A. Susan Jurow

Social Design Experiments: Toward Equity by Design.

In this article, we advance an approach to design research that is organized around a commitment to transforming the educational and social circumstances of members of non-dominant communities as a means of promoting social equity and learning. We refer to this approach as social design experimentation. The goals of social design experiments include the traditional aim of design experiments to create theoreticallygrounded and practical educational interventions, the social agenda of ameliorating and redressing historical injustices, and the development of theories focused on the organization of equitable learning opportunities. To illustrate how we use social design methodology, we present two examples that strategically reorganized the sociohistorical practices of communities to expand learning as a key goal. We conclude with a discussion of the opportunities this approach creates for learning scientists to form effective research partnerships with community members, as well as the responsibilities it entails for creating a more just society.

Designing for the Future: How the Learning Sciences Can Inform the Trajectories of Preservice Teachers.

In this article, the authors discuss how they redesigned an educational psychology course for preservice teachers using insights from the burgeoning, interdisciplinary field of the Learning Sciences. Research on the situated nature of learning and the value of out-of-school contexts for supporting children’s development informed their decisions to require preservice teachers to work with children in community-based settings, frame their interactions with children as “service” rather than as explicit preparation for teaching, and conduct research on the social, cultural, and cognitive nature of these experiences. Two case studies illuminate preservice teachers’ learning trajectories in relation to course practices. Analyses suggest that the course created opportunities for preservice teachers to develop views of learning as inherently cultural and not limited to the acquisition of academic content. Emerging findings point to the potential of using Learning Sciences research as a touchstone for reorganizing educational psychology courses for preservice teachers.

Learning in Equity-Oriented Scale-Making Projects.

This article examines how new forms of learning and expertise are made to become consequential in changing communities of practice. We build on notions of scale making to understand how particular relations between practices, technologies, and people become meaningful across spatial and temporal trajectories of social action. A key assumption of our perspective is that the scale relations that give meaning to our actions are not natural but are contested in social, cultural, and political projects. Studying these contentious activities can help us understand the nature of changing participation in dynamic and historically developed practices. Using case materials from 3 groups engaged in the local food justice movement in the western United States, we illustrate their engagement in equity-oriented scale making. Defining features of this work included identifying leverage points within inequitable systems; developing strategies for remediating scale relations to include the perspectives of historically marginalized groups; and coordinating trajectories of practice across settings, activities, and time so that these interventions became increasingly consequential. We conclude with a discussion of the significance of equity-oriented scale making as a lens for organizing design efforts and for studying their implications for nondominant communities.

The Learning Sciences in a New Era of U.S. Nationalism

ABSTRACT What responsibilities do researchers of learning have in the wake of Trumps election and the proliferation of far-right, populist nationalism across the globe? In this essay, we seek to prompt and engage a dialogue about the political role and responsibilities of our field at this historical moment. First, we situate the social hierarchies that were most pronounced during this election within a longer history of U.S. policies and practices. We then examine the ostensible division between research on learning and the political contexts and consequences of learning. We argue for the need to address this false chasm and build on scholarship that has demonstrated the inextricable links among learning, power, and politics. We conclude by exploring how research on learning might more meaningfully engage with the political dimensions of learning through teaching, engaged research, publishing, professional forums, and service.

Changing Concepts in Activity: Descriptive and Design Studies of Consequential Learning in Conceptual Practices

Concepts and conceptual change have been studied extensively as phenomena of individual thinking and action, but changing circumstances of social or cultural groups using concepts are treated as external conditions. We describe research on consequential learning in conceptual practices, where concepts include representational infrastructure that coordinates meaning and activity across time, setting, and social participation. Consequential learning changes ones relation to conceptual practice, creating access to and valued possibilities for participation in practices at a broader scale. We illustrate our approach to conceptual change with case studies and design research in workplaces, schools, and urban communities. We compare our approach to previous efforts to bridge theoretical perspectives published in this journal, focusing in particular on Greeno and van de Sande (2007). Our efforts provide new constructs and studies that may yet create a span between cognitive and sociocultural theories of learning and conceptual change.

Cultivating Self in the Context of Transformative Professional Development

In this study, the author combines insights from ethnography and discourse analysis to examine how a model of selfhood was cultivated through the social practices of a transformative professional development program for urban public school leaders. Participants were introduced to the notion of an inner self that is knowing, vulnerable, and connected to others through (a) the modeling of multiple ways of talking about an inner self, (b) ritual experience of self in relation to others, and (c) the connection of self to a natural order. Taken together, the author found that the social practices of the retreat aimed to reposition the school leaders to try on new ways of seeing themselves both personally and professionally. This study contributes to our nascent understandings of both the practices and potential of transformative professional development.

Exploring the Relations between “Soul” and “Role”: Learning from the Courage to Lead

In this article, the authors consider how participants in a year-long, transformative professional development program for public school leaders took up and/or ignored insights when they left the sanctity of the retreats and returned to work. The program, called the Courage to Lead, aims to help school leaders to reconnect their “soul” (an essential, inner self) with their “role” so that they can live and work with integrity. Drawing on insights from social practice theory and critical psychology, the authors present two case studies that show why ideas from the retreats were held tentatively in one case and embraced more fully in another. Based on the analysis of interviews with focal participants and participant observation during the professional development program, the authors found that to transfer core principles from the retreat to work, the participants needed their own personal motivations to do so as well as institutional roles that lent themselves to acting on their insights. This research contributes to our growing appreciation for the complex relations between the self and learning in social and cultural contexts.

Relationships de Confianza and the organisation of collective social action

ABSTRACT This article examines the social and cultural organisation of learning and community change in a largely new immigrant and under-resourced neighbourhood in the US Situating our investigation within a local social movement for food justice, we use an ethnographic lens to study how learning is made to become consequential across relationships between people, across activities, and contexts. Our four-year ethnographic study highlights how community health workers (promotoras) build relationships de confianza as a tool that mediated new forms of action in the focal neighbourhood. We demonstrate how relationships de confianza have laid a foundation to (a) mediate social networks to organise for change and (b) promote solidarity through the response to urgent needs, creating a more holistic model of community health and sustainability. Drawing attention to relational resources foregrounds social actors and their ingenuity, promoting equity-oriented scale-making.