Learning Across and Within Settings: An Undergraduate Course for Learning About Learning in the City

• In Event: 64.072 - Connecting Higher Education Classrooms to Learners' Lived Experiences and Community Ways of Knowing

Abstract

This paper analyzes an instructional model that leverages the public university classroom to advance a culturally-sustaining perspective on learning (Lee, 2017; Paris & Alim, 2017) in higher education. Learning in Localities across Contexts (LILAC), invites undergraduate students to connect their classroom learning to the city in which their university is located. By moving learning activities to libraries, community centers, museums, and other localities, undergraduates (UGs) and graduate student mentors (GSMs) observed situated learning practices (Lave & Wenger, 1991), theorizing learning as a relational process that sustains and changes communities of practice of which they may already be a part or will join.

This work builds upon ideas of consequential learning (Jurow & Shea, 2015); learning at the scale of the individual and group changes the place in which that learning occurs (Taylor & Hall, 2013). We seek to test theoretical conjectures about how the openness and exclusivity of spaces (Ingold, 2011) influence agency and positionality across learning experiences (Barab & Duffy, 2000; Brownlee & Bethelsen, 2008; Kohli, Pizarrro, & Nevárez, 2017; Leander, Phillips, & Taylor, 2010). We position the public university as an instrument for culturally-sustaining activities that promote sociopolitical engagement and reform across scale relations (Jurow & Shea, 2015; Nespor, 2000; Politics of Writing, 2017).

This social design experiment (Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2009) offered undergraduate students the opportunity to reflect on varied contexts in relation to their own positionalities. Six times throughout the quarter, students joined Site Visit Groups (SVGs)—eight to ten UGs and one GSM—then ventured out across the city. Students self-selected their sites, and GSMs used wearable cameras to record the site visits. The UGs also submitted reflective memos after each site visit. Students became participant-observers who sought to notice, identify, and engage in the sociocultural and political nature of learning, leading us to ask: How do site visits elicit different kinds of sense-making about learning among undergraduates?

Interaction analysis (Jordan & Henderson, 1995) of video recordings and content analysis (Merriam & Tisdale, 2015) of student work show that localities differently elicit student interest and relative expertise regarding ideology, culture, and access. For example, one SVG’s visit to a natural history museum showed two students reconciling their religious beliefs over dinosaur fossils on display, foregrounding what ontologies are validated at institutional levels. A different SVG visited an Indigenous cultural center far from public transit facilities, and it led students to critically reflect on the accessibility of knowledge of/for marginalized groups. Learning across localities challenged UGs rubric-centered notions of reflection for learning; and UGs developed skills for identifying modes of social (re)production at the intersection of values and practice. 

Ultimately, the instructional model we instituted with LILAC highlighted modes of cultural (re)production across learning localities. We see this experience as an important step toward preparing UGs for engaging in public-facing educational work, alongside culturally diverse stakeholders within communities, no matter what career pathways they pursue. Our UG course continues to be offered for two academic quarters every year, offering opportunities for iterations based on ongoing and retrospective analyses.

Authors

• Adam Bell, University of Washington - Seattle

• Katie Headrick Taylor, University of Washington - Seattle