Following Interest-Based Learning Across Time and Space

• In Event: Interests on the Move: Cultivating Interest Across Contexts

Abstract

Purpose
There are myriad ways of studying the relationship between learning and interest-based participation across contexts. Here I consider a single way of doing so—namely, by tracking an interest from its inception (i.e., its very first occurrence as situational interest; Renninger & Hidi, 2016) through its few initial uptakes in follow up activities, and then mapping out and explaining how learning has played out in such a process. Furthermore, because the triggering of a situational interest includes both continuous and discontinuous dimensions of activity (Azevedo, accepted), I look at how interest-based learning is critically tied to such continuities/discontinuities. I show that the continuity + discontinuity lens I propose provides a handle for understanding the emergence and development of an interest and for systematically studying learning in relation to interest-based phenomena.

Conceptual Framework
Extant conceptions of situational interest frame it fundamentally as a discontinuity in a person’s experiences (Renninger & Hidi, 2016). Put differently, a situational interest denotes a moment in which a new object (broadly conceived) is first brought into a person’s stream of experiences and its triggering marks the boundary between two qualitatively distinct moments—a before-and-after—in one’s ongoing activity participation. However, following Vygotsky’s (1978) observations—and extensions in activity theory (Greeno & Engeström, 2014) and cultural psychology (Cole, 1998)—humans constantly participate in several concurrent activities (or whole distinct activity systems). Taking situational interests as simultaneously continuous and discontinuous experiences allows me to recognize the “novelty” characteristic of a situational interest within ongoing experiences that are part-and-parcel of enduring aspects/dimensions of a person’s life.

Methods and Data
I draw on a 2½-year ethnography of an amateur astronomer’s (Mitchell) hobby practice within and beyond the grounds of the various communities to which he belonged (Azevedo, 2013). The data corpus includes 9+ hours of video tapes of collective field practice and interviews, several pages of field notes, and Mitchell’s 300+ pages of detailed observational notes covering several years of his practice. Within this space, I select for analysis 2 instances of the emergence and initial uptake of a (distinct) situational interest in Mitchell’s amateur astronomy practice. For all events of triggering and re-triggering of the new activity form, I catalog the activity continuities and discontinuities evident in the moment and trace the data record forward in search of learning associated with those.

Findings
Preliminary results indicate that: (1) an interest “pulls” learning in that, once triggered, it leads the person to seek for knowledge of and about the practice; (2) in different contexts and spaces, however, learning “pulls” interest development in that knowledge opens ground for new forms of activities to emerge in one’s practice. By the time of the conference, I will detail how learning took place as it touched on activity continuities and discontinuities impinging on moments of triggering and re-triggering of interests.

Scholarly Significance
These findings shed new light on the structure and functioning of interests and promise to open new possibilities for research, particularly on issues at the intersection of learning and interest development.

Author

• Flavio S. Azevedo, Dept. of Curriculum and Instruction