Breakout 2: Discourse, Positioning, Argumentation, & Learning - Roy Pea

• In Event: Creating Expansive and Equitable Learning Environments: Elaborating the RISE Learning Principles

Abstract

Humans uniquely interact using both their bodies and the representational systems of culture as a social process to make meaning for reproducing and innovating culture. How we communicate using diverse modes of semiotic expression—the body, spoken or written language, symbol systems—is integral to what it means to be human and to learn. The what, how, where, when, why and who of human learning is sculpted by the complex and consequential history of how differences have been socially constructed in discourse and experienced in society, how they relate to power and privilege, and how they have contributed to political and economic inequalities. The marking of differences by gender, class, race, language, ability and other categorizations has consequential outcomes for learners and the learning opportunities and identities made accessible for them in their learning ecologies. This breakout will address some of the ways in which learning is shaped by people’s participation in cultural practices and by these markers of difference. It will also examine how humans use their bodies and representational systems to mediate meaning making for both reproducing and generating new cultural practices.
Guiding questions:
1) How is learning differentially shaped by people’s participation in cultural practices? Specifically, how do humans use their bodies and representational systems to mediate meaning making for reproducing and generating new cultural practices?
2) How are certain cultural forms and ways of learning differentially privileged? How can these power hierarchies be disrupted towards supporting culturally affirming and sustaining theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical approaches?

Authors

• Roy D. Pea, Stanford University

• Rogers P. Hall, Vanderbilt University

• Alfredo J. Artiles, Stanford University

• Cynthia H. Brock, University of Wyoming

• Aydin Bal, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• W. Douglas Baker, Eastern Michigan University

• Noel D. Enyedy, Vanderbilt University

• Nelson Flores, University of Pennsylvania

• Erica Saldivar Garcia, New York University

• Judith L. Green, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Taucia Gonzalez, University of Arizona

• Pauline Joan Harris, University of South Australia

• Danielle Keifert, University of North Texas

• Sarah Levine, Stanford University

• Ananda Marin, University of California - Los Angeles

• Ray McDermott, Stanford University

• David Rose, CAST