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Grounding Scientific Inquiry and Knowledge in Situated Cognition

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Grounding Scientific Inquiry and Knowledge in Situated Cognition Grounding Scientific Inquiry and Knowledge in Situated Cognition Janet Bond-Robinson ([email protected]) Department of Chemistry, 1251 Wescoe Hall Drive Lawrence, KS USA Amy Preece Stucky ([email protected]) Department of Chemistry, 1251 Wescoe Hall Drive Lawrence, KS USA Abstract the way graduate researchers’ thinking and learning (cognitive processes) are influenced by the research We used ethnographic methods to study the cognitive environment as they learn how to carry out scientific inquiry, processes and the social environment in an organic synthesis reason scientifically, and acquire scientific knowledge. We laboratory for its particular kind of human problem solving in propose that the development of graduate researchers is a scientific discovery (Klahr & Simon, 1999). Current work in situated cognition fills the fissure between problems posed by closer parallel to the learning of science students than studies psychologists, both cognitive and behavioral, which have of science as an institution. tended to focus on individual learning and learning of We theorize that situated cognition is plausible and fruitful academic tasks, and the problems posed by sociologists of as a theoretical framework for understanding scientific science who examine social influences on knowledge reasoning and growth of scientific knowledge in day-to-day production within organizations. Further, Greeno (1998) scientific inquiry; that is, that a research laboratory follows asserts that the situative perspective, as it examines intact the literature conceptions of situated learning in terms of activity systems, can provide a synthesis that subsumes the communities of practice, cognitive apprenticeship, cognitive and behaviorist perspectives on learning. We scaffolded learning, affordances, constraints, and the hypothesized that a research laboratory follows the literature conceptions of situated learning in terms of communities of production of valued products, through a social practice, cognitive apprenticeship, scaffolded learning, epistemology. affordances, constraints, and the production of valued knowledge and other products via a social epistemology. We Situated Cognition found that researchers adapted their reasoning to performing There is now more recognition within science studies that effective organic synthesis research, which is an attuning researchers learn as they are immersed in a world of people, process in a type of cognitive apprenticeship. The researchers were guided and constrained in their reasoning by the organic environments, and objects (Gooding, 1992). Participants research community’s practices utilizing particular objects and must adapt, reflect, judge, compare and make seemingly processes. Aspects of any problem to solve attuned them to appropriate decisions (Clancey, 1997) from the work and perception of new affordances, thus stimulating learning in concrete interactions within a meaningful social setting. emergent intention and attention. Each field in science has Therefore, conditions for situated learning concern (a) the different things to reason about, different consequences to level of concrete interactions of individuals who act in a gauge, and thus, different criteria for justifying the conclusions meaningful social environment, and (b) transactional drawn (Toulmin, 1977). We conclude that the thinking and relationships composed of back and forth interactions with acting occurring over time by apprentice researchers in the environmental resources, tools, people, and constraints to organic COP molded everyday thinking into the scientific reasoning required to be “certified” in this field as a research carry out daily tasks. Theories of situated experience focus scientist. on agency and intentions of people, existing on a day-to-day basis within the community. Situated experience requires Recent work in situated cognition fills the gap between (a) coordination with others and with activities; it requires the problems posed by psychologists that have tended to improvisation; it requires negotiation through interactions focus on individual learning and learning of academic tasks, and flexible change; it builds identity for the group and its and (b) the problems posed by sociologists of science who members. examine social influences on knowledge production within organizations. Situated cognition examines how humans Practices and Epistemology learn, remember, and understand as a result of sense making Historically, people interact and work collectively for that occurs from physical and mental interactions with the particular goals. In doing so, they develop practices objects and events of an everyday setting (Lave & Wenger, (Wenger, 1998). In Cognition in the Wild Hutchins (1995) 1991); that is, the learning that develops in close relationship describes Navy navigation as it is done on the bridge of a to doing. Our study explores a research group performing ship as, “human cognition in its natural habitat—that is organic synthesis of novel molecules. We are interested in culturally constituted human activity” (p. xiii). Hutchins 310 interprets the cognition required for navigational prowess in terms of a system of practices that have evolved over A social group of knowing individuals. We put forward centuries. In summary, tools and practices develop within that a specific research laboratory is a production-based the framework of situated work on a problem. A particular community of practice (COP) in which scientific knowledge use of a tool is a simple example of a social practice. is generated, thus making the research group an epistemic Practices are actions of members of a community who are culture. For a common understanding of lab work, we will accomplishing valued work there. Practices require knowing use Clarke's (1997) breakdown of work organization from as well as doing. Practice occurs because there is work to be her grounded theory work. “Production-based social world” done, e.g., “relationships worked out, processes invented, described scientific research, other scholarly work, or the situations interpreted, artifacts produced, conflicts resolved” commercial enterprises of manufacturing and industry, all (Wenger, 1998, p. 49). The community participation is not based on activities that produce something. A line of work simple. As the community is mutually engaged, the work in science is “all activities that address a given set of itself requires analysis, evaluation, negotiation, dissent, coherent and cohesive problems” (Clarke, 1997, p. 72). A justification, as well as incorporating others’ points of view. line of research is broken down into several programs of Epistemology evaluates intellectual practices that produce research to address a group of related questions, and which knowledge, according to Goldman (l998). Further, social usually use a characteristic set of techniques, equipment and epistemology evaluates social practices that product instrumentation. Each research program is separated into a knowledge, he says. The epistemology of situated learning set of related projects having shorter-term goals that lead in depends on knowledge production and distribution in social the direction advocated by the program. A project is often processes and interactions. Cognition, therefore, is the work of one researcher while fellow researchers are understood to encompass the interactions between agents involved in interrelated projects. Clarke describes projects as and environment, not simply the potential representations composed of activities (experiment or experimental system). and processes in the head of a participant. Reasoning is Activities mature through completed tasks or some distributed among workers who utilize a specific tool’s improvisation of the task that enable the experiment to work. knowledge, for example. Nersessian, Kurz-Milcke, Wenger (1998) specified three commonalities among Newstetter, & Davies (2003) have written about the COPs. One commonality is mutual engagement, which biomedical engineering research laboratories as “evolving hinges on the purpose of what COP members are supposed distributed cognitive systems in which the environment to accomplish, which is the joint enterprise. They learn in provides the rich structure that continues to evolve to support joint connection with each other how to accomplish the joint emergent problem solving. enterprise as they continue to work in achieving those goals, Goldman (1999) explains that social epistemology depends implying that learning emerges throughout work. Since each on how, when, and by whom new knowledge is transmitted COP has, as its enterprise, particular types of research to others. This is in contrast to an individual epistemology, programs, each COP has its own shared repertoire of which focuses on “the mental operations of individual standardized procedures to tackle research programs. Each cognitive agents in isolation or abstraction” (p. 4). He COP has its own infrastructure dedicated to its own-shared classified the following three social dimensions of repertoire of standardized practices. distributing knowledge (p. 4): (a) Social paths or routes to knowledge, (b) Social groups made of knowing individuals, A collective group as a potential knowing agent. and (c) A collective group as a potential knowing agent. Goldman (1999) classifies the third arena of social epistemology as collective or corporate entities, such as Social routes to knowledge are composed of interactions juries, which are capable of knowing.
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