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2 - Foundations of the Learning Sciences

from Part I - Foundations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

By
Mitchell J. Nathan  and
R. Keith Sawyer
Edited by
R. Keith Sawyer
R. Keith Sawyer
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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Summary

This chapter describes the intellectual foundations that have influenced the learning sciences (LS) from its beginning, and identifies the core elements that unify many chapters of this handbook. Its theoretical influences include pragmatism, constructivism, sociocultural theory, situated learning, and distributed cognition. The chapter organizes LS research into two levels of analysis: the individual or elemental, and the sociocultural or systemic. The chapter reviews the methodologies that have been used to study each level of analysis and summarizes research findings at each level. LS research bridges research and practice and combines elemental and systemic perspectives on learning across a range of timescales of human behavior.

Keywords

intellectual foundationstheoretical influencesuse-inspired researchlearning engineeringconstructivismsocioculturalepistemologylevels of analysismethodology
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences , pp. 27 - 52
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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