PoLT Online Professional Learning Resource – Principle 6

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Theory Snapshot

Aims of the principle

Principle 6 recognises and values the rich and authentic learning outside of the classroom. At the centre of this principle is the recognition of the changing relationships with knowledge, learning and teaching. Social, spatial, cultural and temporal networks of community are transforming the relationships between students, between teachers and students, between students and their worlds. Literacies are no longer confined to ‘speaking, listening, reading and writing’. Multi literacies (Luke and Freebody 1995) and textuality are now commonplace. As James Gee highlights, there is much to be learnt about learning and thinking through studying how video games are designed and work. He uses 36 principles to explain why games are great learning machines, that is they reflect important principles of learning and thinking that cognitive science has presented as being significant and applicable in our technologically derived worlds.

For more information see: MyRead - What successful readers know and do (http://www.myread.org/what.htm)

Situated cognition

As John Dewey (1916) cited, “From the standpoint of the child, the great waste in school comes from his inability to utilise the experience he gets outside while on the other hand he is unable to apply in daily life what he is learning in school. That is the isolation of the school-its isolation from life.”

Authentic learning refers to learning about what happens in the ‘real world’. The capacity to engage all students more deeply in their learning increases through broadening the learning environment and making authentic connections between the curriculum and the community. Newmann (1996) identifies three criteria that must be achieved for authentic learning to be present: construction of knowledge; disciplined inquiry; and value beyond school. Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989) the first authors to spouse ‘ situated cognition’ value the role of ‘cognitive apprenticeships’ and advocate students using the same tools and language as experts. They maintain that as much as possible the culture of learning should match the culture of the experts. As apprenticeships imply, when students have questions or fail, within authentic learning environments teachers provide structure, support reflection; and incorporate fading scaffolds in order to move students to new levels of development (see Vygotsky Principle 2).

For more information see: Situated cognition Brown, Collins, and Duguid (http://www.edtech.vt.edu/edtech/id/models/powerpoint/cog.pdf)

Learning by design

James Gee explores the learning principles behind video games and the possibility of using them in education. He claims that ‘video games used in different ways have different effects’ and that video games can be good for children and adults when played actively and thought about at a meta-level in terms of their design features and the sorts of interactions they allow or encourage. Most powerful about video games, is that the ‘consumer’ (player, learner) is also a ‘producer.’ Players actively co-create the virtual worlds of games by the decisions they make and the actions they take. In openedended games, the game is different for every player. He suggests that game technology has significant potential in getting people to learn and think about things socially, cognitively, and morally.

For more information see: Learning by Design: Good Video Games as Learning Machines - James Paul Gee (http://www.academiccolab.org/resources/documents/Game%20Paper.pdf)