Participation, Learning, and Identity

Participation, Learning, and Identity PDF Author: Wolfgang M Roth
Publisher: Lehmanns Media
ISBN: 386541852X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
Over the past two decades, western scholars increasingly have embraced cultural-historical activity theory as a framework for thinking about knowing and learning in school and workplace settings. Yet in the adoption of this framework, many of its fundamental underpinnings in materialist dialectic have dis-appeared. Cultural-historical activity theory has been fitted to a fundamentally dualistic way of thinking the subject and object of activity, individual and collective, subjectivity and intersubjectivity, abstract and concrete, etc. This book redresses the inappropriate translation by radically sticking to a materialist-dialectical theorizing of knowing, learning, participation, and identity. The authors draw on several detailed ethnographic studies at the kindergarten, elementary school, and middle school levels and in a workplace as case materials to articulate various aspects of the specifically human activity observed in each setting. Wolff-Michael Roth is Lansdowne Professor of applied cognitive science at the University of Victoria (UVic) and director of the CHAT@UVic laboratory concerned with the investigation of knowing and learning in science and mathematics across the lifespan. SungWon Hwang is postdoctoral fellow at UVic studying embodied cognition. Yew Jin Lee is a Ph.D. candidate at UVic focusing on workplace learning. Maria Inês Mafra Goulart is a Ph.D. candidate investigating science learning in kindergarten schools.

Communities of Practice

Communities of Practice PDF Author: Etienne Wenger
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107268370
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
This book presents a theory of learning that starts with the assumption that engagement in social practice is the fundamental process by which we get to know what we know and by which we become who we are. The primary unit of analysis of this process is neither the individual nor social institutions, but the informal 'communities of practice' that people form as they pursue shared enterprises over time. To give a social account of learning, the theory explores in a systematic way the intersection of issues of community, social practice, meaning, and identity. The result is a broad framework for thinking about learning as a process of social participation. This ambitious but thoroughly accessible framework has relevance for the practitioner as well as the theoretician, presented with all the breadth, depth, and rigor necessary to address such a complex and yet profoundly human topic.

Identity Construction and Science Education Research

Identity Construction and Science Education Research PDF Author: Maria Varelas
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9462090432
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book Description
In this edited volume, science education scholars engage with the constructs of identity and identity construction of learners, teachers, and practitioners of science. Reports on empirical studies and commentaries serve to extend theoretical understandings related to identity and identity development vis-à-vis science education, link them to empirical evidence derived from a range of participants, educational settings, and analytic foci, examine methodological issues in identity studies, and project fruitful directions for research in this area. Using anthropological, sociological, and socio-cultural perspectives, chapter authors depict and discuss the complexity, messiness, but also potential of identity work in science education, and show how critical constructs–such as power, privilege, and dominant views; access and participation; positionality; agency-structure dialectic; and inequities–are integrally intertwined with identity construction and trajectories. Chapter authors examine issues of identity with participants ranging from first graders to pre-service and in-service teachers, to physics doctoral students, to show ways in which identity work is a vital (albeit still underemphasized) dimension of learning and participating in science in, and out of, academic institutions. Moreover, the research presented in this book mostly concerns students or teachers with racial, ethno-linguistic, class, academic status, and gender affiliations that have been long excluded from, or underrepresented in, scientific practice, science fields, and science-related professions, and linked with science achievement gaps. This book contributes to the growing scholarship that seeks to problematize various dominant views regarding, for example, what counts as science and scientific competence, who does science, and what resources can be fruitful for doing science.

Funds of Identity

Funds of Identity PDF Author: Moisès Esteban-Guitart
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107147115
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 151

Book Description
This book provides an invaluable resource for researchers who wish to improve education by bridging students, school, family, and community resources. Based in connecting experiences in and out of school, it suggests a strategy to put students' practices, cultures, and identities in the center of a twenty-first-century education.

Self and Identity in Adolescent Foreign Language Learning

Self and Identity in Adolescent Foreign Language Learning PDF Author: Florentina Taylor
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
ISBN: 1783090014
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
This book explores the role of identity in adolescent foreign language learning to provide evidence that an identity-focused approach can make a difference to achievement in education. It uses both in-depth exploratory interviews with language learners and a cross-sectional survey to provide a unique glimpse into the identity dynamics that learners need to manage in their interaction with contradictory relational contexts (e.g. teacher vs. classmates; parents vs. friends), and that appear to impair their perceived competence and declared achievement in language learning. Furthermore, this work presents a new model of identity which incorporates several educational psychology theories (e.g. self-discrepancy, self-presentation, impression management), developmental theories of adolescence and principles of foreign language teaching and learning. This book gives rise to potentially policy-changing insights and will be of importance to those interested in the relationship between self, identity and language teaching and learning.

Learning in Landscapes of Practice

Learning in Landscapes of Practice PDF Author: Etienne Wenger-Trayner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317692527
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 205

Book Description
If the body of knowledge of a profession is a living landscape of practice, then our personal experience of learning can be thought of as a journey through this landscape. Within Learning in Landscapes of Practice, this metaphor is further developed in order to start an important conversation about the nature of practice knowledge, identity and the experience of practitioners and their learning. In doing so, this book is a pioneering and timely exploration of the future of professional development and higher education. The book combines a strong theoretical perspective grounded in social learning theories with stories from a broad range of contributors who occupy different locations in their own landscapes of practice. These narratives locate the book within different contemporary concerns such as social media, multi-agency, multi-disciplinary and multi-national partnerships, and the integration of academic study and workplace practice. Both scholarly, in the sense that it builds on prior research to extend and locate the concept of landscapes of practice, and practical because of the way in which it draws on multiple voices from different landscapes. Learning in Landscapes of Practice will be of particular relevance to people concerned with the design of professional or vocational learning. It will also be a valuable resource for students engaged in higher education courses with work-based elements.

Negotiating Learning and Identity in Higher Education

Negotiating Learning and Identity in Higher Education PDF Author: Bongi Bangeni
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350000205
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Book Description
While access to higher education has increased globally, student retention has become a major challenge. This book analyses various aspects of the learning pathways of black students from a range of disciplinary backgrounds at a relatively elite, English-medium, historically white South African university. The students are part of a generation of young black people who have grown up in the new South Africa and are gaining access to higher education in unprecedented numbers. Based on two longitudinal case studies, Negotiating Learning and Identity in Higher Education makes a contribution to the debates about how to facilitate access and graduation of working-class students. The longitudinal perspective enabled the students participating in the research to reflect on their transition to university and the stumbling blocks they encountered in their senior years. The contributors show that the school-to-university transition is not linear or universal. Students had to negotiate multiple transitions at various times and both resist and absorb institutional, disciplinary and home discourses. The book describes and analyses the students' ambivalence as they straddle often conflicting discourses within their disciplines; within the institution; between home and the institution, and as they occupy multiple subject positions that are related to the boundaries of place and time. Each chapter also describes the ways in which the institution supports and/or hinders students' progress, explores the implications of its findings for models of support and addresses the issue of what constitutes meaningful access to institutional and disciplinary discourses.

Posh Talk

Posh Talk PDF Author: S. Preece
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230245366
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Book Description
An in-depth study of a group of multilingual students from widening participation backgrounds on a first-year undergraduate academic writing programme. The book explores ways in which identity positions emerge in the spoken interaction, with a particular focus on gender.

International Handbook of English Language Teaching

International Handbook of English Language Teaching PDF Author: Jim Cummins
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387463011
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 1215

Book Description
This two volume handbook provides a comprehensive examination of policy, practice, research and theory related to English Language Teaching in international contexts. More than 70 chapters highlight the research foundation for best practices, frameworks for policy decisions, and areas of consensus and controversy in second language acquisition and pedagogy. The Handbook provides a unique resource for policy makers, educational administrators, and researchers concerned with meeting the increasing demand for effective English language teaching. It offers a strongly socio-cultural view of language learning and teaching. It is comprehensive and global in perspective with a range of fresh new voices in English language teaching research.

Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice

Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice PDF Author: Chris Blackmore
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1849961336
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice is a collection of classical and contemporary writing associated with learning and systemic change in contexts ranging from cities, to rural development to education to nursing to water management to public policy. It is likely to be of interest to anyone trying to understand how to think systemically and to act and interact effectively in situations experienced as complex, messy and changing. While mainly concerned with professional praxis, where theory and practice inform each other, there is much here that can apply at a personal level. This book offers conceptual tools and suggestions for new ways of being and acting in the world in relation to each other, that arise from both old and new understandings of communities, learning and systems. Starting with twentieth century insights into social learning, learning systems and appreciative systems from Donald Schön and Sir Geoffrey Vickers, the book goes on to consider the contemporary traditions of critical social learning systems and communities of practice, pioneered by Richard Bawden and Etienne Wenger and their colleagues. A synthesis of the ideas raised, written by the editor, concludes this reader. The theory and practice of social learning systems and communities of practice appear to have much to offer in influencing and managing systemic change for a better world.