12 - A Foucauldian Analysis of the Learning Sciences: Past, Present, and Future

Summary

We must also question those divisions or groupings with which we have become so familiar .... We are not even sure of ourselves when we use these distinctions in our own world of discourse ... we are analyzing groups of statements which, when first formulated, were distributed, divided, and characterized in a quite different way .... As soon as one questions that unity, it loses its self-evidence; it indicates itself, constructs itself, only on the basis of a complex field of discourse.

(Foucault, 1969/1972, pp. 22–23)

These chapters provide substantial insights into the guiding questions stated in the Introduction: “What is the learning sciences?” and “How did it come to be what it is, and what might it become in the future?” In addition, a more general contribution of this book is to help us answer a much more complex question: “What is a scientific discipline, and how does it form and change over time?” This is the realm of historians of science, who for decades have studied how new scientific disciplines, theories, and methodologies emerge and change over time. Such histories are even more challenging when we are speaking of interdisciplinary sciences – when elements from two or more distinct fields come together to form a new network of relations. This new network attains autonomy and independence, even as the elements remain linked to their foundational disciplines.

In these chapters, we read about the many intellectual currents that joined to form the learning sciences (LS). These currents bubble up, flow quickly or slowly, weave around obstacles, and change direction. They merge with other currents and sometimes synergistically become something very different. I use Foucault's theory (1966/1970, 1969/1972) to explain the interdisciplinary roots and the historical trajectory of LS – the multiple parallel scholarly currents that were active before the interdisciplinary LS emerged and became recognized as its own autonomous scholarly domain. I also use Foucault's theories to analyze the contemporary tensions and contradictions in the field, and discuss how these might drive change in the future. By grounding my analysis in Foucault's theory, I treat this book as a case study in the history of science, one that historians of science may find useful as they analyze other interdisciplinary sciences.