Breakout 4: Reframing and Studying the Cultural Nature of Learning - Maxine McKinney de Royston

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

Abstract

This fourth breakout clarifies what it means to engage in research when we take seriously how we think about learning as cultural for everyone, not just those who have been historically essentialized or exceptionalized via race, gender, class, ability, and other dynamics of power. To understand learning as inescapably cultural requires appreciating how learning is linked to ways of knowing, doing, and being that dynamically unfold across time and contexts, and in relation to systems of power. Disrupting the boundary between learning and culture as separate, yet intertwined entities toward an understanding of learning as cultural also means we must interrogate and rethink how we study learning. This process involves rethinking prior conceptualizations and approaches, as well as being open to novel and innovative interpretations and methods. For instance, authors in this roundtable take seriously how power and normativity are inscribed in discussions of learning and within learning contexts and challenge the field to desettle heretofore presumed distinctions between quantitative and qualitative research by rethinking debates about nature versus nurture in the context of racialized, gendered, and otherwise “othered” bodies and realities. They also push beyond the boundaries of educational research, theory, and methodology to take up concerns about the possible futures of peoples and communities and about “human flourishing.”
Guiding questions:
1) In reaching across the boundaries of disciplinary literatures, what key conceptual and methodological issues arise that educational research must begin to address?
2) How can we engage in research that takes seriously how we think about learning and development as cultural for everyone, not just those who have been historically essentialized or exceptionalized via race, gender, class, ability, and other dynamics of power?

Authors

• Maxine McKinney de Royston, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Leigh Patel, University of Pittsburgh

• Subini Ancy Annamma, Stanford University

• Manuelito Biag, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

• Angela N. Booker, University of California - San Diego

• Ezekiel J. Dixon-Roman, The University of Pennsylvania

• Louis M. Gomez, University of California - Los Angeles

• Kris D. Gutiérrez, University of California - Berkeley

• David Imig, University of Maryland

• John Lester Jackson, University of Pennsylvania

• Susan Jurow, University of Colorado - Boulder

• William R. Penuel, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Sepehr Vakil, Northwestern University