Breakout 3: Learning Across Contexts - Na'ilah Suad Nasir

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

Abstract

This third breakout is centered around the recognition that a cultural orientation to learning requires a rich and multi-layered way of thinking about spaces and places of learning and the understanding that learning is ubiquitous. It occurs in societies around the globe as a normal part of human activity, both in settings organized for the explicit purpose of teaching and learning (e.g. schools, apprenticeships, rites of passage), and as part of the settings and activities that make up daily life (e.g. in families, children’s play, in communities, at work, in leisure activities, and on the go). Our theories of learning, then, must account for learning activity in all of its iterations and forms, and further, must be applicable to the full range of types of learning that occur across multiple communities and societies. Further, they must help us account for the ways that marginalization is a pervasive condition of social life, and thus to determine how learning occurs in relation to, and sometimes in spite of, the conditions and systems of marginalization that fundamentally organize societies. In other words, at times, learning is also contested activity, involving the navigation of systems of power.
Guiding questions:
1) How is the organization of learning environments and access to them deeply influenced by institutional, organizational, and policy contexts and power dynamics?
2) How can theories of learning account for learning activity in all of its iterations and forms, and be applicable to the full range of types of learning that occur within and across multiple settings, communities, and societies?

Authors

• Na'ilah Suad Nasir, Spencer Foundation

• H. Samy Alim, University of California - Los Angeles

• Michelle Jannette Bellino, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Arnetha F. Ball, Stanford University

• Megan Bang, Spencer Foundation and Northwestern University

• Brigid J.S. Barron, Stanford University

• Victoria M. Hand, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Shirley Brice Heath, Stanford University

• Elizabeth Birr Moje, University of Michigan

• Django Paris, University of Washington

• Roy D. Pea, Stanford University

• Tryphenia B. Peele-Eady, University of New Mexico

• Ann Rosebery, TERC

• Reed Stevens, Northwestern University

• Edd V. Taylor, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Maisha T. Winn, University of California - Davis

• Shirin Vossoughi, Northwestern University

• Beth M. Warren, Boston University

• Casey Philip Wong, University of California - Los Angeles