Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning
As a school librarian, I am always setting my librarian standards, as defined by the
American Association of School Librarians (AASL), within the context of
classroom subject content. I have always wanted the content I was teaching to
be relevant within the student’s subject content and I believed that this would
make what I was trying to teach more relevant and therefore students would be
more likely to retain the information and apply the information across all of
their learning.
I believe what I try
to do is similar enough to the ideas presented in situated cognition and the
culture of learning, that this article was not a total surprise to me. However,
as I continue to synthesize the assigned reading for Topic 3, particularly the
article Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning, I realize
there is great value in collaborating with teachers to design lessons that are entirely
authentic.
For my part as the librarian, I believe that my design would
need to include one or more of the following structures (or concepts) as tools:
inquire, include, curate, create, engage and explore.
Just listing them out and thinking of them in this way is exciting,
they are great tools for so many lessons! And that is where the subject teacher
come into play; knowing their curriculum and defining what it is the learners
need to know may put into play the following:
·
Authentic activities – As members of the culture
concerning the subject students are learning about, students would be inquiring about and exploring the tools that enable the activity they are pursuing.
·
Building knowledge activities – Curating the
most relevant information found through inquiry and including all
relevant actors – those acting and those affected by the actions, and how, is scaffolding
added information.
·
Constructing activities – Creating products
to extend the learning into the real world, finding what the real problems are
and designing solutions.
·
Sharing activities – And finally, engaging with
the information by sharing the results and reflecting on the outcome.
This is a rough sketch-up of how school librarian standards could
aid in a lesson design and the added value of collaborating and co-teaching. I
would love to know if a content teacher could identify how one of their lessons
might fit within the design I have laid out and get their feedback on the
possibility of this being effective.
John Seely Brown; Allan Collins; Paul Duguid Educational
Researcher, Vol. 18, No. 1. (Jan. - Feb., 1989), pp. 32-42. Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning.
As a math teacher, I think this is totally doable! Our Math 7 CT works with our librarian to plan lessons and incorporate the resources she has available to enhance student learning. I am sure many teachers would be open to your design!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your response and candor. I am continuously reaching out to teachers and sometimes it works well and sometimes nothing ever comes of it; I appreciate knowiung it is worth the effort!
DeleteBeth, I'm sure that you can find teachers in your building who would like to collaborate with you to create meaningful, authentic activities. The library standards support all classes!
ReplyDeleteIf we had emojis I’d heart your response.
DeleteI am going to be completely honest here....
ReplyDeleteI never even thought about asking my school librarian to help create meaningful, authentic activities or provide activities that would serve as extensions for my students in my Math classes.
I am excited to explore this option because, as we all know, students don't necessarily think Math class and the library "go together!" I always tell my students that 'Math is a Reading subject,' so why not get this collaboration started?!? I would like more information on having this collaboration, for real!
Maybe this is something we can explore more together and take back to our schools. I am struggling with a Science lesson for five 6th grade classes. The same old centers no longer seem good enough. The students have difficulty with stating a hypothesis and identifying dependent and independent variables. I'd really like to have an authentic opportunity to solidify this important first step in Scientific Investigations with them.
DeleteYes, of course we can explore more of this together!
DeleteWe discuss independent and dependent variables in Pre-Algebra and Algebra, and I always ask my students if they remember those terms from Science class!
As I am reading your outline of the ABCS, I am getting a better understanding of them, so I first want to say how much I appreciate your clarity. Acronyms are tough for me, and sometimes it takes me a while to fully grasp the meanings behind them. I am going to be putting these into practice during second quarter as one of our librarians/media specialists and I are working together on a PBL relating to fan fiction. We are going to explore classical literature and compare/contrast it with current writings. This design principle will be very useful in how we approach this work.
ReplyDelete