Reflections on the Learning Sciences

Michael A. Evans is Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education and Learning Sciences at North Carolina State University, where he is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation. His numerous articles have appeared in journals such as the International Journal of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, Educational Technology Research and Development and Computers in Education. Martin J. Packer is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of the Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. He is the author of The Structure of Moral Action, Changing Classes: School Reform and the New Economy, and The Science of Qualitative Research. He is also coeditor of Entering the Circle: Hermeneutic Investigation in Psychology (with Richard B. Addison) and Cultural and Critical Perspectives on Human Development (with Mark B. Tappan). He has published in American Psychologist and Educational Psychologist and was founding coeditor of the journal Qualitative Research in Psychology. R. Keith Sawyer is the Morgan Distinguished Professor in Educational Innovations at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author or editor of fourteen books, including The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences, 2nd edition; Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation, 2nd edition; and Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration.

1. Introduction Michael A. Evans, Martin J. Packer and R. Keith Sawyer; Part I. Past: 2. Why learning sciences? Roger Schank; 3. The prehistory of the learning sciences Roy Pea; 4. Some early contributions to the situative perspective on learning and cognition James Greeno and Timothy Nokes-Malach; 5. The group as paradigmatic unit of analysis: the contested relationship of CSCL to the learning sciences Gerry Stahl; Part II. Present: 6. Reconstructing the influences on and focus of the learning sciences from the field's published conference proceedings Victor R. Lee, Min Yuan, Lei Ye and Mimi Recker; 7. Mapping the territory of the learning sciences Martin J. Packer and Cody Maddox; 8. Researcher-practitioner collaboration in educational design research: processes, roles, values, and expectations Susan McKenney; Part III. Future: 9. Growing the learning sciences: brand or big tent? Implications for graduate education Mitchell J. Nathan, Nikol Rummel and Kenneth E. Hay; 10. Education policy and the learning sciences: the case for a new alliance Mary Kay Stein, Kevin Crowley and Lauren Resnick; 11. Learning and development as transaction: offering a Deweyan perspective to extend the landscape of the learning sciences Michael A. Evans and Sandra Schneider; 12. Conclusion: a Foucauldian analysis of the learning sciences R. Keith Sawyer.