Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments, A Review

Summarized by Derrel Fincher

Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments.

Jonassen, David H. and Susan M. Land (ed.), 2000, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

 Chapter 1

Student-Centered Learning Environments. Susan Land and Michael Hannifin

Their goal is to advance a "more principled approach" that links teaching, learning, and technology. They then lay out what they call "grounded design" for constructivist methodologies.

Grounded Design Primer (pg3)

Grounded approaches basically links methods and approaches consistent with the corresponding epistemological perspectives. In other words, regardless of your philosophy of how students learn, learning environment that you create should be based on the philosophy and the best available thinking about the philosophy. Although apparently self-evident, there are many cases where the learning environment is not really following the philosophy.

All learning environments have five foundations: (from other works) psychological, pedagogical, technological, cultural, and pragmatic.

• Psychological foundations--Focused on how individuals think and learn. Note that all strategies should have appropriate psychological foundations, such as behaviorist for Skinnerian philosophy.

• Pedagogical Foundations are tied to psychological foundations.

• Technological Foundations are how media can support the learning environment.

• Cultural Foundations are the prevailing values of the learning community.

• Pragmatic Foundations emphasize reconciling the available resources and constraints with designing the learning environment.

Principles of Grounded Design

Four basic conditions for grounded design (pg 5):

• Designs must be rooted in a defensible and publicly acknowledged theoretical framework.

• Methods must be consistent with the outcomes of research conducted to test, validate, or extend the relevant theories.

• Designs are generizable from the instances where they are applied.

• Designs and their frameworks are validated iteratively through successive implementation.

 Constructivism and Grounded Design Principals. (req 1) "Grounded constructivist learning environments, therefore, support individuals or groups as the attempt to negotiate multiple rather than singular points of view, reconcile competing an conflicting perspectives and beliefs, and construct personally relevant meaning accordingly (Hannafin & Land, 1997)" Page 6

 "Learners, especially weaker students, tend to be characterized by passive learning strategies that are remarkably persistent and enduring (McCaslin & Good, 1992). Successful learners, on the other hand, use a variety of cognitive strategies and self-regulation procedures to plan and pursue goals, integrate new knowledge with existing, formulate questions and inferences, and continually review and reorganize their thinking (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1989; Scardamalia et al., 1989)"  Page 8

Empirically verified methods (Req 2) Strategies and methods used should be empirically based and validated. Page 8

Generalizability of Design (req 3) The design can be generalized and extended or applied to comparable contexts, problem areas, or learners.

 Designs and Frameworks Successively Tested and Refined (Basically, you can't sit still) Page 10.

 On page 11, they point out that trendy activities have often been sold as constructivist learning even when directed instruction, or a lack of external support is mistaken for student centered learning despite the absence of needed scaffolding. Page 11.

Other points: The learner actively constructs meaning in the learner-centered environment. There may be external learning goals, but the learner determines how to proceed based on individual needs  and questions that arise while test beliefs. Page 12

Importance of Situated thinking and Authentic Contexts. "Although all learning is contextually  based, not all contexts support the application of knowledge equally.  Knowledge acquired in decontextualized situation, for example, tends to be inert and of little practical utility (Whitehead, 1929)." Pg 13. They go on to talk about math problems. :-)

Negotiation and Interpretation Involving Multiple Perspectives. Page 13. Basically , exploration, interpretation, and negotiation deepen understanding as socially mediated aspects of learning.

On page 14, they discuss the importance of prior everyday experiences and the naive view that some learners have. (Such as the view many students have that it's hotter in the summer because the earth is closer to the sun.). They also talk about technology and the zone of proximal development.

Inertia and the Tyranny of Tradition: Old Dogs, New Tricks? Pg 16. "Although as educators we espouse support for constructivist approaches to teaching and learning, we continue to rely on familiar pedagogical approaches such as lectures, worksheets, and rote learning practices."  They go on point out that trying to stuff a constructivist learning environment into traditional classroom practices can result in mismatches. The result is constructivist pedagogy to attain traditional goals, you end up with Petraglia's "domesticated constructivism." In short, students to the same old thing.

Learned Helplessness and learner Compliance: "Will this be on the test?"  Pg 17

"In typical constructivist learning environments, students establish (or adopt) learning goals and needs, navigate through and evaluate a variety of potentially relevant resources, generate and test hypotheses, and so forth. Teachers clarify rather than tell, guide rather than direct, and facilitate student effort rather than impose their own approaches. For both teachers and learners, these represent radical departures from conventional school-based learning activities. Teachers have traditionally possessed the required knowledge, determined what is correct and what is incorrect, and set and enforced grading standards.   Students are told what knowledge is required, which answer are correct and which are incorrect, and the standards that separate good from bad students, average from substandard performance, and robins from bluebirds. A pact between teacher and student is tacitly struck and enforced: Good teachers make the preceding explicit and direct students effort accordingly, while good students learn quickly to detect and comply with the standards."

They go on to point out that students frequently queried researchers if they had "done enough". Even with web-based inquiry-oriented learning tasks, students tended to reduce the task to finding the correct answer, the single source. Pg 18.

The Situated Learning Paradox ("I know what I know") Pg 18 "Although personal theories are considered critical to progressive understanding, they can become especially problematic when learners become entrenched in faulty theories to explain events that cannot be tested within the boundaries of a system or fail to recognize important contradictory evidence."

Last maintained 11/19/2007