Re: reporting evidence of learning in informal settings

Joe Polman (jlpolman who-is-at artsci.wustl.edu)
Tue, 12 Jan 1999 15:13:54 -0500

Hello Sara, Sally and others,
Thank you Sara for the Heath & McLaughlin reference--it looks great. And
thank you Sally for the thought-provoking post.

I think the sort of thing that Sally describes with the highly-driven
cancer patients could be seen as an example of "appropriation leading to
mastery" or something like that. By this I mean that the person may have
"made her own" the idea that she was someone who wanted to and could
understand her cancer better. Initially, this did not mean she DID
understand it conceptually (i.e., she had not mastered it). But the
interest led her to participate in action mediated by the web site (and
perhaps other people), which in turn led to greater mastery.

Such appropriation leading to greater mastery strikes me as similar to the
Deweyan learner-centered ideal. Although it is possible to foster mastery
without appropriation if you are clever or authoritarian enough, it can be
much harder. I was really struck by Sally's statement that the PROCESS
appears to be different for those driven by others' needs rather than their
own. The other important thing is that understandings that are "mastered"
conceptually without being "appropriated", are less likely to be used
voluntarily by the learner in other situations (for two possible reasons:
they don't WANT to use those thinking tools--because of their sense of
identity--, or it doesn't occur to them that they CAN--because the
cognitive tool was situated in one context and is not readily transferred).
That is the classic problem of "school learning" that is never used outside
school.

Because the learner's level of control (and fulfilling one's own needs)
appears so important and perhaps easier to maximize in informal settings,
we are interested in trying to measure that. Level of control and interest
are commonly considered "motivational factors" that are independent
variables affecting dependent learning variables, but maybe this is wrong.
The motivational factor of sense of control/level of personal interest is
NOT a constant, but another dynamic, and I think it is not off to say that
we LEARN to be interested.

-Joe