Models as Relational Categories

Model-based learning (MBL) has an established position within science education. It has been found to enhance conceptual understanding and provide a way for engaging students in authentic scientific activity. Despite ample research, few studies have examined the cognitive processes regarding learning scientific concepts within MBL. On the other hand, recent research within cognitive science has examined the learning of so-called relational categories. Relational categories are categories whose membership is determined on the basis of the common relational structure. In this theoretical paper, I argue that viewing models as relational categories provides a well-motivated cognitive basis for MBL. I discuss the different roles of models and modeling within MBL (using ready-made models, constructive modeling, and generative modeling) and discern the related cognitive aspects brought forward by the reinterpretation of models as relational categories. I will argue that relational knowledge is vital in learning novel models and in the transfer of learning. Moreover, relational knowledge underlies the coherent, hierarchical knowledge of experts. Lastly, I will examine how the format of external representations may affect the learning of models and the relevant relations. The nature of the learning mechanisms underlying students’ mental representations of models is an interesting open question to be examined. Furthermore, the ways in which the expert-like knowledge develops and how to best support it is in need of more research. The discussion and conceptualization of models as relational categories allows discerning students’ mental representations of models in terms of evolving relational structures in greater detail than previously done.     

Laughter,smiles and grins: The role of humor in learning and facilitating

Abstract

This article inquires into the role of humor in the relational learning process that takes place in adventure education programs. It presents program episodes, which the authors experienced in their practice as facilitator, staff trainer and researcher, and explores the related literature. Four aspects appear to affect whether humor either facilitates or interferes with participants' learning in development programs. First, humor plays a role in developing relationships among participants and between participants and facilitators, and hence in the relational safety that characterizes an environment conducive to learning. Second, it may play a role in creating a workable distance to sensitive learning issues. Third, humor may offer new and unexpected perspectives, which contribute to revising familiar but restrictive reference frames. Finally, humor seems to fulfill these functions to the extent that it is not planned to do so, and as such may exemplify the ‘paradox of functionality’ in relational processes.     

Transformative learning and concepts of the self: insights from immigrant and intercultural journeys

This article examines Canadian immigrant and intercultural learning as an insightful context for examining transformative learning. Theories of intercultural communication are explored, particularly the concept of transculturality and Bhabha’s concept of ‘Third Space’. Various concepts of the self are also compared, particularly two conceptions implicit in theories of transformative learning, the autonomous self and the relational self. Finally, three empirical studies from Canada are reviewed and findings discussed regarding the transformative process of learning into transculturality as well as the relational self and relational knowing in transformative learning.     

Individual differences: Either relational learning or item-specific learning in a same/different task

Three pigeons were trained in a three-item simultaneous same/different task. Three of six stimulus combinations were not trained (untrained set) and were tested later. Following acquisition, the subjects were tested with novel stimuli, the untrained set, training-stimulus inversions, and object shape and color manipulations. There was no novel-stimulus transfer—that is, no abstract-concept learning. Two pigeons showed partial transfer to untrained pairs and good transfer to stimulus inversions, suggesting that they had learned the relationship between the stimuli. Lack of transfer by the third pigeon suggests item-specific learning. The somewhat surprising finding of relational learning by 2 pigeons with only six training pairs suggests restricted-domain relational learning that was controlled more by color than by shape features. Individual differences of item-specific learning by 1 pigeon and relational learning by 2 others demonstrate that this task can be learned in different ways and that relational learning can occur in the absence of novel-stimulus transfer.     

Assessment In Practice: An inspiration from apprenticeship

The paper investigates the relationship between assessment and learning through an empirical study of apprenticeship training. The paper suggests that well‐established modes of learning, which facilitate meaningful assessment in apprenticeship training, present an “antidote” to a traditional emphasis on assessment as selection and control. In contrast to rejection of apprenticeship modes of assessment as being inappropriate and obsolete at the present time, the paper suggests that the concept of apprenticeship assessment can be seen as a highly attractive and effective alternative to current assessment practices in both schools and workplaces. Taking a situated and relational perspective on knowledge and learning, we argue that assessment practices should focus on contextually‐anchored reviews of the core competencies of the person. This contextual assessment contrasts with an emphasis on assessment as essentially controlling and selecting students for further education and, on the other hand, with assessment as a process of self‐monitoring and self‐reflection.     

Science Students' Perceptions of Engaging Pedagogy

During their years of schooling, students develop perceptions about learning and teaching, including the ways in which teachers impact on their learning experiences. This paper presents student perceptions of teacher pedagogy as interpreted from a study focusing on students' experience of Year 7 science. A single science class of 11 to 12 year old students and their teacher were monitored for the whole school year, employing participant observation, and interviews with focus groups of students, their teacher and other key members of the school. Analysis focused on how students perceived the role of the teacher's pedagogy in constructing a learning environment that they considered conducive to engagement with science learning. Two areas of the teacher's pedagogy are explored from the student perspective of how these affect their learning: instructional pedagogy and relational pedagogy. Instructional pedagogy captures the way the instructional dialogue developed by the teacher drew the students into the learning process and enabled them to “understand” science. How the teacher developed a relationship with the students is captured as relational pedagogy, where students said that they learned better when teachers were passionate in their approach to teaching, provided a supportive learning environment and made them feel comfortable. The ways in which the findings support the direction for the middle years and science education are considered.     

Understanding social presence in text‐based online learning environments

This article reports on key aspects of a theory generative study into social presence in text‐based online learning environments. The focus of the article is the nature of social presence as experienced by online learners in those environments. Employing a collective case study design, the study accessed online learners’ experience‐based heuristic knowledge through a multi‐phase dialogical process which functioned as an extended interview. Among the key findings was (a) a definition of social presence drawn from learners’ experiences; (b) explication of the nature of social presence in online learning environments; (c) suggestions for the creation and sustenance of social presence in those environments; and (d) support for a relational view of social presence which emphasizes human agency in mediated social processes and foreshadows a role for social presence as a critical element of online learning environments.     

Learning to see the familiar: Technological assemblages in a higher education (non)classroom setting

If an objective of public higher education is to engage with a diversity of communities, then coursework should be less insulated within classrooms. This work describes and analyzes a university course design that supports undergraduate students to experience learning as relational and transformational via Site Visits within various communities. We focus on “technological assemblages” as a way to understand students’ reorientation to the process and purpose of learning (and teaching). We analyze experiences within the course as moments of disorientation, reassembly and stabilization in which students use their mobile devices, bodies and interactions-in-place to understand familiar locations as socially and historically contingent sites of learning (and teaching). We argue that this instructional model does important work of putting students at the nexus of building relationships between the university and other community settings around the city.     

Encountering Pedagogy through Relational Art Practices

Two artists involved in ‘socially engaged art’ practice were invited to work with art education teacher candidates and instructors in an effort to rethink notions of teaching, learning and art. We initiated this residency, which we called ‘The Summerhill Residency’, to examine how learning encounters might create environments for meaningful exchanges between the ways in which artists and secondary art education teacher candidates learn to think about pedagogy and the nature of artistic learning. Drawing upon Bourriaud's theory of relational aesthetics, we consider, yet trouble, the relational aspects of the processes and products of the artist residency, and examine the crisis of imagination that permeated teacher candidates' experiences. Throughout the project, a/r/tography offered a rich form of living enquiry that opened up possibilities for learning within a community of enquirers.     

Youth cultures,activism and agency: revisiting feminist debates

Following the invitation issued by the London Feminist Salon Collective in the pages of Gender and Education, this paper offers further theoretical suggestions for understanding agency. Based on an ethnographic study with young people engaged in activist politics, I offer a conception of agency that is at its core relational. I build this theoretical contribution upon a lineage of feminist theorising about the nature of agency, which began in debates about poststructuralism/postmodernism but have since moved to incorporate Pierre Bourdieu's cultural sociological approach. I suggest that while previous theorising has been enormously important for yielding insights into the possibilities for agency, it has not adequately accounted for the everyday means by which agency takes place. My empirical work highlights one of the modalities through which young people come to take political action – that is, through relational processes. I suggest that such an understanding about agency can further illuminate the means by which progressive and feminist goals might be reached.     

Conflict,risk and authority: female faculty members' stories of change

Abstract

Most studies of gender and information technology have investigated gender differences in the relationships between education and achievement, and attitudes towards and use of computers. Few have explored gendered experiences of faculty members using learning technologies in higher education. The study on which this article is based explored the experiences of 47 Canadian female faculty members integrating information and communications technologies (ICTs) into the higher education learning environment. The stories they told suggest that learning to use ICT in ways coherent with their values may be an intensely personal process of cognitive and cultural change for these women, in which beliefs and values may be examined and even realignedas they develop personal, moral authority. When faculty members explicitly contextualize the process as social, relational learning, it has the potential to be transformative at personal and societal (institutional) levels. The interrelated theoretical constructs of transformative or action learning, the development of authority-into-agency, and technology issues related to feminist pedagogy frame the three illustrative narratives of experience presented.     

The importance of respect in teaching and learning: perspectives of final year pre-service teachers in a regional university in Ireland

This article aims to address the lack of attention given to respect as an important relational construct for pre-service teachers. It seeks to inform teacher educators on how to better understand its practice and the implications for teaching and learning. This study examined second level pre-service teachers’ perceptions and experiences of respect. A qualitative design was employed and 12 undergraduate pre-service teachers in their final year of study were interviewed twice (pre and post practicum) about their perceptions of respect and their experiences of respectful teaching and learning. The emerging data indicate that the relational component of respect was identified by the pre-service teacher participants as being important to feeling respected as a teacher. Recommendations are made, in light of these findings, to help teacher educators support pre-service teachers gain a greater understanding of the relational nature of respect.     

Unpacking teacher–researcher collaboration with three theoretical frameworks: a case of expansive learning activity?

Long association with a mathematics teacher at a Grade 4–6 school in Sweden, is basis for reporting a case of teacher–researcher collaboration. Three theoretical frameworks used to study its development over time are relational knowing, relational agency and cogenerative dialogue. While relational knowing uses narrative perspectives to explore the experiential and relational nature of collaboration; relational agency, draws on activity theory perspectives and identifies the change in the purpose of collaboration, from initially conducting classroom interventions to co-authoring research. Finally, cogenerative dialogue, deploys hermeneutic-phenomenological perspectives and investigates the dialogue that transpired between Lotta and the author, as they co-authored their research report. Such analysis sheds invaluable light on a case of expansive learning activity.     

Learning outcomes and ways of thinking across contrasting disciplines and settings in higher education

This article describes the ways in which learning outcomes have been, or will be, investigated within the TLRP projects in higher education. It introduces the term ways of thinking and practising which has been used in one of the projects to describe the intentions of staff in higher education. This term covers what staff see as the essential nature of their discipline and so defines learning outcomes more broadly than is typical in the current specification of intended learning outcomes. The article considers the wide range of differences in learning outcomes that exist across higher education, reflecting different institutional missions and priorities, as well as the fundamental differences that exist between subject areas in the nature of learning outcomes, and considers some of the problems encountered in how to conceptualize and assess them.     

Merleau-Ponty’s ‘wild Being’: Tangling with the entanglements of research with the very young

Abstract

This article draws on a study of infant participation in research, and work in philosophical-empirical inquiry, to illuminate some of the inexhaustible entanglements constituting the collective relational landscape of educational research of particular encounters, which have been called moments of wonder. Working with Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical notions of wild Being and flesh, I look closely at one such ‘moment’, as lived as an entanglement of embodied self, worldly things, and other selves that collectively comes into being whilst opening onto time and space. I see this account as demonstrating the value of learning to see the ‘collective’, wherein individualities are engendered, for developing new understandings of early childhood education (ECE) relational landscapes, specifically in relation to ‘participatory’ research with very young children – and educational research more generally.     

A sociocultural analysis of organisational learning

The concept of organisational learning has been widely debated and frequently contested by educationalists, but the specific processes and actions which constitute this form of learning have received relatively little research attention. This paper reports a three‐year empirical investigation into organisational learning in a large industrial complex, with the aim of clarifying the practices of organisational learning and interpreting them within sociocultural learning theory. A sociocultural model is proposed which identifies dialogue as the fundamental process by which organisations learn, and relational practices as the social structure which embeds the dialogue and makes it sustainable in a potentially conflictual environment. Three relational practices are analysed in detail: opening space for the creation of shared meaning, reconstituting power relationships and providing cultural tools to mediate learning. A pedagogy of organisational learning is defined in terms of participation in these practices, either as the carrier of a practice or as the facilitator of participation by others. The theoretical requirement that adult learning must be autonomous is reconciled with the concept of collective learning in pursuit of organisational goals by rejecting the notion of an individually‐contained self in favour of a relational concept of the self, in which autonomy is achieved by building relationships with others.     

Changing as a person: the experience of learning to research in the social sciences

In this study of learning to research on a higher degree programme in Education, half the sample of 18 students reported that the experience of learning changed them as people. The lived experience of learning of these students was analysed using an approach based on a Variation Theory of learning. The critical aspects of this object of learning and the relevance structure and dimensions of variation related to this change were identified and are illustrated in individual cases of learning. The critical aspects relate to epistemological stance, perception of others’ perspectives, the (relational) nature of learning, interpretation (reflexivity) and perception of professional practice. It is contended that change in relation to these aspects of a person’s world is related to change in one’s own person, and that learning to research on a professional doctorate is congruent with this object of learning.     

Doing,knowing, caring and feeling: exploring relations between nature-oriented teaching and preschool children's learning

Research has shown that early childhood science education is based on education and care, sometimes stressed as a dichotomy. The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the relations between teachers' teaching and children's learning in preschool practice, both in terms of educative processes and nature-oriented content. The ambition is also to develop and present an analysis method that facilitates these investigations. Outdoor nature experiences of preschool children (aged one to three) were video-recorded, transcribed and analysed. The methodology is based on John Dewey's pragmatic philosophy. Here, epistemological move analysis (oriented towards teachers' guiding processes as moves) and substantive learning quality analysis (oriented towards multi-dimensional learning qualities) are developed and used as analysis tools. The analyses show that the relations between teaching and learning processes and nature content are intertwined and include education and care. The teachers guide towards aesthetical, moral, cognitive and physical qualities in learning by challenging, admonishing, instructional, confirming, generative, reorienting and reconstructing moves. The results contribute to nature-oriented teaching practice and nature-oriented preschool research when discussing and investigating teaching and learning processes and nature content.     

The Great evolution trial: Use of role-play in the classroom

This article gives both the pedagogic and scientific thinking that guided the construction of a classroom role-play—The Great Evolution Debate. This role-play is about the publication of Darwin's The Origin of Species, which is supposed to be on trial for blasphemy. Historical characters are used to show the range of ideas which were current at that time. The literature on learning history, and on learning about the nature of science, is discussed, leading to an examination of historical empathy as a classroom objective. The reasons for including the various characters in the role-play are explained. The exercise has been used by 15 to 16-year-old students in British high schools with considerable success, and some tentative findings about learning from role-play are drawn from its observation.     

Approach and avoidance motivation and achievement goals

This article takes a critical look at three pervasive urban legends in education about the nature of learners, learning, and teaching and looks at what educational and psychological research has to say about them. The three legends can be seen as variations on one central theme, namely, that it is the learner who knows best and that she or he should be the controlling force in her or his learning. The first legend is one of learners as digital natives who form a generation of students knowing by nature how to learn from new media, and for whom “old” media and methods used in teaching/learning no longer work. The second legend is the widespread belief that learners have specific learning styles and that education should be individualized to the extent that the pedagogy of teaching/learning is matched to the preferred style of the learner. The final legend is that learners ought to be seen as self-educators who should be given maximum control over what they are learning and their learning trajectory. It concludes with a possible reason why these legends have taken hold, are so pervasive, and are so difficult to eradicate.