28. Sociologies of Education
Paper
What Learning Means for Higher Education Students: Listening to Students' Voices and Considering the Contextual Dimensions of Learning
Fernando Hernández-Hernández1, Judit Onsès2, Juana Maria Sancho-Gil1
1University of Barcelona, Spain; 2University of Girona Spain
Presenting Author: Hernández-Hernández, Fernando;
Onsès, Judit
In recent decades, university students' learning has attracted increasing interest, reflected in a growing number of publications (Batanero and Sanchez, 2005; Entwistle and Peterson, 2004; Gargallo et al., 2007; Muñoz and Gómez, 2005; Richardson, 2011; Vermunt and Donche, 2017; Vermun and Vermetten, 2004; Winne and Jamieson, 2002, among others). Most of these studies adopted a logical-positivist psychological approach, in which researchers' views were prevalent, with little space to listen to students' voices and consider the contextual dimensions of learning (Phillips, 2014) and students' conceptions and experiences.
In this context, in 2021, Educational Researcher, the American Educational Research Association (AERA) journal, published an article by Nasir, Lee, Pea and McKinney in which these authors reviewed the dominant perspectives on learning in psychology and education. They also explained what these approaches contribute, what they omit and how they complement each other. The paper also offered several contributions to what might be an interdisciplinary view that can illuminate how we approach learning and identified three learning theories with different framing foundations: behaviourism, cognitivism and social theory (social-constructivism). Each provides lenses that foreground some learning phenomena and neglect others. From a behaviourist perspective, learning is the accumulation of facts and skills learned through processes of reinforcement (e.g., behaviour management charts). From a cognitivist perspective, learning is best cultivated by active exploration in the service of real-world tasks. Teaching young people how to learn is critical to developing the habits of mind to manage their learning. A socio-cultural perspective also involves paying attention to teaching and learning social contexts; being sensitive to forms of belonging, prejudice and inclusion; respecting the variety of 'repertoires of practice' learners bring to the classroom (Gutierrez and Rogoff, 2003); and focusing on the social routines and connections that support learning.
Considering Nasir et al. (2021), our paper explores the following questions based on how university students say they learn in the research project [anonymised]. More specifically: 1) How are the students' statements linked to the contributions of psychology and pedagogy to learning? 2) What insights can we draw from this study to improve our understanding of university students' relationships to learning? 3) What insights can we gain from the research participants' reflections on the situations that help and hinder their learning?
The aim of the [anonymised] research project and this paper is not only to give an account of university students' conceptions of learning but also to deepen our understanding of learning as an interdisciplinary process and bring new conceptual and methodological approaches to studying learning. In line with the invitation of Nasir et al. (2021, p. 562, paraphrased), our purpose is not only to generate new knowledge about how learning takes place. We also try to make university learning experiences emancipatory and to overcome the current boundaries and limitations imposed by deficit assumptions and research frameworks and methods that reaffirm deficits and inequalities.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn the first phase of the [anonymised] research project, aimed to explore how young university students learn, we developed 50 learning trajectories with students. Thirty were women, 20 were men (55.6% and 44.4%, close to the distribution observed in Spanish universities in 2019-2020), and seven had specific needs (14%). From a collaborative and participatory perspective (Bergold & Thomas, 2012; Hernández-Hernández, 2017; Nind, 2014; Wilmsen, 2008), we conducted four individual encounters with each of them. In the first gathering, we made sure we had conveniently explained the research scope and aims and the compromise it entailed for them and us. We signed the ethical protocols. We invited them to discuss several contradictory views based on research and media discourses about young people's attitudes and positions. Finally, we asked them to reflect, over several days, on how, where, with whom and what they learned. We encourage them to use any means of expression they wish. In the second meeting, they shared the narrative (most of them have visual components) of their learning trajectory. They gave an account of their learning movements (Jornet & Estard, 2018) over time and in different scenarios. For the third meeting, we requested them to make and share a learning diary that allowed them to situate their visions about learning, learning experiences and meanings. We collaboratively constructed the global narrative of their learning life trajectory for the fourth encounter in which they validated the final version. We recorded and transcribed all conversations.
For this paper, we focus on the 12 participants with whom the authors of this contribution have worked. From the transcripts, we made a table with the selected students' statements on the following subjects: what learning is, in which circumstances they learn best and in which ones they have difficulties. We extracted 88 sentences and fragments of conversations and placed them in the first column. In the second column, we related them to learning theories, not to link them to what the students said but to dialogue with them. In the third column, we included our reflections on what the students' statements allowed us to think about their conceptions of learning.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsFrom the students' perspective, teaching and learning deeply relate. They form an intra-action (Barad, 2003) between students, teachers, grades, and institutions' dynamics. Students' conceptions of learning are not linked to psychological or pedagogical 'theories', although we can identify some relationships. They base on reflection on experiences arising from and taking place in teaching-learning situations and different learning contexts. That leads researchers to think about the meaning and usefulness of some theories and how they are created.
Students emphasise the difference between studying and learning. They study to pass an exam or to respond to a particular situation. They learn when they understand, make sense of the information, relate it to practical situations, can take it to everyday life or open themselves to new challenges. In this sense, learning is about 'transferring' to new situations or expanding understanding.
For some participants, sometimes learning is about what is achieved (a job, passing a subject, understanding 'something'). At other times, with difficulties, e.g., in the face of new information in a field, they need to update their mental framework for organising their learning,
Finally, learning has to do with a movement of affects, which involves a displacement that implies a change of 'state' and takes place when the learner's agency feels affected by an intra-action of relations (Cvetkovich, 2012, p. 2 paraphrased). This movement of affection leads to a change in their view of themselves, others, and the world. In this framework, as Atkinson (2011) points out, authentic learning is configured as part of an event that transforms the learner (and the teacher). This transformation is a movement of affection because this real learning is about 'feeling affected' and constitutes a movement linked to the capacity to exist in transit between states.
ReferencesAtkinson, D. (2011). Art, Equality and Learning: Pedagogies Against the State. Sense Publishers.
Batanero, C., & Sanchez, E. (2005). What is the Nature of High School Students' Conceptions and Misconceptions About Probability?. Exploring probability in school: Challenges for teaching and learning, 241-266.
Cvetkovich, A. (2012). Depression is Ordinary: Public Feelings and Saidiya Hartman's Lose Your Mother. Feminist Theory, 13 (2),131-146.
Entwistle, N. J., & Peterson, E. R. (2004). Conceptions of learning and knowledge in higher education: Relationships with study behaviour and influences of learning environments. International journal of educational research, 41(6), 407-428.
Gargallo, B., Suarez, J., & Ferreras, A. (2007). Estrategias de aprendizaje y rendimiento académico en estudiantes universitarios. Revista de investigación educativa, 25(2), 421-441
Gutiérrez, K. D., & Rogoff, B. (2003). Cultural ways of learning: Individual traits or repertoires of practice. Educational Researcher, 32(5), 19–25. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X032005019
Hernández-Hernández, F. (Coord.). (2017). ¡Y luego dicen que la escuela pública no funciona! Investigar con los jóvenes sobre cómo transitan y aprenden dentro y fuera de los centros de Secundaria. Editorial Octaedro.
Jornet, A., y Erstad, O. (2018). From learning contexts to learning lives: Studying learning (dis)continuities from the perspective of the learners. Digital Education Review, 33, 1-25.
Muñoz, E., & Gómez, J. (2005). Enfoques de aprendizaje y rendimiento académico de los estudiantes universitarios. Revista de investigación educativa, 23(2), 417-432.
Phillips, D. C. (2014). Research in the Hard Sciences and Very Hard "Softer" Domains. Educational Researcher, 43(1), 9-11. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X13520293
Richardson, J. T. (2011). Approaches to studying, conceptions of learning and learning styles in higher education. Learning and Individual Differences, 21(3), 288-293.
Suad Nasir, N., Lee, C.D., Pea,R. and McKinney de Royston, M. (2021).Rethinking Learning: What the Interdisciplinary Science Tells Us. Educational Researcher, 50 (8), 557–565 DOI: 10.3102/0013189X211047251
Vermunt, J. D., & Donche, V. (2017). A learning patterns perspective on student learning in higher education: state of the art and moving forward. Educational psychology review, 29, 269-299.
Vermunt, J. D., & Vermetten, Y. J. (2004). Patterns in student learning: Relationships between learning strategies, conceptions of learning, and learning orientations. Educational psychology review, 16, 359-384.
Winne, P. H., & Jamieson-Noel, D. (2002). Exploring students' calibration of self reports about study tactics and achievement. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 27, 551–572.
28. Sociologies of Education
Paper
Children’s Perspectives on Solidarity, a Participatory Research Approach
Elena Ungureanu1, Leyla Safta-Zecheria2, Cătălina Ulrich-Hygum1, Maria-Mădălina Coza1
1University of Bucharest, Romania; 2West University of Timisoara, Romania
Presenting Author: Ungureanu, Elena;
Safta-Zecheria, Leyla
Solidarity has received recent scholarly attention both in the field of education and beyond. Sleeter & Soriani (2012) show that in education, while the concept of solidarity is conceptualized in conjunction with other related concepts such as social justice and equity, the tendency is to not clearly define it. We see this as an advantage as it opens up perspectives to openly explore how participants make sense of and relate to this concept. Solidarity has been defined as building community among children or youth, especially in school settings, as empathy across differences or as civic virtue or identification with one’s own marginalized group (Sleeter & Soriani, 2012). One of the characteristics of the concept of solidarity is its relationality, its “amongness”. In this case, it is seen as a relational process modeled by the context (Gaztambide-Fernández, Brant & Desai, 2022). This means that solidarity always emerges as a phenomenon among people that relate to each other in one way or another. Another characteristic of the concept is the contextualization to the setting of the studies, meaning natural, geographical, cultural, intergenerational, socio-political layers of real life’ issues and experiences.
Following Sleeter & Soriani (2012) we consider that investigating solidarity in educational settings can lead us to question “mainstream knowledge and interpretations” of students, and place their perspective and meanings above conventional practices and ways of understanding. Another concept in relation to which solidarity is used is sustainability and future orientation (Torbjönsson & Molin, 2015), an association that leads us toward looking at solidarity as a civic virtue for participatory citizenship. From this perspective, youth and children, as well as teachers can learn to see humanity as “sharing common concerns”. Based on this conceptualization Santora (2003) discusses how she teaches her students to become participatory citizens in a diverse community/society. She understands it as reciprocal understanding, based on trust that goes beyond individual interests that helps students experience “selfhood, diversity and community”. Yet, solidarity can also co-exist tensely with notions of diversity as it is generally built on a common sense of belonging to a community (be it via citizenship or of other shared characteristics). Children have often been represented as passive recipients of solidarity, for example through humanitarian representations that show them as ‘speechless victims’ (Mallki, 1996) or as objects of teachers’ solidarity practices. However, the new sociology of childhood (James, Jenks & Prout, 1998; Epstein et al, 2006) has problematized the representation of children as passive subjects, recentering children’s perspectives and agency as a way of overcoming adultist approaches to how children understand the world around them. Alanen’s (2014) intergenerational approach of childhood highlights children’s co-participation in the daily reproduction and/or transformation of intergenerational practices.
Creating a context for children to reflect on relational acts of solidarity can help overcome the adultist perspective on childhood and the distancing, hierarchical perspectives on solidarity so common in the contemporary European imaginary (Chouliaraki, 2013), and further our knowledge on children`s particular understandings. In our project we ask: How do children understand and engage in practices of solidarity in the present situation in Europe? The present situation is marked by both the consequences of the inflation and price crises that risk rendering vulnerable large segments of the population, as well as the war on Ukraine and the broader context of looming environmental crises. That is why our case studies are situated in Romania, a country with historically high levels of economic inequality and of poverty in a European perspective (Gazibar & Giulgea, 2019), moreover Romania is a neighboring country to Ukraine that has since the onset of the war received high numbers of refugees.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedDoing research with children in school settings as adults on the abstract topic of solidarity will bring about specific challenges for the research design:
Firstly, the school relationship is a hierarchical relationship between children/students and adult/teachers. As we will be conducting research in schools, it is necessary to think about strategies to reinscribe the researcher - child relationship beyond a teacher - student relationship as part of building a rapport with participants. This is needed as the expectation of transfers of knowledge sanctioned by power from teachers/adults to students may result in children seeking the approval of adults and thus presenting perspectives they consider to be pleasing to adults or avoiding altogether to express themselves (James et al, 1998).
In order to go beyond these dynamics, a pedagogy of solidarity (Gaztambide-Fernandez et al, 2022) and an investigation into the meaning-making processes of children needs to engage dialogically with questions of social and political change. However, as an abstract term that children may not have explicitly encountered before the participation in the research process, researching solidarity may require educating the participants about what solidarity can mean (for a similar approach see Dekort et al, 2022). This would involve both transferring knowledge to children and receiving knowledge transfer from them.
We seek to create an interactive context with children (aged 11-13), students of lower secondary schools in different regions and socio-economic contexts in Romania. Groups of 12-15 participants will be formed. We will engage progressively with participants over several days: starting with open ended questions and interactions based on child-friendly methodologies and continue to progressively structure input.
Complementarily, research with children has been known to depend on the ability of researchers to contextualize their questions in the everyday lives of children (Pyle, 2013). Special attention should be paid to starting with imaginaries put forward by students. Secondly, the language asymmetry between adults and children may inhibit children’s participation. Therefore we chose to use visual methods, both based on photography and drawing. Drawings may reveal both what is present and what is absent in children’s imaginaries and everyday lives (Frith, Riley, Archer, & Gleeson, 2005; Søndergaard & Reventlow 2019). While photo-elicitation (Harper 2002, Clark-Ibanez, 2004) and photovoice (Wang & Burris, 1997) may lead to channeling representations of solidarity towards concrete social and political change. Furthermore, interviews with children in groups and individually will help us understand how they make sense of solidarity.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsAs part of our research, we will produce both textual (transcripts of individual/ group interview, photovoice/photo-elicitation/ drawing discussion recordings, researchers of ethnographic diaries) and visual data (in terms of photographs and drawings) in three different research contexts (lower secondary schools in socio-economically marginalized and privileged communities, in rural/urban areas or closer to the Ukrainian borders/ with high percentage of displaced students).
The data will be analyzed looking at tentative questions: 1) How is solidarity understood by children? 2) How do diversity and solidarity relate in the imaginaries of children? What is seen as a legitimate basis for solidarity? 3) How do children conceptualize social, ethnic and geographic distance? How do these imaginaries relate to solidarity? 4) How do children conceptualize the future? What solidarity imaginaries emerge in relation to the future? 5) How do children conceptualize social and political change? What role does solidarity play in these understandings? 6) How do children engage in practices of solidarity? How do they describe these engagements? How do they describe the engagements of others (children, adults, etc)?
After a collaborative process of data-analysis through coding based on dialogue between the researchers that have collected the data, we plan to engage in member-checking to see whether our analysis appears plausible to the children participating in the process or to others in similar situations. Finally, we do not exclude developing alternative modes of dissemination of messages that will result from our inquiry together with the participants in each setting and beyond, but this will depend on their willingness to engage in such a process.
ReferencesAlanen, L. 2014. Childhood and intergenerationality: Towards an intergenerational perspective on child well-being. In Ben-Arieh, A., I. Frønes, F. Casas & J.E. Korbin (eds) Handbook of Child Well-Being. Theory, Indicators, Measures and Policies. Dordrecht: Springer
Chouliaraki, L. (2013). The ironic spectator: Solidarity in the age of post-humanitarianism. John Wiley & Sons.
Henderson-Dekort, E., van Bakel, H., Smits, V., & Van Regenmortel, T. (2022). “In accordance with age and maturity”: Children’s perspectives, conceptions and insights regarding their capacities and meaningful participation. Action Research, 14767503221143877.
Gazibar, G., & Giuglea, L. (2019). Inequalities in Romania. World Vision Romania. https://www.sdgwatcheurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/13.3.a-report-RO.pdf
Epstein, I., Stevens, B., McKeever, P., & Baruchel, S. (2006). Photo elicitation interview (PEI): Using photos to elicit children's perspectives. International journal of qualitative methods, 5(3), 1-11.
Frith, H., Riley, S., Archer, L., & Gleeson, K. (2005). Editorial. Qua[1]litative Research in Psychology, 2, 187–198. doi:10.1191/ 1478088705qp037ed
Gaztambide-Fernández, R., Brant, J., & Desai, C. (2022). Toward a pedagogy of solidarity. Curriculum Inquiry, 52(3), 251-265.
James, A., C. Jenks and A. Prout (1998) Theorizing Childhood. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Malkki, Liisa. (1996). Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization. Cultural Anthropology (11)3, 377-404.
McGregor, J. (2004). Space, power and the classroom. In Forum: for promoting 3-19 comprehensive education (Vol. 46, No. 1, pp. 13-18). Symposium Journals. PO Box 204, Didcot, Oxford OX11 9ZQ, UK.
Søndergaard, E., & Reventlow, S. (2019). Drawing as a Facilitating Approach When Conducting Research Among Children. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 18.
Torbjörnsson, T., & Molin, L. (2015). In school we have not time for the future: voices of Swedish upper secondary school students about solidarity and the future. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 24(4), 338-354.
Santora, E. D. (2003). Social studies, solidarity, and a sense of self. The Social Studies, 94(6), 251-256.
Sleeter, C. E., & Soriano, E. (2012). Creating solidarity across diverse communities: International perspectives in education. Teachers College Press.
28. Sociologies of Education
Paper
Children’s Futures. Experiences, and Methodological Challenges from Biographical Research
Susanne Siebholz
University Halle
Presenting Author: Siebholz, Susanne
Most of the time, children are no central actors when it comes to discuss societal futures, be it in political or academic arenas. We can observe a widely held belief that children are not capable of reasoning about future because they are said to have only limited capacities to understand temporal, and factual realities. Biographical research based on narrative inquiry with children challenges those beliefs as there are long-standing experiences, since at least the nineties, of asking children about their future visions in biographical interviews (Siebholz, 2020). The paper has three parts. First, it starts with an overview of the attempts, and experiences in biography research with children focusing elicited statements about future. The second part asks about the results: What do we know about the futures that children with different social backgrounds and diverse experiences perceive, and anticipate? What do we know about the future visions of children from different parts of the world? How do children relate to societal transformations, uncertainties, and crises when they tell their life stories, and connect past, present, and future? What can we learn from comparisons between biographical future visions of past, and present children? Third, the paper summarises the reflections on the conducted research, and discusses the question: What are, on the one hand, the possibilities, and potentials, and what are, on the other hand, the limitations of biographical research with children when we are interested in their perspectives on societal futures that are marked by global changes, and challenges?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings,
ReferencesSiebholz, S. (2020). Dokumentarische Methode und (erziehungswissenschaftliche) Kindheitsforschung. In: Kreitz, R./Demmer, C./Fuchs, T./Wiezorek, C. (Hrsg.): Das Erziehungswissenschaftliche qualitativer Forschung. Opladen/Berlin/Toronto, S. 173–188.
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