Leslie Rupert Herrenkohl

Comparative Understanding of School Subjects: Past, Present, and Future:

Research has elevated the proposition of knowledge’s domain specificity from a working hypothesis to a de facto truth. The assumption of domain specificity structures handbooks, organizes branches of funding agencies, and provides headings for conference proceedings. Leading researchers often focus on a single slice of the school day despite the possibility that such segments swirl into a blur for children. The authors examine the domain-specific landscape, beginning with the recent past, when domain generality, not domain specificity, reigned supreme. They then examine the transition to domain-specific approaches. Next, they offer an alternative to both positions, a stance they call the comparative understanding of school subjects. A comparative understanding trains attention on how the same children understand multiple subjects in the curriculum. The authors argue that this approach represents a promising path for conceptualizing research on children, schooling, and thinking by raising new questions about children’s understandings.

Pedagogical Practices to Support Classroom Cultures of Scientific Inquiry.

This article examines the pedagogical practices of two science inquiry teachers and their students using a Web-based system called Web of Inquiry (WOI). There is a need to build a collective repertoire of pedagogical practices that can assist elementary and middle school teachers as they support students to develop a complex model of inquiry based on testing alternative hypotheses. A repertoire of effective instructional practices may help students learn the language of science, develop an understanding of scientific tools and representations, and take up a scientific worldview that emphasizes the generative, social nature of science (National Research Council [NRC], 2007). The Web of Inquiry (WOI) (http://www.webofinquiry.org) is a dynamic website where students carry out scientific inquiry projects to develop and test their theories; learn scientific language, tools, and practices of investigation; engage in self assessment; and provide feedback to peers. Two teachers and their classes participated in this study using a variety of science content. We examine and discuss the teachers’ use of instructional strategies to support students to develop a coherent and theoretically driven model of scientific inquiry using the WOI. Implications of this work are addressed with respect to student and teacher learning and preservice teacher education.

Intellectual Role Taking: Supporting Discussion in Heterogeneous Elementary Science Classes.

One of the major challenges of teaching whole class lessons in heterogeneous classrooms rests in finding ways to engage all participants in the conversation. Intellectual role taking, an approach developed and studied in the teaching of elementary science and history lessons, provides one possibility for handling this perennial pedagogical dilemma. Intellectual role taking builds on 2 wellknown and well-studied pedagogical approaches —complex instruction (Cohen, 1984, 1994) and reciprocal teaching (RT; Palincsar & Brown, 1984). Complex instruction provided a foundation for small group work time and RT informed the development of intellectual roles to be used during small group time and whole class discussions. This article provides a detailed description of the approach, highlighting the school contexts and research literatures that informed its development. Examples from elementary science lessons are included and suggestions for using it in elementary history lessons are discussed.

Sociocultural Theory as a Lens to Understand Organizational Learning

The articles in this issue represent work at the forefront of the field. These authors are engaging in empirical exploration of school districts as learning organizations while also trying to build theory that can be used to explain this work. In choosing sociocultural theory, the authors move beyond the individual and social/cultural determinism that characterized much of twentieth-century social science. They focus on learning and leadership as phenomena that belong to persons in contexts. They examine how interactions among individuals situated in particular social and cultural institutions support teacher professional development, leadership development and opportunities, organizational learning, and ultimately student learning. This is exciting and important work that has and will continue to significantly affect theory and practice. As a developmental psychologist who uses sociocultural theories of the mind to understand learning (primarily science learning) in and out of school environments, I have found sociocultural theory to be a generative theoretical perspective in these contexts. Like John Bransford and Nancy Vye (2008, in this issue), however, I recognize the challenges associated with trying to work toward widespread change at district levels. What happens beyond the classroom walls? How does the work done in some classrooms have the opportunity to affect the work in others? How do we move to thinking about learning and change at the building, cluster, district, and professional levels? Where does central office leadership fit in? These questions are being taken up by this set of articles in ways that help us to understand anew that some of the most vexing problems concerning student learning (or lack of student learning) do not rest inside the classroom alone. The articles begin to shed light on what counts as organizational learning and how it transpires in institutional

Using Peer Feedback to Improve Students’ Scientific Inquiry

This article examines a 7th grade teacher’s pedagogical practices to support her students to provide peer feedback to one another using technology during scientific inquiry. This research is part of a larger study in which teachers in California and Washington and their classes engaged in inquiry projects using a Web-based system called Web of Inquiry. Videotapes of classroom lessons and artifacts such as student work were collected as part of the corpus of data. In the case examined, Ms. E supports her students to collectively define “meaningful feedback,” thereby improving the quality of feedback that was provided in the future. This is especially timely, given the attention in Next Generation Science Standards to cross-cutting concepts and practices that require students discuss and debate ideas with each other in order to improve their understanding and their written inquiry reports (NGSS, 2013).

How Students Come to Be, Know, and Do: Conclusion

Studies of learning are too frequently conceptualized only in terms of knowledge development. Yet it is vital to pay close attention to the social and emotional aspects of learning in order to understand why and how it occurs. How Students Come to Be, Know, and Do builds a theoretical argument for and a methodological approach to studying learning in a holistic way. The authors provide examples of urban fourth graders from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds studying science as a way to illustrate how this model contributes to a more complete and complex understanding of learning in school settings. What makes this book unique is its insistence that to fully understand human learning we have to consider the affective-volitional processes of learning along with the more familiar emphasis on knowledge and skills. Developing interest, persisting in the face of difficulty, actively listening to others’ ideas, accepting and responding to feedback, and challenging ideas are crucial dimensions of students’ experiences that are often ignored.