Symposium at ICLS 2004
International Conference on the Learning Sciences
Santa Monica, California
June 23-26, 2004

Symposium Presentations

Interaction, mediation and intervention in Investigate
Heather King, King’s College London, In collaboration with staff at The Natural History Museum, London
email: heather.king at kcl.ac.uk [pdf]

Design-Based Research in Informal Education Settings
Coe Leta Finke, Lawrence Hall of Science and UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education
email: coeleta at uclink.berkeley.edu [pdf]

Learning that Transfers Across Multiple Settings: A Problem of Studying and Facilitating Nomadic Inquiry
Sherry Hsi, The Exploratorium
email: sherryh at exploratorium.edu [pdf]

Islands of expertise: Following the child through everyday, informal, and formal learning environments
Kevin Crowley, University of Pittsburgh
email: crowleyk+ at pitt.edu [pdf]

Session Organizer: Sherry Hsi, The Exploratorium
Discussant: Nora Sabelli, SRI International

Overview & Motivation

While studies of learning and learning environments have predominantly taken place in laboratories and formal educational settings, there is a growing community of researchers and next generation informal learning researchers who are conducting studies in non-school settings such as museums, afterschool, homes, zoos, workplaces, and other informal learning environments (Callanan & Jipson, 2001; Leinhardt, Crowley, and Knutson, 2002; CILS; MLC).

Though researchers and practitioners continue to debate the definition of informal learning and its relationship to formal education, there are some core identifiable features – learning is self-directed, the administration or sponsorship of the learning activity is not always present/assumed, activity is often unsystematic and have fluid arrangements, and learners represent a diversity in groupings, age, race, and ethnicities.

Will prior research on cognition, learning, and reform-based schooling be sufficient to continue research in informal learning, or is there something fundamentally different about the ways in which non-school/non-laboratory learning occurs that require a reconceptualization of the model of the learner and new frameworks for organizing informal activity systems? Will this necessitate the development of new theories of practice?

The purpose of this session is bring to the foreground key issues being addressed by researchers who have been designing, studying, and working in informal settings as well as at the intersection of formal and informal learning institutions. Our goal is to bring these issues to the discourse in learning sciences, share some examples of new work in the informal learning space, and understand where this body of research fits into the larger educational research landscape. Each panelist will share their perspectives on informal learning research drawing upon their own studies as illustrations. The role of discussants will be to help frame and critique our discussions in light of prior psychological, cognitive, and social-cultural traditions.

We have identified four areas of discussion that can be addressed:

FORMAL-INFORMAL DUALISM

• Are current models of learning derived from laboratory studies and studies of formal schooling sufficient for studying learning and teaching as it occurs in informal contexts?
• Is the distinction and dualism created between informal and formal learning a productive one to make?

The defining characteristics of the formal and informal learning environments have been well documented (Hofstein & Rosenfeld, 1996: Wellington, 1990). However, the degree to which these two contexts can inform the practice of the other and the appropriateness of inferring theories and methods between the two remains controversial. Wertsh (chapter 7, 2002) acknowledges that the informal setting is a different sociocultural setting from classrooms and cautions researchers in the degree to which we infer findings from one context to the other. Additionally, informal learning is largely concerned with the processes of learning and does not focus on product outcomes such as test scores. Such products are not available or suited to the exploratory nature of museum environments and studies show that such measures do not transfer well to the study of learning in informal environments (Bitgood, Serrell, & Thompson, 1994; Falk & Dierking, 1992; Hein, 1998). While measures may not transfer well, some museum-based studies suggest that activity structures from classroom-based research can be extended and adapted to the informal setting (Hapgood & Palincsar, 2002).
Perhaps clarifying similarities and differences between these two contexts is of little importance. Rather, the informal space should be viewed as a “rich variation (Bartels & Hein, 2003)” that can offer unique perspectives on learning such as how parents and children engage in everyday thinking (Crowley, Callanan, Jipson, Galco, Topping, and Shrager, 2001) or how motivation and engagement influence self-directed learning (Paris, 1997).

THEORIES & MODELS

• Are social-cultural theories of learning or design-based research methods adequate to interpret, analyze, and build models of informal learning?
• What are some ‘theories of practice’ being generated by studies or enactments of practice in informal learning environments?

While numerous studies have explored learning processes and outcomes of individual and groups in informal settings (Allen, 2002; Ash, 2002; Crowley et al., 2001; Diamond, 1986; Falk, 1983; Laetsch, Diamond, Gottfried, & Rosenfeld, 1980), it is only recently that this field has begun to develop more generalizable theories and models of informal learning. For example, Schauble, Leinhardt, and Martin (1997) encourage museum researchers to study learning as informed by sociocultural theory which "emphasizes that meaning emerges in the interplay between individuals acting in social contexts and the mediators - including tools, talk, activity structures, signs, and symbol systems - that are employed in those contexts." Additionally, Falk and Dierking (2000) promote a model of learning in museums that connects personal, sociocultural and physical contexts together. George Hein (Chapter 5, 1998) encourages researchers to embrace network, as opposed to linear, theories to model the learning process of visitors in museums and discusses at length (Chapter 2) how different theoretical commitments influence the process of designing educational artifacts and environments.
Design-based research is an emerging paradigm to systematically study educational innovations outside of a laboratory setting in the natural, complex activity space (Brown, 1992; Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer, & Schauble, 2003; The Design-based Research Collective, 2003). This approach attempts to fill the gap between theory and practice by being grounded in theory but tested in real-world settings. Design-based research may be particularly relevant to the informal learning community as we seek to study and design for learning based on theories that account for the unique characteristics of this context. Minda Borun and colleagues though a three-phase study provides a rich example of how an iterative exhibit design cycle can both further our understanding of how people learn and which features of an exhibit promote more robust educational experiences. Studies that have been conducted by Finke at the Lawrence Hall of Science and King at the Natural History Museum in London also provide examples design-based interventions.

ISSUES OF CONTEXT AND PRACTICE

• How might learners be studied in a science museum when entertainment, experience, ethics, empowerment, and/or meaning-making are the primary instructional design objectives, rather than content acquisition, process skills, and expertise?
• How does one go about orchestrating learning, creating new participation structures/social arrangements, or facilitating interactions in informal settings to enact sound education practices?
• What practical interventions can be designed to improve learning, yet preserve the spatial, social, and, cultural context in which informal learning takes place?
• How is ‘design for learning’ or ‘teaching for understanding’ achieved in environments in which activity is self-directed and/or occurs in family groups?

Schauble and Bartlett (1997) argue that as educators and researchers, we need to reconceive our role in the informal learning space from that of scientific observer to active designer, whereby we structure and design the environment according to a coherent theory of how people learn here. Osbourne, 1998 argues for not only designing rich content, but also providing instructional supports and pedagogical prompts within the design.
In the learning sciences, many researchers are faced with methodological challenges when studying learning in complex, non-laboratory settings. While some informal learning researchers argue for purely qualitative, naturalistic approaches (cf. Deborah Perry), other researchers embrace design-based research methods have been used to create and assess educationally-relevant interventions in which designs embody hypotheses about learning, and interventions are iteratively refinement and studied (DBRC, 2003). Rather than attempting to isolate particular variables to study in a complex setting, salient variables and their interrelationships are identified (Collins, Joseph, & Bielaczyc, 2000).

RESEARCH POLICY

• What are the nature, attributes, strengths, and characteristics of effective informal learning environments that can influence and transform formal institutions, settings, student learning, and teacher practice?
• What is the role of institutional policy, sponsorship, and administration to enable informal learning research between (or in) education institutions?
• How does informal learning research fit into the learning sciences?

General research in museums has a history of over 100 years (Hein & Alexander, 1998), while studies that focus specifically on learning and cognition have gained considerable momentum in the past 20 years (see Dierking & Falk, 1994 and Ramey-Gassert, Walberg, & Walberg, 1994 for comprehensive review of the literature). Informal learning research remains somewhat invisible to the larger educational research community (Bartels and Hein, 2003) and our understanding of learning and facilitating in informal settings may, arguably, lag behind classroom-based research by about 10 years (Schauble and Bartlett, 1997). To advance this field, several efforts are underway: the Center for Informal Learning and School a partnership between Kings College London, UC Santa Cruz, and The Exploratorium which has created a framework for carrying out research in informal learning institutions that will inform formal settings. Second, a recent policy statement was issued from the informal learning community (Dierking, Falk, Rennie, Anderson, & Ellenbogen, 2003) to promote six avenues of research: 1) exploring precursors to learning, 2) taking the physical setting into account, 3) exploring social and cultural mediating factors, 4) promoting longitudinal research, 5) investigating the process of learning, and 6) expanding our research methods. These will be discussed in the context of advancing the agenda for learning sciences.

References

Allen, S. (2002). Chapter 8: Looking for learning in visitor talk: A methodological exploration. In G. Leinhardt (Ed.), Learning Conversations in Museums (pp. 259-303): The Type House.

Bartels, D., & Hein, G. (2003). Book review: Learning in settings other than schools. Educational Researcher (August), 38-43.

Bitgood, S., Serrell, B., & Thompson, D. (1994). The impact of informal science education on visitors to museums. In H. N. V. Crane, M. Chen, & S. Bitgood (Ed.), Informal science learning: What research says about television, science museums, and community based projects (pp. 61-106). Dedham, MA: Research Communication, Ltd.

Borun, M., Chambers, M. B., Dritsas, J., & Johnson, J. I. (1997). Enhancing family learning through exhibits. Curator, 40/4, 279-295.

Brown, A. L. (1992). Design experiments: Theoretical and methodological challenges in creating complex interventions in classroom settings. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2(2), 141-178.

Callanan, M., and Jipson, J. Explanatory conversations and young children's developing scientific literacy. In K. Crowley, C. Schunn, and T. Okada (Eds.), Designing for Science: Implications from Everyday, Classroom and Professional Settings, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2001.

Center for Informal Learning and Schools

Cobb, P., Confrey, J., diSessa, A. A., Lehrer, R., & Schauble, L. (2003). Design experiements in educational research. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 9-13.

Collective, T. D.-b. R. (2003). Design-based research: An emerging paradigm for educational inquiry. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 5-8.

Collins, A., Bielaczyc, K., & Joseph, D. (2000). Design research: Theoretical and methodological issues. In J. C. Campione (Ed.), Volume in honor of Ann Brown.

Crowley, K., Callanan, M. A., Jipson, J., Galco, J., Topping, K., & Shrager, J. (2001). Shared scientific thinking in everyday parent-child activity. Science Education, 85(6), 712-732.

Diamond, J. (1986). The behavior of family groups in science museums. Curator, 29/2, 139-154.

Dierking, L., & Falk, J. (1994). Family behavior and learning in informal science settings: A review of the research. Science Education, 78(1), 57-72.

Dierking, L. D., Falk, J. H., Rennie, L. J., Anderson, D., & Ellenbogen, K. (2003). Policy statement of the "Informal Science Education" ad hoc committee. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 40(2).

Falk, J. H. (1983). Time and behavior as predictors for learning. Science Education, 67, 267-272.

Falk, J. H., & Dierking, L. D. (1992). The museum experience. Washington, DC: Whalesback.

Falk, J. H., & Dierking, L. D. (2000). Learning from Museums. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.

Friedman, A. (1995). Creating an academic home for informal science education. In J. H. Falk & L. D. Dierking (Eds.), Public institutions for personal learning (pp. 135-140). Washington: American Association of Museums.

Hein, G. (1998). Learning in the museum. London ; New York: Routledge.

Hein, G., & Alexander, M. (1998). Museums: Places of Learning. Washington, DC: American Association of Museums.
Hofstein, A., & Rosenfeld, S. (1996). Bridging the gap between formal and informal science learning. Studies in Science Education, 28, 87-112.

Laetsch, W., Diamond, J., Gottfried, J., & Rosenfeld, S. (1980). Children and family groups in science centers. Science and Children, 15, 14-17.

Leinhardt, G. Crowley, K. & Knutson, K., Eds. (2002). Learning Conversations in Museums. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Museum Learning Collaborative

Osborne, J. F. (1998). Constructivism in museums: A response. Journal of Museum Education, 23, 8-9.

Paris, S. (1997). Situated motivation and informal learning. Journal of Museum Education, 22(2, 3), 22-27.

Ramey-Gassert, L., Walberg, H. J. I., & Walberg, H. J. (1994). Reexamining connections: Museums as science learning environments. Science Education, 78(4), 345-363.

Schauble, L., & Bartlett, K. (1997). Constructing a science gallery for children and families: The role of research in an innovative design process. Science Education, 81(6), 781-793.

Schauble, L., Leinhardt, G., & Martin, L. (1997). A framework for organizing a cumulative research agenda in informal learning contexts. Journal of Museum Education, 22(2 & 3), 3-8.

Wellington, J. (1990). Formal and informal learning in science: The role of the interactive science centres. Physics Education, 25, 247-252.

Wertsch, J. (2002). Epistemological issues about objects. In S. G. Paris (Ed.), Perspectives on object-centered learning in museums. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.