Keys, Carolyn W. (1997) (zie archief):
A proponent of the freedom perspective, Lijnse (1995, p2), made the following assertion, "we could say that we should not teach the concepts of science (as a product), not even in an above-mentioned constructivist way, but guide students in the activity of 'scientificalizing' their world." Allowing students freedom to make their own scientific decisions may foster a deeper understanding of the connections between questions, methodologies, data and knowledge claims.
Manuela Welzel 919e.a. (zie archief):
Roth (1995,1996) described investigations which focus on social aspects in learning situations. Classroom situations are analysed before the beginning of the next lesson and interactions are designed on the basis of the results of the previous lesson. Lijnse (1995) stated that: "'developmental research' is needed in which small-scale curriculum development is cyclically coupled to in depth classroom research of teaching-learning processes." The named questions devoted to individual processes, their dynamic during learning physics and their description were and still are in the focus of our investigations.
The main step of the data interpretation is the reconstruction of students' ideas. In this area, we have built up considerable experience through several case studies and scientific discussions. Lists of ideas of every student are abstracted. That is, every action of a student described in the transcript and seen on the videotape is interpreted according to the idea which is beeing reconstructed by the observer. The observer implies that this situation-related idea might be a cognitive construction that generates the action of the student. Result of this interpretation process is a vertical (chronological) list of ideas for each student through all chosen sequences. The criterion for a correct interpretation of students' activities within the contexts observed is the consistency of the following activities (see also Lijnse 1995, 193).
We are using the term "situated cognition". In previous papers of our group (e.g. Fischer, Aufschnaiter, 1992) the term "development of meanings" was used. Recent discussions have led us to use the term "situated cognition" following Roth (1995) and Lijnse (1995). We think, that in every new situation new ideas are produced in a context dependent way - in a frame of situated cognition. These ideas are generated in the context of the interaction with the learning environment. This is different from the term "meaning" used in scientific discussions of science education.
Looking at these investigations we have to describe "learning" as individual processes of a development of situated cognition. These processes are generated internally on the basis of experiences of a learner and according to the opportunities he/she has within the learning environments. These results show that in learning processes no exchange of information take place. It is unusual to believe, that you have to tell someone special things and he has taken this in his mind.
According to our results, everybody always constructs and develops within processes of situated cognition new especially individual knowledge on the basis of his/her own experiences.
And such processes of reaching higher complexity are context dependent and take place everywhere in all of the learning situations. If you know that, you can plan courses in new ways other than the traditional way of telling students abstract things like laws and to illustrate these laws with examples, you have to give the students all the possibilities to get many experiences in the new (physics) context on lower level of complexity. They have to understand by themselves which are the relevant objects and properties to manage a special situation, they have to act with them and to get experiences to predict events, when they combine properties of objects. After that they are able to climb up to principles in the physical world and to a systematic view on physics. We have to agree with Lijnse (1995), when he wrote:
"In our opinion, a more radical change is needed. If we want students to really understand and use what they are taught, we should engage with them a "bottom-up" learning process. In analogy to Freudenthal, we could say that we should not teach the concepts of science (as a product), not even in above-mentioned constructivist way, but guide the students in the activity of "scientificalizing" their world." (Lijnse, 1995, 192)
We were surprised, that advanced learners too (like students of the upper high school and like new results at the age of second year students of university in physics) have to pass such a development of situated cognition in each new situation of their learning environments beginning from a very low level of complexity.
In our research program we plan new courses to test our hypotheses. We want to organise the interactions and the opportunities of students to act within their learning environment.