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47.013 - Learning Sciences, School Reform, and Teacher Preparation: Juxtaposing Knowledge and Methods for Equity and Social Justice

Sun, April 7, 11:50am to 1:20pm, Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Floor: 100 Level, Room 104B

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

Educational policy and practice are often grounded in ideologies, rather than in knowledge about how people learn and develop, and this ideological framing has only strengthened in the current “post-fact” era. Yet, even as the political world has increasingly conflated fact and fantasy, the empirical basis for productive education has been strengthened with recent syntheses of knowledge from the sciences of learning and development (SoLD). As part of our collective effort to ground policy and practice in empirical evidence, rather than political arm wrestling, this symposium:
1. Connects the growing knowledge base from the sciences of learning and development to studies of effective educational practice and the preparation of educators; and
2. Explores the implications of this synthesis for teaching and learning that is focused on “21st century skills,” (such as investigation, critical thinking, and problem solving) and affirmatively equitable and socially just.
Using the increasingly popular idea of “deeper learning” as a fulcrum, a diverse set of researchers will illuminate how a conversation between theories and evidence from developmental, cognitive, and sociocultural research on learning and qualitative, multi-case practice and policy studies can provide the grounding for equitable, “truth-based” (or “evidence-based” in the common parlance) school reform and a parallel reconceptualizing/restructuring of teacher preparation. The “truth” that emerges from this conversation across disciplinary traditions and research methods is one that upends old, but persistent views about the uneven distribution of learning ability across various populations of students and rejects the dominance of “white supremacist” knowledge and ways of knowing in school curriculum. It also undermines the current policy press for teacher-proofing pedagogy, fast-tracking professional preparation, and disregarding powerful evidence on child development in the quest for “data driven” results.

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