The Learning Community as a Collection of Social Microcosms: A Person-Centered Perspective

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

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the way graduate students’ knowledge building practices and identities evolve through their participation in classroom learning communities. We examine learning communities from a person-centered perspective, that is, informed by the work of Carl Rogers (1969). Although “giants” like Piaget, Dewey and Vygotsky are commonly cited as 20th century figures who have impacted education, by taking this perspective we are giving attention to a frequently implied line of inquiry that is relevant to contemporary educational challenges.

We draw on social microcosm theory—a framework of transformational change used in person-centered group therapy (Yalom & Leszcz 2005)—and frame our view of a classroom learning community as a collection of social microcosms. Accordingly, the unfolding process of a learning community occurs in four interrelated stages. First, students describe their identities outside of the community as they get to know one another. Subsequently, students make first-hand observations about each others’ identities. Third, interpersonal feedback is given with the potential to raise the awareness of the receivers’ identities, particularly if the feedback is unknown to them. Feedback that is given appropriately helps participants make intentional changes to their long-held practices (Hod & Ben-Zvi, 2014). The way learning communities transform over time can be described when these are considered collectively. 

We have conceptualized the “Humanistic Knowledge Building Community” (HKBCs: Hod & Ben-Zvi, 2018). HKBCs advance the communities’ knowledge (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2014) and the participant’s identities as knowledge builders using person-centered methods (Rogers, 1969). By bringing these two together, a unique discourse is created where interrelationships between knowledge and identities are elicited and advanced. We investigated 14 students within a 13-week graduate course HKBC.  

Data included all audio, video, and written materials produced throughout the semester, alongside interviews to investigate events from participants’ perspectives. We asked (a) What identity-artifacts are negotiated by the participants referring to outside communities?; (b) In what ways do these identity-artifacts shape the community?; and (c) How does the community build on these knowledge building identities as it shapes itself for future activities?

Our results demonstrate how the community evolved, giving transformative feedback in three cases, and different levels of feedback in others. The findings reveal missed opportunities that could have led to transformational change if they were identified, communicated, and endorsed by the recipients. We provide illustrative examples framed by the social microcosm idea of (a) students who transformed based on interpersonal feedback that they received; and (b) the communities’ missed opportunities around students who did not transform. 

The CSMs provides a way to make sense of the complex, socially-situated data of learning communities. It provides a framework to discover transformative activities within communities as well as to identify their blind spots. The results are useful for analyses of learning communities and their practice within higher educational contexts.

Authors

• Yotam Hod, University of Haifa

• Michal Dvir, University of Haifa