Do the Merits of the Complex Systems Conceptual Framework of Learning Extend to Design-for-Learning Guidelines? An Embodied Perspective

• In Event: 81.026 - WITHDRAWN: Theories of Learning and Education Through the Looking Glass of Complexity

Abstract

My scholarship in STEM education is influenced by a theoretical perspective that characterizes learning and development as emergent phenomena that arise from interactions between processes that operate at a wide range of scales (Figure 2). In addition to this theoretical perspective, methodologically, I distinguish between systemic and elemental approaches to learning research (Nathan & Sawyer, 2016). Elemental approaches assume aspects (such as context) can be “factored out” and analyzed independently (Greeno & Engeström, 2016). Systemic approaches reject this “factoring assumption.”
For example, I am intrigued by ways that fine-grained processes of embodiment operating at the level of neural, perceptual, and motoric systems, contribute to, or supervene on, complex cognitive processes such as conceptual learning, inference making, teaching, and educational policies that operate at greater time scales (e.g., Nathan & Martinez, 2015; Nathan & Walkington, 2017). This also motivates my use of a systemic perspective on classroom learning by studying both learning/learners and teaching/teachers, and their interactions. These systemic studies of situated learning and instruction combine with elemental investigations into potential mediators of the complex behaviors of interest. Information from systemic and elemental studies each inform early stages of design-based research on learning environments as experienced by teachers and students.
One central outcome is that teachers are highly responsive to students’ in-the-moment learning needs, and that teachers and students each employ physical enactment of their thoughts, levels of cognitive development, and social communication along with spoken language to make sense of new ideas, be understood by one another, and manage the complexities of the environment to foster learning and engagement (Alibali et al., 2014; Nathan & Kim, 2009; Nathan et al, 2015). These studies demonstrate that much of what we know, as well as how we teach and communicate what we know (and what we think we know about what others know), is embodied, as exhibited by behaviors such as gesture and movement, the use of objects and space, and metaphors linking abstract ideas to concrete experiences. This seemingly formative role embodied processes have on complex cognitive behaviors has significant implications for learning environment design and for formative and summative assessment, which I would discuss during the presentation.

Author

• Mitchell J. Nathan, University of Wisconsin - Madison