Breakout #5: Implications for Policy and Practice

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

Abstract

Complex and expanded notions of learning taking seriously the cultural and contextual nature of learning undoubtedly have significant implications for policy and practice. The ways teacher education is organized, and the kinds of policies that are enacted at the local, state, and federal levels are all informed by how learning is conceptualized, and the kinds of learning that are determined as goals. The fifth roundtable of this symposium consists of senior scholars who will articulate a vision for what teacher education and educational policy would look like if we honored the kinds of robust notions of learning along the lines forwarded and discussed in the other roundtables, and relatedly, the implications this would have for supporting student learning, belonging, and academic success broadly defined. Specifically, the authors in this roundtable will facilitate a discussion among participants about how we should think about policy solutions, teacher learning, and teacher professional development differently if we were to take seriously the ways in which learning is fundamentally a cultural process. The authors also explore and examine how a cultural view of learning adds nuance and complexity to our understanding of (as well as the practices of) educational research.
Guiding questions:
1) What would teacher learning and education (including professional development) look like if we honored the kinds of robust notions of learning forwarded by the authors presenting in this symposium?
2) What would educational policy (from the local to the federal level) look like if we honored the kinds of robust notions of learning forwarded by the authors presenting in this symposium?

Authors

• Prudence L. Carter, Brown University

• Arnetha F. Ball, Stanford University

• Gloria J. Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Linda Darling-Hammond, Learning Policy Institute