Learning Sciences

Here is a website telling about communities of practice, situated learning and legitimate peripheral participation. You can check for an overview about situated learning.

"Many of the ways we have of talking about learning and education are based on the assumption that learning is something that individuals do". This is a really nice article that outlines the theory and its applications and some issues related to situated learning theory are pointed out.

When situated learning theory (SLT) is investigated, it can be seen that most of the articles or documents mention learning by doing within an actual context. The first thing that comes to mind is the real world environment while someone mentions the SLT. What if we want to form a "legitimate peripheral participation" environment to learn a concept by the boundaries of online platforms? How can we design online platforms by using situated learning theory?

"Participation Learning becomes a social process dependent upon transactions with others. Learning is not separated from the world of action but exists in robust, complex, social environments made up of actors, actions, and situations. How to incorporate participation in online learning? *Create discussion boards to enable students to reflect socially *Encourage engagement in discussions and issues presented *Require students to present/defend their arguments in forums, discussion groups, bulletin boards *Encourage students to engage in critical reflection with other *Instructors should continually assess the growth of the student, and let the student know " These are the principles applied in our 542 course. We are experiencing situated cognition in progress.

A case study in situated learning

The first problem is defined by Dan Lortie in The Apprenticeship of Observations (1975) as being acquainted with the task of teaching.The professor on the video emphasizes that in the countries where immagrants are most successful, teachers spend 50% of their work planning lessons, observing other classes and negotiating about the lessons. She also touches the problem of 'Toxic Environment' of schools for teachers where they gossip about their students and colleagues. She gives a successful school example in which professional development is a part of school culture. Can you list additional problems for teacher expertise faced in schools?

Although sharing ideas and instances about the classroom hours and students can be accepted as components of adult learning for teachers, gossiping about them can be a real barrier to develop on those areas. In my teaching experience, we prohibited the conversations about the negative issues happened in the school.

Even if someone would be an expert, the things that he can do have a boundary. Do not expect impossible thing from experts. this video is a good example for this.

CORVALLIS, Ore. - English learners are more likely to become proficient English speakers if they enter kindergarten with a strong initial grasp of academic language literacy, either in their primary language or in English, a new analysis from Oregon State University has found.

Research on how deliberate practice combined with innate abilities lead to expertise.

Elanur, Actually, I was trying to find the movie that you mentioned about high-wire actor (Petit). Then I realized that you have already written here. What made me so impressed about him that he worked on that about 6 years. I have read somewhere "experts view mistakes as opportunities to learn", however, this man had no chance to do mistake. the story of the guy in this link http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2015/09/30/the_real_story_behind_philippe_petits_highwire_act_in_the_walk.php

Yes Yasin I totally agree with you about the mistake part but this man dedicated his life to perform on the wire between Twin Towers so I thought that someone who dedicates oneself to perform in a particular area develops expertise in that area eventually and we can call him an expert in being a juggler even he put his life in danger. By the way this is an extreme example of being an expert. I just try to make connections between dedication and developing an expertise through this example.

When decisions with important consequences involved, people ask for expert opinion let it be a hotel booking (trip advisor, booking...) or purchasing a book (amazon recommends, kitapyurdu...). If the stakes are high, then it becomes obligatory to go and ask for expert opinion. However this becomes a problem if people rely on experts as if they are getting parental advice. People become addicted to experts because of its certainity, assuredness and definitiveness. In a study, a group of adults' brains' MRI scans when they are listening to experts showed that the independent part of their decision making part of their brains switches off while they are listening. This listening becomes unquestionnable and they use these opinions without distinguishing as right or wrong. Considering the doctors who misdiagnose 4 out of 10, not questionning is an important issue. As a result the role of the expert should change because they are affected by social norms, cultural norms and everything. So their judgements may differ. Think about companies who try to sell their products and include experts in the process. Toothpaste, washing detergents etc. are exagerated. Although they are experts, they have assumptions which may have flaws. People should question and become skeptical about experts. People should not blindly accept or listen, rather they should open their eyes wide open, face the world, use experts for certain things but be aware of their limitations and also their own.

What do they mean by deliberate practice? What are the essential components of practising deliberately? The person continuing on an activity should respond first why, how and when to perform it to become an expert. 

You can find a brief summary of how expert can be defined. I think this will helpful for your readings.

Is it valid for any kind of knowledge or subject area that expert learners follow some of those guidelines? Are there any previous ideas or "expertise" in such a field to learn as experts? Are expert learners use those learning styles in any topic even they do not have any particular idea about it?

Although this article is a short one, it gives a brief information about six common characteristics that expert teachers have.

And to explain to you how I visualize the concept of an expert teacher I want to share a film trailer named as "Stand and Deliver (1988)" which is about a mathematics teacher and his unusual teaching methods and classroom management techniques that help his desperate students in a rural school pass the advanced calculus exam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG-Cxs8eYkI

Guess how many hours is needed to become an expert on yoga, celebrity gossip, knitting, science fiction, astrology or etc.?

This link have helped me to make a comparison of how many hours will it take to become an expert in different fields.

In the video, students are learning and getting expertise concepts by engaging different activities. Through activities students make some research about the topic and teachers help them to get deeper knowledge about topic by asking questions. In the activities, the source of knowledge not only teachers but also students themselves. I mean, students also learn from each other. Moreover, teachers' role is guiding and helping students when they stuck on something.

My conclusions from this video are: for students to develop expertise, teachers should scaffold them. Teachers should question the students and make them articulate their ideas. Moreover teachers should teach students as teams formed from expert teachers.

The study reveals how consumers increase their knowledge when they were posed to extend their existing knowledge and experience. When the learners were assumed to be consumers of knowledge, can this study be a good pathway to understand how people learn?

What I understood from this article is that to move from novice position to expert position, one should increase the range of their experiences. That's why novice consumers experience on a particular product. Am I right in my conclusion to this article?

Another interesting study about expertise similar to the video related to chess players " https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWuJqCwfjjc&feature=player_embedded ". Should we use and extend the experts points of view while producing new technological tools for learning?

Professor John Loughran of Monash University shares his ideas about how to become an expert teacher. Do you agree? What are your individual opinions about how to become an expert teacher? Metacognitive abilities? Ability of selecting among procedures?

The human brain learns two ways - either through avoidance learning, which trains the brain to avoid committing a mistake, or through reward-based learning, a reinforcing process that occurs when someone gets the right answer. Scientists have found that making a mistake can feel rewarding, though, if the brain is given the opportunity to learn from its mistakes and assess its options.

"Scientists have long understood that the brain has two ways of learning. One is avoidance learning, which is a punishing, negative experience that trains the brain to avoid repeating mistakes. The other is reward-based learning, a positive, reinforcing experience in which the brain feels rewarded for reaching the right answer." The "avoidance learning" is which I have learned from my father thanks to his raising children technique. He always wanted that we, as his children, should be faultless. And that understanding (of course he is not a pedagog :)) affected me negatively in my subsequent years. In fact, the second one, reward-based learning, is essential if someone wants to apply discussion and peer learning in his/her classroom as students who avoid making mistakes will avoid having communication with others, generating assertive questions, defend his/her arguments, asking help even if s/he struck at a ridiculous point, etc. Making mistakes is a part of learning. We need to emphasize this in our classrooms.

College professors and instructors can learn a lot from the chapters of a digital textbook that they assign students to read. Reynol Junco, an associate professor in Iowa State University's School of Education, says digital books provide real-time analytics to help faculty assess how students are doing in the class.

In this research, digital textbook is used for predicting students outcomes. With help of digital text book, instructors can track the time students spend reading. On the other hand, with regular textbooks, instructor do not know how students are doing or whether they read the assigned material or not until they give a graded assignment. Digital text book gives opportunity to teacher to monitor their students' actions and can take precation to make students read the material.With help of digital text book, instructors can track the time students spend on reading. By this way, instructor can gain some information like the material complexity for students reading level and s/he can adapt course material or take other precautions to help students succeed.