taught by
Wolff-Michael Roth
Lansdowne Professor
Course Objectives
Consider these two questions:
- Have you ever wondered what makes people so competent in their jobs or hobbies?
- How do people learn and become competent?
This course is designed to look into some answers to these questions. We take a look at how people know and learn in a variety of situations and from a variety of perspectives. These perspectives include traditional information processing cognitive science and artificial intelligence, Heideggerian cognitive science and artificial intelligence, anthropology, cognitive anthropology, sociology of scientific knowledge, ethnomethodology, and historical and philosophical approaches to the study of human knowing and learning.
The course will be structured largely as follows (though adapted when it unfolds to address the students' needs). During the first 6 weeks, we mainly read and discuss the articles. We also view some video and other data to engage in analyses designed to better understand how people know and learn in everyday settings. We also begin planning and discussion small student course projects in which students gain some experience to find out more about knowing and learning. During the second 6 weeks, we focus more on student activities related to their projects and, as a group, facilitate the efforts of each individual. Sharing observations, presenting tentative findings, etc. are central to this part of the course. The end point of these activities will be a finished course paper which will constitute proof of students' participation in the course.
Epistemology
The course is designed to facilitate learning about knowing and learning. Throughout the course, students' activities will be scaffolded such to produce a course outcome (paper) of high quality. The basic idea is learning not setting up hoops that students have to jump. Individual initiative and participation in the ongoing activities are central to the epistemology (see also article by Lave, 1993).
Readings
Selected readings from the literature on everyday knowing and learning [for reading list press here]. These will mainly be articles to get the broadest range possible, and allow for students to suggest and contribute readings from their own areas of interests.
Activities
Discussions of papers read, analysis of data, design and discussion of student projects, student presentation of their ongoing work.
Assignment
Students will work on a small project in which they learn about doing a study on knowing and learning. Students select the domain of interest, and throughout the course work on this project. The finished course paper is simply the end stage of a process. [A sample paper written by a student in a previous embodiment of this course.]
Admission
Graduate students from all departments and faculties are welcome. Please check with Dr. Roth (Tel: (250) 721-7885 or email [mroth@uvic.ca]).
Reading list
A course pack will be available at the bookstore containing the following readings.
Chapman, D. (1991). Vision, instruction, and action (Chapter 2, pp. 17-33). Cambridge, MA and London, England: The MIT Press.
Gooding, D. (1990). Mapping experiment as learning process: How the first electromagnetic motor was invented. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 15, 165-201.
Goodwin, C. (1994). Professional vision. American Anthropologist, 96, 606-633.
Hutchins, E. (1995). How a cockpit remembers its speeds. Cognitive Science, 19, 265-288.
Jordan, B. (1989). Cosmopolitical obstetrics: Some insights from the training of traditional midwives. Social Science in Medicine, 28, 925-944.
Lave, J. (1993). The practice of learning. In S. Chaiklin & J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding practice: Perspectives on activity and context (pp. 3-32). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mandelblit, N., & Zachar, O. (1998). The notion of dynamic unit: Conceptual developments in cognitive science. Cognitive Science, 22, 229-268.
Orr, J. (1998). Images of work. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 23, 439-455.
Roth, W.-M. (1998). Situated cognition and assessment of competence in science. Evaluation and Program Planning, 21, 155-169.
Roth, W.-M., McRobbie, C., Lucas, K. B., & Boutonné, S. (1997). The local production of order in traditional science laboratories: A phenomenological analysis. Learning and Instruction, 7, 107-136.
Suchman, L. (1995). Making work visible. Communications of the ACM, 38(9), 56-64.
Varela, F. J. (1995). The re-enchantment of the concrete: Some biological ingredients for a nouvelle cognitive science. In L. Steels & R. Brooks (Eds.), The artificial life route to artificial intelligence: Building embodied, situated agents (pp. 11-22). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erbaum Associates.
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