Sorting Through Layers of Learning: A Brief History

• In Event: Layers of Learning: Working Toward Mediated Praxis by Positioning Researchers, Practitioners, and Students as Learners

Abstract

Since its formal emergence in the 1980’s and 1990’s, the Learning Sciences has developed several significant conceptual contributions to education practice and research, such as zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978), communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991), and expansive learning (Engeström & Sannino, 2010), to name just a few. Compared to these constructs, the concept of layering has received relatively sparse attention. Where it is invoked, however, it has raised important questions about how and where research is conducted, and how educators might design learning environments with layering in mind. This paper aims at a “definition” of the concept of “layering,” whereby “definition” refers to the genealogical, ontological, epistemological, phenomenological and axiological meanings of layering. Methodologically, this is a philosophically driven literature review that takes up these dimensions and reflects on their implications for education practice and research. The organizing framework for this paper is a five-part study of how layering came into being as an idea (its genealogy), the materiality of layering (its ontology), the experience of layering (its phenomenology), what ideas about layering are afforded by its materiality (its epistemology), and the ethical implications of working with layering (its axiology).

Several core papers constitute the theoretical orientation taken to layering. In philosophy, Thurtle (2014) took up how layering is inseparable from the concept of folding (Deleuze, 1993) and articulated this co-relation of folding and layering in how animators generate experiences of space and time by adding layers of celluloid by folding the layers into each other. In interaction analysis, Goffman (1986) related layering to how interactive frames have a key (tone or feel) to them that can be rekeyed, or transformed, by processes of layering the keys onto each other. In education research, Jurow (2005) examined how classroom participants layered different interactive frames into classroom learning experiences in drawing together the figured worlds (Holland et al., 2001) of the classroom, Antarctica (the subject of classroom study), and mathematics (the tool of classroom investigation of the subject). In teacher education research, Gutiérrez and Vossoughi (2010) draw on the construct of layering to draw a relationship between the educational experiences of prospective teachers in their preparatory classes and the educational experiences those same teachers develop for their own students in their fields of practice. Finally, also looking at teacher education, Mendoza (2014) links layering to Erickson’s (2006) conception of side-by-side learning arguing for a conception of layered learning, in which all participants, educators and researchers are positioned as learners in expansive systems of learning.

Provisionally, this review finds that layering refers to processes in which ideas or materials are folded over themselves to form linked and related layers of that material or idea. For example, activity systems of learning are collections of materials and ideas that are folded over each other such that learning as an ontological, epistemological, phenomenological and axiological process folds over itself to form layers of student, teacher, researcher, and even policy-maker learning.

Author

• Joh Howard, University of Washington