Daniel Schwartz, School of Education, "Agency and Learning"
ABSTRACT:
Issues of agency suffuse nearly all prescriptive theories of learning.
They appear in proposals that the goal of education is to produce
autonomous citizens and in proposals that student-centered learning is
superior. In more cynical moments, it appears that educational
researchers have a particular vision of agency and then look around
for candidate cognitive, motivational, or social mechanisms that can
support, or perhaps justify, their vision. I contend there is nothing
wrong with this approach, and in fact, prescriptive learning theories
that disregard issues of agency do so with peril. But, researchers do
need to clarify their tacit theories of agency, lest they slip into
faulty assumptions. For example, many people believe that "choosing
and doing" involve more agency than "observing" and that "choosing and
doing" is a better way to learn. These beliefs are wrong on both
accounts. I will explain why using the concept of productive agency. I
will provide empirical evidence that "passive" observation can be
better than "active" doing, but only when conditions of productive
agency are met.
BIO:
Dr. Schwartz studies student understanding and representation and the
ways that technology can facilitate learning. He works at the
intersection of cognitive science, computer science, and education,
examining cognition and instruction in individual, cross-cultural, and
technological settings. A theme throughout Dr. Schwartz's research is
how people's facility for spatial thinking can inform and influence
processes of learning, instruction, assessment and problem solving. He
finds that multimedia technologies make it possible to exploit spatial
representations and activities in fundamentally new ways, offering an
exciting complement to the verbal approaches that dominate educational
research and practice. Dr. Schwartz's current interest is in the
creation and use of web-based tools for instruction.