Connecting the Unit of Analysis in Learning Research

• In Event: 81.026 - WITHDRAWN: Theories of Learning and Education Through the Looking Glass of Complexity

Abstract

Over the last three decades, conceptualizations of the phenomena of learning and cognition have been a hot topic. In the award-winning paper published in Educational Psychologist, “Conceptualizing Debates in Learning and Educational Research: Towards a Complex Systems Conceptual Framework of Learning,” a new conceptual turn is suggested (Jacobson, Kapur, & Reimann, 2016). We need to take units of analysis that can account for the complexity of learning and include levels of descriptions that capture processes and outcomes (Ludvigsen &Nerland, 2017). This involves including multiple layers of human activities. When the analysis of learning takes a starting point that involves social interaction and artifacts in complex systems, the question of connecting layers and the unit of analysis becomes urgent.

In many stances in learning theory, the unit of analysis focuses exclusively on the individual within an environment. To advance the understanding and capacity to explain complexity of actions and activities we can take a socio-genetic stance that encompasses an analytic stance with three layers (social interaction, the individual in interaction, and social practices) that we must view as interdependent (Ludvigsen & Nerland, 2017).

When taking socio-genesis as a stance, understanding learning starts with an analysis of micro-interactions. The study of micro-interactions implies a detailed analysis or measurement of how humans engage in reasoning and problem-solving in specific knowledge domains or in themes that cross areas of disciplinary knowledge. Social interaction is crucial because it is here that history, tools, and human action come together and mutually shape one another. This is the first layer in the analysis and here one can measure the outcomes of actions. The second layer focuses explicitly on how humans make their cognitive, social, and emotional efforts relevant in interaction with others. This layer gives insight into how students manage to interact with others and into their mastery of specific forms of knowledge. With the third layer, humans focus on the institutional and historic dimensions that create affordances and constraints for human actions (the social practices). Institutions will always involve a degree of complexity and emerging phenomena that requires a broader historical and institutional analysis using a variety of methods.

The socio-genetic stance can explain the complexity that is at stake when people learn. It makes it possible to work with different types of analysis rather than with only one analytic layer. We need to recognize that multiple layers influence participant’s processes and performance. This will give us a more robust, nuanced, and sophisticated understanding of human learning and cognition that often involves use of computational artifacts.

Author

• Sten Runar Ludvigsen, University of Oslo