Power and Privilege in the Learning Sciences

Critical and Sociocultural Theories of Learning

Indigo Esmonde, Angela N. Booker, Indigo Esmonde, Angela N. Booker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317413134
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Although power and privilege are embedded in all learning environments, the learning sciences is dominated by individual cognitive theories of learning that cannot expose the workings of power. Power and Privilege in the Learning Sciences: Critical and Sociocultural Theories of Learning addresses the ways in which research on human learning can acknowledge the influence of differential access to power on the organization of learning in particular settings. Written by established and emerging scholars in the learning sciences and related fields, the chapters in this volume introduce connections to critical and poststructural race theories, critical disability studies, queer theory, settler-colonial theory, and critical pedagogy as tools for analyzing dimensions of learning environments and normativity. A vital resource for students and researchers in the fields of learning sciences, curriculum studies, educational psychology, and beyond, this book introduces key literature, adapts theory for application in education, and highlights areas of research and teaching that can benefit from critical theoretical methods.

1
Introduction

Indigo Esmonde and Angela N. Booker

The learning sciences is an interdisciplinary field, dedicated to studying learning and teaching in a wide variety of contexts. Approaches from psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, education, anthropology, and sociology provide multiple lenses on the field’s big questions: What is learning, and how does it occur? What “should” people learn, and how do we know when they have learned it? Which teaching methods, in which contexts, are most likely to bring about “good” learning?

As such, the field is concerned with relations among people, and between people and the practices in which they participate. We study the varied forms of practice and knowledge that shape and support human participation across environments and over time. When we look more closely, we discover that wherever we find social relations, variability of experience and practice, or evaluation of knowledge and learning, we also find dynamics of power. The learning sciences, therefore, must necessarily centre conceptions of equity, diverse experience, and the dynamics of power and privilege expressed in and through learning environments. Yet, the learning sciences possesses limited theoretical underpinnings that make the relationship between power and learning visible, even as the field strives to speak across both a situated, sociocultural tradition and a more individualistic psychological tradition.

Sawyer (2006a) named five “early influences” (p. 5) on the development of the learning sciences: constructivism (as rooted in Piaget’s work), cognitive science, educational technology, sociocultural studies, and studies of the nature of knowledge. From this foundation, the learning sciences has developed a strong emphasis on the design of learning spaces (including, but not limited to school classrooms), and the use of technology to support learning.

Issues of power and oppression require more committed attention in the learning sciences. Consider, for example, the two flagship publications representing the “state of the art” of the learning sciences at their time of publication, How People Learn (Committee on Developments in the Science of Learning with additional material from the Committee on Learning Research and Educational Practice, National Research Council, 2000) and The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (Sawyer, 2006b). These two volumes make very few references to issues of power and oppression. An important exception is the Handbook chapter Learning as a Cultural Process: Achieving Equity through Diversity (Nasir, Rosebery, Warren, & Lee, 2006). But even this chapter was placed in the section entitled Learning Environments, indicating that this material may not be relevant to other sections, including Foundations (of the field), Methodologies, The Nature of Knowledge, or Learning Together.

All contexts are learning contexts, and the authors in this volume take the approach that power is ever-present in learning contexts. Some people might agree with this point, but still maintain that power is not necessarily connected to broader systems of oppression (such as racism, patriarchy, colonialism). For example, in classroom settings teachers wield power over their students, and students may have access to different kinds or levels of power over one another, relating to friendship, popularity, or perceived smartness. These are not obviously related to broad social systems, and yet, if we look beneath the surface, teachers are authorized by the government to teach state-sanctioned curriculum. In the United States, the vast majority of teachers come from the dominant racial group—white people—and from a comfortable economic class (Ball & Tyson, 2011). Again, dissenters might point out that most teachers in the U.S. are women! And what about teachers who are racialized minorities, or from the working class? Do they not wield power? We would reply that this kind of complexity is why we need theories of power, to explain how power circulates in contexts, how it aligns with structural oppression, how it challenges oppression, how it is subtle, and explicit, pervasive, and yet often invisible. A final protest might contend that my original statement was too general: Could it really be true that power is present in all (learning) contexts? We ask that the reader judge for themselves after reading through the volume (and, yes, we just used “they” as a gender neutral singular pronoun).

The sociocultural tradition offers promise to integrate a critical understanding of power with an analysis of learning. We use the term sociocultural theory to describe the diverse set of theories that are rooted in Vygotsky’s work in the early 20th century, including situated learning theory, cultural-historical activity theory, distributed cognition, and others. Vygotsky was committed to developing a Marxist psychology, one that could explain how the material conditions of labour shape everyday learning and cognition. Since that time, others have taken up critical approaches to studying learning. These range from projects that have demonstrated the deep cognition required for seemingly menial or blue-collar work (e.g., Sylvia Scribner’s study of dairy work, 1985), to projects that codify the development of cultural and racialized identities (e.g., Lee, 2007; Nasir, 2011), to cultural-historical activity theorists who have demonstrated how an analysis of breakdowns within an activity system (often stemming from power imbalances) can support reorganization and generative learning (e.g., Engeström, 2000, studies of medical care). Each of these studies draws from different theoretical resources and applies different concepts to the study of power.

Sociocultural approaches to the study of learning have begun the difficult work of analyzing how historically constructed systems of power and oppression can be understood in the moment-to-moment unfolding of learning. The field could benefit greatly by integrating traditions of critical theory that have largely developed outside of the learning sciences (Lewis, Enciso, & Moje, 2007). While critical theories have made substantial inroads into educational studies as a whole, these theories (e.g., critical race theory, queer theory) have largely not been concerned with the study of learning. Increasing numbers of learning scientists are engaged in this critical work, and the time is ripe to expand the field’s analyses of power and oppression. This volume advocates a shift from ad hoc approaches to a more shared and deliberate project to grapple with the ways our work is situated and mobilized with regard to power.

In this book, we bring together a variety of theories that address the circulation and operation of power in society, to use as resources for critical sociocultural theories of learning. To aid in the process of integration, Chapter 2 provides an overview of sociocultural theories—their roots, ways of conceiving power, and the different directions that have emerged over the last fifty years. Chapters 3 through 8 address, respectively: critical race theory, poststructural theories of race, critical disability studies (with some additional material on how Vygotksy and his intellectual descendants have conceptualized disabilities), queer theory, settler colonialism studies and indigenous ways of knowing, and critical pedagogy. Inspired by Nasir and Hand’s (2006) integrated review of sociocultural theory with research on race and racism, the authors of these chapters were tasked with the following guiding questions:

1. What was the theory developed to explain? What is the history of this theory?
2. What are the key themes, assumptions, or conceptual frameworks of this theory?
3. What methodologies are predominantly used?
4. How does this theory interface with theories of learning? How does this theory help to grow a more critical sociocultural theory of learning, and how can socio-cultural theories of learning contribute to the development of the critical theory?

We close with Chapter 9, in which we review the material throughout the book, and put forward principles and unresolved questions towards critical sociocultural theories of learning.

This volume addresses the need for a broad and integrated approach to critical studies of learning, although we make no claims to a single theory that can answer all of our research questions. The theoretical integration and synthesis required is not easy work. These theories have different histories, assumptions, and goals, and the authors in this volume will discuss where the theories fit together and where they do not, which points of tension seem productive and generative, and which tensions have to be resolved to move forward.

Why now? And why the learning sciences, and not educational psychology, or any other field? We believe the learning sciences is uniquely positioned in several ways. First, the learning sciences is already interdisciplinary, so we are already learning to make explicit the assumptions underlying our research, and to work across difference. Second, the learning sciences wields power in the domain of educational policy and practice: educators, policy-makers, granting organizations, turn to the learning sciences for cutting-edge, innovative design work to support learning in a variety of contexts. We can shift the focus away from learning as an individual cognitive endeavour, and help the broader public see that learning is always social, relational, and cultural.

Why does this volume argue that the field as a whole needs to take on this challenge, rather than isolated efforts of those who are interested in questions of power? In part, the answer lies in each of the chapters; they argue, in different ways, that power is always present in learning contexts, and so no learning design can be successful if power is not taken into account. Second, it becomes increasingly difficult for those isolated individuals to persist, when scholarship that addresses power is pushed to the fringes, rejected from flagship journals, or derided as “activism” and not scholarship (an odd way to insult someone, in a field known for its fierce advocacy about productive learning contexts).

We invite the reader to consider how these varied theoretical frameworks can be a resource for the learning sciences. It is our hope that this volume marks the beginning of renewed and vibrant debate about our theories, priorities, conceptualizations of research, and methodologies. Such conversations can only deepen the field’s capacity to work across our differences and develop more powerful and inclusive contexts for learning.

References

Ball, Arnetha F., & Tyson, Cynthia A. (Eds.). (2011). Studying diversity in teacher education. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Committee on developments in the science of learning with additional material from the committee on learning research and educational practice, National Research Council. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school: Expanded edition. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Retrieved from http://www.nap.edu/catalog/9853

Engeström, Y. (2000). Activity theory as a framework for analyzing and redesigning work. Ergonomics, 43 (7), 960–974.

Lee, C. D. (2007). Culture, literacy and learning: Taking bloom in the midst of the whirlwind. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Lewis, C., Enciso, P. E., & Moje, E. B. (Eds.). (2007). Reframing sociocultural research on literacy: Identity, agency, and power (1st edn.). Mahwah, NJ: Routledge.

Nasir, N. (2011). Racialized identities: Race and achievement among African American youth. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Nasir, N. S., & Hand, V. (2006). Exploring sociocultural perspectives on race, culture, and learning. Review of Educational Research, 76 (4), 449–475.

Nasir, N. S., Rosebery, A. S., Warren, B., & Lee, C. D. (2006). Learning as a cultural process: Achieving equity through diversity. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), Handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 489–504). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Sawyer, R. K. (2006a). Introduction: The new science of learning. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), Handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 1–16). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Sawyer, R. K. (Ed.). (2006b). The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Scribner, S. (1985). Knowledge at work. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 16 (3), 199–206.

2
Power and Sociocultural Theories of Learning

Indigo Esmonde

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate various ways that power has been taken up in the learning sciences. I begin with a brief description of the more dominant, individualist cognitive theories prevalent in the learning sciences, and explain some of the limitations of cognitive theories in regards to studying issues of power. For the remainder of the chapter, I will describe six central themes of sociocultural theory, and show how researchers have investigated the relationship between power and learning via each of these themes. I will also point out the limits of sociocultural perspectives on power up to this point. By the end of the chapter, I hope readers will have a good sense of how sociocultural perspectives conceive of learning, and will be prepared to take on the broad issues that are raised by critical theories.

The dominant perspective in learning sciences research takes what Greeno (2006) calls the “individual cognitive” perspective. Research from this perspective focuses on individual minds, “knowledge structures” inside the mind that govern how knowledge is stored and how pieces of knowledge relate to one another, or processes of learning and knowing, such as reflection, problem-solving, representation and so on (Sawyer, 2006).

One of the major differences between the individual cognitive and the socio-cultural perspectives is the treatment of context. Context is not dismissed within individual cognitive approaches; on the contrary, researchers think deeply about teaching processes, and technological or other tools that can help bring about learning. For cognitivists, context matters in that some supports for learning (i.e., teaching methods) function better than others, but once knowledge is established in the mind, context recedes in importance. In contrast, sociocultural perspectives treat context as inseparable from cognition.

Individual cognitive perspectives are not well positioned to tackle power because power is fundamentally relational; it is not “in the head,” it circulates among people and the objects in their environments. Cognitive approaches are also limited in the types of explanations they can offer for inequitable learning outcomes (e.g., widespread racialized, gendered and classed differences in academic attainment and a...