Grounded Constructions and How Technology Can Help

About the CRLT The CRLT has as its mission to promote and support a community of scholars dedicated to research on the design, use, and implementation of technology to improve learning. Three primary themes underlie the work at the Center: • research that contributes to the development of new pedagogical models for continuing professional development in the 21st century; • research on and evaluation of interactive distance learning environments that inform our understanding of student learning; and • research on teaching strategies for using current and emerging technologies to support student interaction, collaboration, and engagement in the issues being studied. This report is one of a series from our ongoing research on learning and technology. If you have any questions or comments on this report, or if you would like to find out more about the activities of the CRLT, contact: Currently, there is an increasing number of educators abandoning predominantly lecture-based modes of instruction and moving towards more learner-centered models in which students, frequently in collaboration with peers, are engaged in problem solving and inquiry. This movement is facilitated by current technologies that function less like books, films, or journals and more like laboratories, workshops, and studios where students can immerse themselves within contexts that challenge and extend their understandings. These novel technologies facilitate the development of rich learning environments that encourage exploration and discovery, supporting students in the construction of personally meaningful and conceptually functional understandings. Drawing heavily on examples from our own research, in this article we discuss five ways that we have used technology for stimulating and/or supporting authentic learner inquiry. Rather than using technology simply as a medium for delivering pre-specified content, our research is predicated on the belief that technology can be used to provide a fertile context from which grounded constructions may emerge. Background Whereas traditional perspectives describe knowing and thinking as isolated activities that occur primarily within the context of the cerebellum, many current theorists argue that thinking is situated; that is, being in part a product of the content, activity, and culture in which it is developed and applied (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989). Situated cognition is a recent term for a family of research efforts that explain cognition, including problem solving, sense making, understanding, transfer of learning, and creativity, in terms of the relationship between learners and the properties of specific environments. From a situated perspective it becomes impossible, and …