authors of knowledge-building activities rather than as conscripted information-processors with regard to the ideas of acknowledged experts in the field.

Briefly, the design we settled on retained the three meetings per week but changed their function. Key to the new organization was that, within the ten sections of 30 students, they would work in self-selected “study groups” of four to six students. In each week, the three meetings were as follows: on Monday there was a lecture for all the students and TAs; then, at some time during the remainder of the week, each study group met for one to one-and-a-half hours on their own and reported on their work at their

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following section meeting; finally, at the section meetings, the TAs encouraged their students to make connections between their group activities and the readings for the week.

In the first half of the course, the study groups were presented with a variety of tasks that highlighted different forms of intellectual challenge that might be incorporated into curricular units in schools. Then, having completed the task for the week, they were encouraged to adopt a “metacognitive stance” to the processes in which they had engaged and to relate them to the theories they were encountering in the required readings. Building on these earlier activities, the final challenge presented to each group was to design a grade-appropriate curriculum unit, using those theoretical principles that they had appropriated from the course. One of the main intentions for these study-groups was that they would foster a more intimate peer-network, a “safe-space” in which, in the absence of authority figures, students would be more likely to engage in knowledge building and less likely to assume a passive role.

The large weekly lecture session, in contrast to the more student-centered orientation of the other aspects of the course, provided an introduction to each new topic and an overview of the principles and ideas that it involved. At the same time, in keeping with CHAT theory, each lecture also incorporated more interactive episodes in which video-clips, demonstrations, and open-ended questions were used to stimulate interaction between students, followed by more general discussion, in an attempt to involve them more actively in collaborative knowledge building and thereby to sustain their interest and engagement. Finally, within the overall organizational framework, section meetings were intended to provide an arena in which the different levels and aspects of the course could be mediated and integrated.

A further – and, for many, a disconcerting – feature of the new course organization was the absence of tests and exams. In their place, students were required to submit a substantial portfolio at the end of the course, in which they demonstrated their understanding and engagement with the theories presented in two written assignments and in regular journal entries. Students were informed on the first day of class that they would not be receiving formal grades for individual assignments but that the final grade would be based on these portfolios and on their participation week by week. In this way we hoped to move students away from the traditional paradigm, in which engagement with course material tends to be motivated by external incentives. As we knew from experience, test questions that elicit single correct answers can lead students to package and memorize information with little regard for how it functions in a system or relates to their own purposes. Instead, our intention was for them to take ownership of, and responsibility for, their own learning and to devote their time and effort to developing lines of inquiry that they perceived to be personally and socially relevant rather than detached from their lives and interests.

At the end of the course each year, the students were asked to complete a questionnaire that sought their reactions to the different aspects of the course format as well as its content; they were also invited to offer their ideas about how the course could better meet their needs. Many took up this latter opportunity and their suggestions helped us to make several significant improvements, as we shall discuss below.

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Reviewing the responses received over the years, it is clear that some undergraduates were disconcerted – at least initially – by our efforts to grant them greater agency as inquiring learners. Here is a comment from the first year.

I have found myself struggling to create my own structure in this class, but despite what I create as a structure… there are still expectations…. Usually the expectations of the teacher create the goals of the student, especially in this university setting. And this is where I am faltering… I don’t know the expectations of the teacher (except that I have to turn in a portfolio at the end) and so my goals concerning the class aren’t forming well.

A major reason for the difficulty that such students experienced was insightfully expressed by another member of the class.

Our current educational system takes the structured aspect … to such an extreme that this approach ends up arresting the student’s ability to function in and take advantage of the other approach. People seem to have such a hard time accepting Education 92B’s philosophy and expectations and this is only because their previous school learning developed certain modes of operation, habits, approaches to problem solving, ways of thinking that stand in stark contrast to the 92B approach. Their acquired skills lose their meaning and capacity for use in this new setting. Undoubtedly it must prove perturbing for students to find themselves in a context where they are unable to use the habits and skills they have refined through their years in school.

However, from the outset, there were also many students who did understand and appreciate the value of having to collaborate in constructing both questions and answers rather than simply accepting a teacher’s protocol. The following comment also shows that the emphasis we placed on creating opportunities for students to reflect metacognitively on their experiences during the course enabled some students to gain a better understanding of themselves as learners.

As with all aspects of life, diversity is key. When a problem has a definite answer, once it is found, the learning essentially stops. I feel therefore the acts in which we all shared and took in the strategies and thought processes of our group members was more beneficial. Listening to what they are doing may make your mind in turn start looking at new strategies which would not have been considered on an individual basis.

Furthermore, it was clear that the majority of students really enjoyed the opportunity to work in small groups without an instructor – although some were initially skeptical about how the work would be distributed among them and the value or feasibility of being given responsibility for deciding how to use that time. However, despite appreciating this novel opportunity, a substantial proportion remained unclear about how the group activities they were asked to carry out were related to the central topics of the course.

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This led us to make several changes. The first was to consolidate the group activities under a single inquiry theme that runs throughout the course. In the most recent offering, we chose the theme of “sustainability” because of its current importance not only for them but for the global community as a whole. In the first half of the term, groups chose a particular aspect of the theme to research in preparation for a mid-term forum at which they presented their findings to their peers; then, in the second half, they drew on the same material to construct a curriculum unit for a grade level of their choice.

The second step we took was to be more explicit about our reasons for organizing the course into two phases with respect to this theme. We explained our conviction of the value of an “improvable object” as a focus for group inquiry and pointed out that the forum presentation and the curriculum unit were, together, intended to serve this function. We also emphasized that the various activities they undertook in creating and improving these objects would provide a solid basis for their metacognitive reflection on their own and others’ learning. In sum, we tried to explain how the processes in which they engaged in relation to this inquiry theme would allow them, as active learners, to experience, in practice, the theories of learning-and-teaching that the course was about.

On the evidence from the most recent students’ evaluations, these changes seem to have been successful. Many more students than in previous years came to value their experiences during the course, reporting that, for the first time during their undergraduate careers, they had learned to work toward their own personal goals and, as a result, felt a new sense of empowerment around their education and their work. The positive tone of the following, fairly representative, quotations suggests that these students are now “getting the point” and enjoying as well as benefiting from the experience.

It has been a real rewarding experience taking this course. I signed up for it at the last minute to satisfy a [General Education requirement], yet it has transpired into so much more than that. I applaud and am inspired by the dedication, willingness, and desire people have shown (TA's included) to change our education system for the better. I have learned a great deal about what needs to change not only in the classroom, but in the public's eye as well, when in comes to assessment, teaching, and understanding. If I ever go into teaching in the future, I will look back on this course as one of the cornerstones that sparked my interests in informing society of not only how to teach, but how to enlighten the public on the many issues that we are facing in our warming world.

I really appreciated [the] method of teaching. It inspired me to want to learn new ways of learning.

Our group project on sustainability was a welcome twist to how to teach a course. I did not like it at first, but as the course progressed, I found it to be very effective.

Preparing a curriculum unit was difficult but it really hammered home everything we had done up to that point and all of the effective teaching methods we learned. Honestly our project and the ones I saw in my section were better than most activities I’ve ever done in classes I’ve taken in elementary or secondary school!

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I felt that by having to develop our own curriculum we were carried to a better understanding of specific theories. This class was amazing.

These comments suggest that, as a result of the form as much as the content of the course, many students had not only changed their perceptions of learning and teaching, but had also achieved a better understanding of themselves as learners and of their responsibility as well as their potential to contribute to the improvement of the world around them.

While the undergraduate course just described was explicitly designed to enact the model of learning-and-teaching represented by the model in figure 1, the second case study concerns a program that already existed on our campus. Nevertheless, as will be seen, its underlying aims were very much in conformity with the same model.

Learning and Teaching in a Science & Technology Research Center

Since the year 2000, our campus has been home to the headquarters of the Center for Adaptive Optics (CfAO), one of eleven interdisciplinary Science & Technology Centers supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation; its charge is to develop and implement advances in educational practice and broaden student participation. In the opening years of its operation, the NSF officers, reviewing the progress of CfAO towards the above objectives, challenged CfAO leaders to be bolder in the development of educational initiatives. At the same time, members of the organization recognized the continuing need to develop structures and programs that would address apparent inequities involving the race/ethnicity, class and gender of those working in advanced science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). In response to these challenges, the incoming Director of Education and Human Resources at CfAO, Lisa Hunter, worked with center leaders and members to strategize a framework for new educational initiatives.

In both academia and in industry, those who play the most critical roles as mentors and instructors have rarely trained as educators and so have had little exposure to learning theory or research in the social sciences. So, while these mentors have developed expert knowledge and skill in their respective fields, they have typically spent less time thinking about how to effectively facilitate the entry of newcomers into the profession. The lack of preparation of member researchers to teach in higher education was recognized by the educational leaders of CfAO, as was the organization’s ability to take the initiative in this respect, given its strategic position and resources.

To this end, striving to develop research-based practices grounded in the learning sciences, a core group of CfAO members embraced the principle of “inquiry” as a pedagogical strategy and, working with staff at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, began to develop curriculum that would serve the professional development of current and future science and engineering faculty, while creating advancement opportunities for undergraduate students from non-dominant backgrounds who might otherwise not have had access to advanced research in STEM fields. One of the most substantial outcomes of these efforts was the concurrent development of two interdependent strands: an annual Professional Development Program (PDP) and an internship program specifically designed to increase access to college for students from non-dominant backgrounds.

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In the first strand, the professional development program, current and future science and engineering faculty are re-positioned as “the learners” who, with partners of their choice, complete several inquiry activities that have been carefully designed to contrast different pedagogical strategies. These activities enable PDP participants to investigate and reflect on their experiences as learners (or as “shadow” facilitators if they are returning participants) while concurrently exploring and discussing literature on educational practice. PDP participants spend the last few days of this immersion workshop in “design teams,” creating sets of learner-centered content, process, attitudinal, and community goals and then working “backwards” from these goals to create lab activities tailored to specific venues. Members of these curriculum design teams are then responsible for trying out their planned activities on site in order to develop their skills as facilitators and to explore the outcomes of the resulting learning activities. This iterative process of experiencing inquiry-oriented learning, reflecting on that experience in light of new information about learning theory, and then implementing the designs they have created, promotes a sense of “ownership” and thus a conscious investment in understanding contingencies and intersections between learning and teaching that they might otherwise take for granted.

The second strand of the initiative integrates college-level students into the research environment through a thoughtfully designed internship program. Each summer, before going to their respective research sites, CfAO interns spend an intensive introductory week together, learning about ongoing research in the world of adaptive optics and preparing to participate in cutting-edge research projects. This “Short Course” includes a range of “self-guided” yet highly structured lab activities that are designed by PDP participants to encourage CfAO interns to practice valued research skills while gaining confidence as scientists and engineers. The Short Course thus not only serves as an intensive transition into CfAO research for students who might not otherwise have access to this elite community, but it also serves as a “teaching lab” for the graduate student mentors. All eight of the interns interviewed by the second author of this chapter spoke about how strikingly different the Short Course learning activities felt in comparison to the many “lab” exercises they had completed at school. One of the biggest differences, they said, was that they did not start the activity already knowing the “answer” they were “supposed to get.” Several noted discovering that what they initially ignored as “mistakes” often later proved to be important sources of information that led to the resolution of the problem or question they were investigating. One intern confided her realization during the Short Course that not only could she not “differentiate between [her] findings and [her] conclusions” but that she had never previously thought to “look for the difference in the first place.” In addition, they all felt that Short Course activities were critical for building the confidence necessary to be able to work on problems or questions that at first they found incomprehensible. Indeed in an interview midway through the summer program in 2006, one intern specifically credited Short Course activities for helping him move past pre-existing fears of feeling incapable when uncertain about how to begin work on a research problem:

“Remember how I told you – what’s the worst possible scenario? I told you: if I have no idea about how to approach the problem? Well it happened! ‘Cause like for the – ummm – for the color one, for the filter one that I did the presentation on, I had no idea how to approach it and I was tripping out… And my interpretation of the question was way different than [my partner’s]….I was like, what kind of question are we

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trying to answer?! …But in the end, I liked it… I knew then I could have that feeling and get through it, and that helps for the internship for sure.”

Finally, five interns confessed that whereas in school they were unwilling to share their work and felt competitive with other individuals, during this course, because the activities explicitly required innovation and creativity, they unequivocally felt they benefited from working with others.

As facilitators during Short Course activities, graduate students are encouraged to draw on their PDP training in the effort to counter certain tendencies they understand to be common to classrooms and other instructional settings. In typical classrooms, students working within a “fixed” set of parameters may come to expect that the “answers” they produce have also been “fixed” and will be evaluated by an authority. The goal then becomes to “finish” rather than to work on knowledge-building. Consequently little initiative or effort is required on the students’ own part to determine the validity or limitations of their conclusions or how the issue could be explored further. Such assumptions are evident in the following exchanges between two interns, Abu and Keri, who were using hand-held spectrometers, colored filters, an adjustable resistor and a selection of different light bulbs to investigate whether changing the brightness of a light source affects the spectrum. This activity had been scheduled to occupy the better part of two days, but after only ten or fifteen minutes of peering through spectrometers at their station, Abu and Keri decided “they were done”:

Abu Its not changing the color it's just making it - Keri More brighter or not. But so, Abu But we can look at it directly [rather than through the plastic filter]Keri oh yeahAbu ((looks through the spectrometer again, this time bypassing the blue

filter)) Yeah it just gets dark. It’s still not really changingKeri Yeah I know its not changing at all! Well…. we're done!Abu Well, but that’s sort of boring.

The graduate students facilitating this pair of interns were responsible for noticing these moments and finding ways to motivate and sustain further problem-solving activity. So when Abu, who was confused about how they were expected to spend the remainder of the allotted time, approached Jan, one of the facilitators, asking if they were really expected to continue the same investigation into the next day, Jan responded with an attempt to kindle the spirit of inquiry by suggesting that scientists are never done: “There's always more questions. You can always push it farther. You can understand everything: the whole universe comes together.”

Subsequently, turning back to his station, where Keri was writing down their conclusion (“it doesn’t change it just makes it more defined”) in her notebook, Abu ventured a way they might explore further (“we can try to explain WHY it doesn’t change”), then offered his own “theory”. However, he was again persuaded by Keri that a basic statement would be sufficient to satisfy their instructors.

Abu Yeah we're not changing the color too much - my theory is we're not changing the xxxxx wavelength

Keri Ooooohhh (laughs) - there you go

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Abu (laughing) Ah, we just need to use xxx wavelength or xxxx wordsKeri Yeah exactly, big words. So we're done.

A fundamental challenge for all instructors who are leading knowledge-building activities involves balancing attention to curricular or pedagogical goals with moves that elicit action and contributions from learners. Often, when instructors see that a student is confused or straying from a course of action that will lead to the expected or normative result/outcome, their instinct is to step in and offer “help” in the form of a clarifying explanation or demonstration, or by authoritatively redirecting the learner’s actions without pausing sufficiently to first ascertain more about the learner’s perspective and focus. Indeed this was true of many of the mentor-intern interactions we observed in the CfAO internship program, and especially those of mentors who had not participated in the PDP. To combat this tendency, CfAO graduates facilitating Short Course activities are constantly encouraged, before stepping in, to draw on their skills as researchers to actively seek out evidence of how the interns are making sense of new information. And if and when they do step in, their challenge is to offer suggestions that are responsive to the learner’s focus rather than narrowly prescriptive of how they should act or think. This is important because, for knowledge-building to be collaborative and productive, it is important for learners and instructors to share a joint focus.

For example, noticing that Abu and Keri, having decided they were “done” with their investigation, had drifted into a conversation about their nightlife, Eben, another facilitator, approached the pair and, drawing on his PDP training, asked them about the question they were investigating. This was a way for Eben to give interns the “floor”, by opening up the dialogue and thereby learning more about what they had understood up to that point. Eben’s own understanding was that light sources with a higher luminosity emit a greater proportion of light at frequencies that appear blue in color. However, Eben refrained from immediately evaluating their conclusion or indicating that it was in need of revision – as often happens in classrooms (Cazden,1988; Mehan, 1979; Nystrand, 1997) – and instead offered a way in which they could expand their investigation and gather more information. In so doing, he continued to position the interns as the decision makers and instigators of further problem solving action:

Eben Have you looked at any other bulbs? Because you can actually unplug that bulb.

Keri Oh, and try different ones? That's a good idea. OK.

Nevertheless, mastering the creativity and discipline required to maintain learner-centered assistance and guidance while aiming to satisfy content and process goals planned for the activity remained challenging for the graduate facilitators. At times, in their struggle to find that balance, they sometimes slipped into more didactic “explainer” roles. At other times, their own understanding of the phenomena at stake seemed to prevent them from understanding the full relevance or potential of the connections the interns were making and this led, in turn, to breakdowns in communication or other impasses. For instance, the following day, after they had had the opportunity to use more sensitive instruments, Abu and Keri became invested in understanding the differences between the spectra produced by a fluorescent bulb and those produced by incandescent bulbs. Excited about their discovery, Abu eventually articulated a fairly sophisticated hypothesis to explain the differences they had noticed:

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Abu …something that I think that is exciting: all these- all these how do you call these bulbs?

Jan Incandescent Abu - these incandescent bulbs - they all had the same kind of spectra lines

irrespective of the watts. This one is different, it has-Jan Oh, interesting.Abu - like discrete linesKeri (to Abu) Non-continuous, is that what you said?Abu I'm just guessing that the reason for that [the “continuous” spectra] is due

to electro magnetic radiation and that [the “discrete” spectra] is due to the pressure of the gas

Jan So they are different things?Abu This one [spectrum produced by the fluorescent bulb] is electrons that

move from one electron level to another, so it jumps, so you are going to have that gap

Jan This [spectrum produced by incandescent bulb] is due to something else?

Abu This one [incandescent spectrum] is just due to the heat,Jan ahhhhAbu - so it’s just continuous.

Abu’s hypothesis was the product of a divergent line of inquiry that he had initiated with his partner, fairly independently of input or assistance from the instructors. Indeed this was part of what made it interesting and “exciting” to him. On this occasion, Jan interpreted Abu’s account as explaining an “interesting” but “sort of tangential effect” and then went on to make suggestions that drew attention away from comparisons of the two kinds of bulbs and back to the narrower relationship between temperature and blue light. However, still interested in their own discovery, Abu and Keri treated her repeated references to making use of the available thermometers as more a distraction than a helpful hint.

As it was, the learners’ own agenda, namely to come up with something “new,” and the instructor’s commitment to curricular objectives impeded the coordination of the kind of joint focus, necessary to establish and sustain collaborative work on an “improvable object”. With a different facilitation strategy at this phase of investigation – one which further pursued the line of inquiry initiated by Abu, Jan might ultimately have led these interns to grasp the relationships between heat, intensity, and the frequency of wavelengths at the “blue” end of the visible spectrum – as intended by the designers of the activity. Thus, through even more sensitive, precise and responsive facilitation moves it could have been possible for Jan to help combine the partially divergent agendas that surfaced on this occasion.

Short Course activities are intended to use strategic timing and careful selection of materials rather than direct instruction to scaffold activity, allowing the interns to retain a sense of initiative and control of their own learning so that later activities can build on earlier ones incrementally. Throughout the Short Course a range of different skills is introduced in sequence while procedural supports are deliberately withdrawn. The aim is to enable the interns to become more confident in and aware of their ability to manage their own investigations. But, as this example shows, it is often a challenge to manage

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this transition. Facilitating this kind of learning is a significant departure from more traditional teaching approaches, and it requires skill, guidance and practice.

As is clear from this brief account of the CfAO initiative, enacting what we have called “dialogic inquiry” is a challenge for teachers and students alike, even when, as in this case, conditions are favorable – a small group of specially selected interns working with prepared mentors and facilitators in a self-contained program. In the Short Course, both teachers and learners are struggling with a lifetime of classroom instruction in science that encourages the teacher to explain and the learner to expect to be given the “answer.”

Reflections on the Case Studies

While there are obviously important differences between the two cases we have briefly described, they share some important commonalities. One, unexpected, feature common to both cases was the “culture shock” that interns and undergraduates experienced when they were challenged to embark on self-directed inquiries that required them to formulate and attempt to evaluate answers to their own questions rather than accept the questions asked and answers expected by the experts. Many of the students and interns who contributed their perspectives commented on how different their experiences were from what they had encountered in school; indeed, some of the undergraduates were aggrieved as well as disoriented by the unfamiliarity of the new approach that they were suddenly expected to adopt. Although most were eventually able to take steps in this direction, we learned how important it is to employ explicit structures to ease the transition.

As we noted in the introduction, a – perhaps unintended – result of the imposed emphasis on coverage and the importance of the economy of grades is that schools tend to inculcate learning strategies that, once acquired and found effective for success in “doing school,” are hard for students to give up. This was particularly the case for the undergraduates in 92B, since their familiar strategies continued to be successful for many of the courses they were taking concurrently. What we have realized, therefore, is that it is not sufficient simply to explain to students why the “banking” model of education (Freire, 1970) is not appropriate for life in the 21st century. Nor is it enough to emphasize the need to understand rather than merely become acquainted with the material that is presented in lectures and in the accompanying reading. We recognize that our attempt to explain our expectations and create opportunities for inquiry and wait for the students to take up the invitation must be accompanied by a great deal more structured support. If you can’t swim, it is scary to be pushed in at the deep end along with many other novice swimmers if there is only one lifeguard on duty.

In this respect, the intensive short course that launches the CfAO internship is much more successful. As the vignette presented above makes clear, such success depends to a considerable extent on the ready availability of teachers and mentors who are attuned to the interns’ perspectives and skilled in providing appropriate guidance and assistance. Here, in addition to the carefully planned exploratory activities that encourage interns to ask and attempt to answer their own questions, there are also multiple opportunities for them to reflect on and explain their developing understanding with peers and teachers who are interested in what they are doing and thinking. For this reason, although it will be more challenging in the case of the large undergraduate class, we have

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become even more convinced of the importance of carefully planned opportunities to support them in the transition to self-directed learning.

As the model of learning presented above predicts, the inclusion of “improvable objects” significantly mediated the creation of new understandings in both the case studies. CfAO interns, working on problems posed during different Short Course inquiry activities, were continually producing and improving explanations of the outcomes of their investigations. As they gradually took responsibility for inventing, sharing and improving their public explanations of the (albeit partly staged) discoveries they were making, the interns came to a deeper understanding of the processes and phenomena at stake in their investigations. Similarly, in the large undergraduate class, the task of designing a curriculum unit and defining a focal theme together with a group of peers challenged the students to apply the information they had encountered in the readings and in lectures, as they made decisions about what to include and how to justify those decisions. This was also true for the graduate students participating in the PDP, and those who served as Teaching Assistants for 92B, many of whom were encountering learning theory for the first time. PDP participants drew on reflective discussions about their shared experience of learning activities that took place in the earlier workshop as they grappled with team members over elements of the design they were working on; and in our regular planning meetings the Teaching Assistants were participating in forms of learning that they were simultaneously trying to facilitate in the section meetings for which they were responsible.

We firmly believe that it is largely through the sustained and “dialogic” effort of creating and improving their curriculum units and their constituent activities that both the undergraduates and the PDP graduate student participants transformed and synthesized their understanding of how people learn and how teaching can best support learning. In both cases, the designing of a curriculum unit functioned as an “improvable object” that motivated a spiral of cycles of action and knowledge-building. In addition, we found that, because work on an improvable object sustained and focused their engagement, the learners became more ready to ask pertinent questions and to voluntarily contribute their emerging understandings during public knowledge-building events.

Thus far, we have emphasized the importance of providing opportunities for work on an improvable object in supporting students’ learning. However, the concept of an improvable object applies equally to the teachers and mentors who are responsible for planning opportunities for productive learning over successive years. In both examples, for those who were involved in planning and implementing a curricular design, the improvable object was the course itself. At this level, the undergraduates’ and interns’ situated actions and written reflections in each iteration provided the information that spurred those responsible to engage in the kind of knowledge-building that enabled them to better understand how to improve their respective program or course. And for our own part, the writing of this chapter has also involved a spiral of knowing, as successive drafts have been improved by the comments and suggestions we have received from each other and from our fellow contributors to this volume.

Conclusion

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In contributing to this timely volume, we are in agreement with our fellow authors that there is a pressing need to find ways to improve the quality of the learning opportunities that students encounter in Higher Education. However, we contend that it is not sufficient to focus on HE in isolation from the wider society of which it is a part, for colleges and universities play a pivotal role not only in shaping the lifelong learning of all individuals but also – albeit less directly – in channeling the development of society as a whole. Here, we should like to draw attention to three “levels” that we think are important.

First, the designation “higher education” implies that students entering college or university have already completed a basic education and have excelled in the course of it; indeed, the extent of their excellence is the chief criterion for admission. However, since entry to higher education is increasingly the goal to which all young people are encouraged to aspire, the entry criteria have a powerful impact on the organization of the preceding stages. One baleful effect, in schools in the U.S. and elsewhere, is the early tracking of students according to their apparent ability to meet these criteria and the generally restricted learning opportunities provided for those who do not (Oakes 1990). An equally serious issue is the use of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and Grade Point Average (GPA) in high school as the metrics of success and the influence these have on the way in which learning is conceptualized and assessed. When reception and memorization of mainly factual information is what counts, as this is what can be measured by multiple-choice tests, and when breadth of coverage rather than depth is emphasized, educational institutions imply and students learn that being successful is more about developing strategies for doing well on tests than attempting to understand the implications or applications of what is being learned.

A second way in which universities and colleges impact education in the preceding years is through their role in preparing future educators. This has the potential to be an important means of improving public education. By equipping those who will teach children and administer schools with a more critical and reflective understanding of what should be the goals of schooling and of effective ways of achieving them, university-based professional development can significantly affect educational practice at the local level. It can also fire teachers and administrators with a commitment to social justice and to the eradication of inequitable treatment of non-dominant groups. Similar arguments hold for professional preparation programs in other fields. Since HE is responsible for preparing students for a wide variety of professional careers, it has a strong influence on the values and the kinds of knowledge that shape the various professions and organize the world of business and industry.

But most important, in our view, is that the majority of students entering HE in the U.S. and in other countries are at the point where they are exploring and establishing the goals and values for their future lives. Clearly, advanced academic study in the discipline(s) relevant to their personal interests and envisaged careers should be an essential part of their undergraduate learning. But, in addition, it is important that they develop a wider understanding of the social, cultural and political contexts in which the knowledge they are gaining will be put to use. In other words, HE should not only focus on the development of individual expertise in a specific discipline or professional field but should also contribute to the creation of a more just and democratic society by providing opportunities for students to develop understanding of contemporary issues and

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the disposition to participate critically and collaboratively in public discussion in order to take effective action (Dewey, 1966).

We are not suggesting that institutions of HE fail to recognize their responsibilities to students and society at large. But we are suggesting that they tend to respond administratively and in a piecemeal fashion: deciding what courses need to be taught, what content they should include and who should be responsible for teaching and assessing them. While organizational issues of this kind need to be resolved, to give them priority runs the risk of short-circuiting broader consideration by teachers and students of the more fundamental questions about the kind of learning experiences that would be most appropriate in fulfilling these responsibilities.

The two case studies that we have presented in this chapter are attempting to fulfill these responsibilities within the limits of their brief duration. The scientists who attend the PDP workshop are preparing to mentor the CfAO interns, while many of the undergraduates who take the Theories of Education course are seriously thinking about a career as public school teachers. For this reason, it is essential that these courses enact as well as present a theory of learning-and-teaching that is appropriate for the challenges facing the global citizens of today. Unfortunately, most educational institutions are still locked in an out-of-date, mechanical conception of learning and teaching that will be perpetuated at all levels unless the educational leaders of tomorrow themselves experience and learn to enact a conception of learning that has as its goal the development of understanding as a basis for effective and responsible action. This is the challenge that Higher Education must take up if it is to meet its responsibilities as the pivot in the system.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all those who made this chapter possible, including the participants in the two case studies, our editors, and the other authors contributing to this anthology. Special thanks go to Lisa Hunter, Director of Education and Human Resources at the Center For Adaptive Optics, for her substantial contributions to the preparation of this chapter and helpful suggestions during the revision process. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center for Adaptive Optics, managed by the University of California at Santa Cruz under cooperative agreement AST 98-76783. We are also grateful for the support offered by the Center for Teaching Excellence, University of California at Santa Cruz.

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