Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments

Susan Land, David Jonassen, Susan Land, David Jonassen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136702594
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments provides students, faculty, and instructional designers with a clear, concise introduction to the major pedagogical and psychological theories and their implications for the design of new learning environments for schools, universities, or corporations. Leading experts describe the most important contemporary theories that form the foundation of the conception and design of student-centered learning environments and new applications of educational technologies. This book is well suited as a textbook for courses in instructional design, educational psychology, learning theory, curriculum theory and design, and related areas.

The rise of constructivism and its associated theories represented a paradigm shift for educators and instructional designers to a view of learning as necessarily more social, conversational, and constructive than traditional transmissive views of learning. This bestselling book was the first to provide a manageable overview of the altered field, and the second edition has been fully updated to include expert introductions to Metacognition, Argumentation, and other key contemporary theories.

Part 1 Overview

DOI: 10.4324/9780203813799-1

1 Student-Centered Learning Environments

Foundations, Assumptions and Design

Susan M. Land, Michael J. Hannafin and Kevin Oliver

DOI: 10.4324/9780203813799-2

Student-centered learning environments (SCLEs) “provide interactive, complimentary activities that enable individuals to address unique learning interests and needs, study multiple levels of complexity, and deepen understanding (Hannafin & Land, 1997, p. 168). This general framework is used in the learning sciences to delineate design methods that support personal sense making via problem contexts enriched with technology tools, resources, and scaffolding (Quintana, Shin, Norris, & Soloway, 2006). Such environments facilitate student- or self-directed learning by enabling students to productively engage complex, open-ended problems that are aligned authentically with the practices, culture, or processes of a domain.

During the past two decades, new frameworks for designing learning environments have emerged in response to constructivist-inspired views of learning (Jonassen, 1991). Such views represented a fundamental shift in the paradigms of learning and design during the 1990s, but few guidelines were available for designers to create learner-centered environments. Likewise, as technologies advanced, approaches evolved to integrate digital resources, tools, and connectivity to expand the designer's toolkit. These shifts in the learning–design–technology landscape required corresponding shifts in theoretical and design frameworks to capture emerging viewpoints and technologies for learning (Hannafin & Land, 1997).

The National Research Council Report (Bransford et al., 2000), How People Learn, established principled-based approaches to designing learner-centered environments, emphasizing learning with understanding and the importance of social and cultural contexts in learning. These perspectives require very different approaches to design, teaching, and assessment, including the importance of learner preconceptions, deep, usable knowledge, and metacognition as processes that mediate individual learning. One implication for learning-environment design drawn by the NRC is that “schools and classrooms must be learner centered” (Bransford et al., p. 23). The 2006 edition of the Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences further expanded the 2000 NRC report, aligning Learning Sciences research and development with the goals of student-centered learning outlined in that earlier work (Sawyer, 2006).

Despite the 2000 report detailing the prevailing views on how people learn, debate about the veracity of assumptions about learner-centered designs has re-emerged, with questions arising about the research evidence available in support of constructivist approaches (see for example, Hirsch, 2001; Kirschner et al., 2006). Indeed, unlike for traditional instruction, no unifying theory seems to guide the design of student-centered learning environments, which creates challenges for research, scalability, and generalizability. We acknowledge the efficacy of varied approaches to teaching and design, with design decisions being a byproduct of different contexts, tasks, pragmatics, and goals. This chapter focuses on introducing the tenets of student-centered learning environments that are grounded in foundations, assumptions, and methods associated with a constructivist epistemology.

Theoretical Background

The Role of Epistemology in Learning Environments

Epistemological shifts have engendered a variety of innovative and provocative learning environments. Interest in student-centered teaching and learning, for example, has given rise to myriad approaches to provide flexible and powerful alternatives to the design of instruction (Jonassen, 1991). Student-centered environments, tacitly or explicitly, are designed to support individual efforts to negotiate meaning while engaging in authentic activities. Student-centered approaches reflecting epistemological variants have emerged including problem-based learning (Hmelo-Silver, 2004), anchored instruction (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1992), cognitive apprenticeships (Collins, 2006), computer-supported collaborative learning (Stahl et al., 2006), learning-by-design (Kolodner, 2006), project-based learning (Krajcik & Blumenfeld, 2006), games and simulations (D. Clark et al., 2009), and open learning environments (Hannafin, Land, & Oliver, 1999). While operationalized differently, student-centered learning environments share common epistemological foundations and assumptions. SCLEs are grounded in a constructivist view of learning, where meaning is personally rather than universally defined. Such perspectives draw heavily from psychological research and theory related to areas such as situated cognition (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989) with attendant assumptions emphasizing the interlacing of content, context and understanding, the individual negotiation of meaning, and the construction of knowledge (Jonassen, 1991). Pedagogically, SCLEs favor rich, authentic learning contexts over isolated, decontextualized knowledge and skill, student-centered, goal-directed inquiry over externally directed instruction, and supporting personal perspectives over canonical perspectives. Technology tools support the individual's identification and manipulation of resources and ideas (Iiyoshi, Hannafin, & Wang, 2005).

With increased popularity, however, fundamental questions have arisen related to the kinds of learning such environments support, how best to design them, and whether or not designs can be generalized across varied domains and contexts (Dick, 1991; Merrill, 1991; Kirschner et al., 2006). Numerous “how to” guidelines have been offered, but they typically lack adequate theoretical or empirical framing (Hannafin & Land, 1997). Given the unique student-centered learning goals and requirements, it may be impossible to derive an inclusive design model. Rather, we need to identify frameworks for analyzing, designing, and implementing learning environments that embody and align particular foundations, assumptions, and practices.

Clark (Clark & Hannafin, 2011) recently described “pitfalls” and shortcomings of constructivist-inspired learning environments such as discovery learning research and practice, citing examples to support his assertion that fully-guided, direct instruction results in superior performance in virtually all cases. Similar arguments have been presented for constructivist-inspired learning strategies and environments including student-centered learning, inquiry-based learning, and self-directed learning (Kirschner et al., 2006). Clark also suggested that empirical evidence generated from directed-learning studies is applicable to all types of learning independent of the associated epistemological roots. He suggests personal perspectives might unduly sustain the popularity of minimally-guided approaches in the absence of empirical evidence. Finally, Clark cautions “Far too many in our field are avoiding inconvenient evidence in favor of self-serving beliefs and opinions” (p. 375). He questions the preparation and motivation of non-adherents: “few people have the motivation or training necessary to invest the effort required to carefully review complex research on learning and instruction … ambivalence about research training in our instructional technology and instructional systems graduate programs is certainly a contributing factor” (p. 375). He concludes that programs that do not heed his advice “risk causing harm to people who depend on us” (p. 375).

But are the goals, assumptions, and learning contexts of these approaches really comparable to those based on learning from direct instruction? Clark et al.'s guidance is only occasionally viable when the circumstances and assumptions guiding design decisions are aligned. His perspectives, methods, and findings do not align with widely adopted approaches advanced by reputable theorists, researchers, and practitioners with different perspectives. Hmelo-Silver, Duncan, and Chinn (2007) challenged Kirschner et al.'s (2006) use of the term minimal guidance: “problem-based learning (PBL) and inquiry learning (IL), are not minimally guided instructional approaches but rather provide extensive scaffolding and guidance to facilitate student learning” (p. 99). McCaslin and Good (1992) noted, “the intended modern school curriculum, which is designed to produce self-motivated, active learners, is seriously undermined by classroom management policies that encourage, if not demand, simple obedience” (p. 4). The authors suggest that both teachers and students require sustained opportunities and support in order to adapt and implement significant pedagogical changes. Optimal guidance is needed where learning outcomes are not or cannot be explicitly predefined.

We do not argue for inherent superiority (or inferiority) of one perspective or approach over alternatives. We do not intend to fuel what is often a rancorous ongoing debate, but to advance a more principled approach to linking teaching, learning, and technology. Since learning is the goal of design, we need to clarify the type(s) of learning we mean to facilitate. Learning systems design has evolved frameworks that provide important and useful ways to support directed learning. So, while we acknowledge that fully-guided direct instruction is often well-suited to support external learning requirements, these same methods and models cannot adequately support learning that has become increasingly spontaneous and self-directed within and across formal (e.g., independent follow-up on debates related to global warming or Jefferson's ancestry) and informal settings (e.g., learning the causes of home garden infestations or the impact of recent tax laws on personal finances). We acknowledge that different learning goals exist, recognize the implications of these perspectives on design and learning, and identify strategies that are best aligned with and appropriate for a given learning need.

Grounded Design

Grounded design is “the systematic implementation of processes and procedures that are rooted in established theory and research in human learning” (Hannafin et al., 1997, p. 102). Grounded approaches emphasize the alignment of core foundations and assumptions, and the linking of methods and approaches in ways that are consistent with their corresponding epistemological perspectives. It does not advocate or presume the inherent superiority of a specific epistemology or methodology for design. Rather, grounded design provides a framework for reconciling diverse design practices with the basic tenets of their associated belief systems. We have previously outlined the importance of alignment among psychological, pedagogical, technological, pragmatic, and cultural foundations of a learning environment.

Grounded student-centered learning environments support learners as they negotiate multiple rather than singular points of view, reconcile competing and conflicting perspectives and beliefs, and construct personally-relevant meaning accordingly. Key overarching assumptions and values are reflected in seemingly diverse environments. For instance, one environment might support collaboration activities to facilitate shared meaning of scientific practices; others might rely upon individually-mediated use of technology tools to generate, test, and refine personal theories. Both environments emphasize learning as a goal-directed activity, yet each provides a somewhat different context to support learner-constructed meaning (e.g., rich technological support, rich social support). What is important from a grounded design perspective is that the design decisions, features, and sequences of the learning environment align with theoretically-grounded perspectives on learning and associated pedagogy.

Grounded design, therefore, involves the simultaneous alignment of each foundation in order to optimize coincidence across all foundations; as the intersection across foundations increases, the better grounded the design. A wide array of psychological perspectives can be drawn upon, for which a multitude of pedagogical alternatives is available. All perspectives and methods, however, are not interchangeable; in grounded design they are interdependent. By default or design, many learning environments simply do not adhere to the definition, foundations, assumptions, and methods of grounded instruction. This is the case both for designs that purport to be instruction but fail to reflect the requisite alignment as well as for learning environments that are rooted in fundamentally different perspectives. Compared with instructivist methodologies, for example, student-centered approaches support different learning goals, u...