Educational Media International, Vol. 43, No. 4, December 2006, pp. 271–284 The learning sciences: the very idea Liam Rourkea* and Norm Friesenb aNanyang Technological University, Singapore; bSimon Fraser University, Canada TaylorREMI_A_192539.sgm10.1080/09523980600926226Educational0952-3987Original2006434000000DecemberLiamRourkeliam.rourke@gmail.com and& Article Francis (print)/1469-5790Francis Media 2006 LtdInternational (online) Attempts to frame the study of teaching and learning in explicitly scientific terms are not new, but they have been growing in prominence. Journals, conferences, and centres of learning science are appearing with remarkable frequency. However, in most of these invocations of an educational science, science itself is understood largely in progressivist, positivistic terms. More recent theory, sociology, and everyday practice of science are ignored in favour of appeals to apparently idealized scientific rigour and efficiency. We begin this article by considering a number of examples of prominent scholarship undermining this idealization. We then argue that learning and education are inescapably interpretive activities that can only be configured rhetorically rather than substantially as science. We conclude by arguing for the relevance of a broader and self-consciously rhetorical/metaphorical conception of science, one that would include the possibility of an interpretive human science. Science et apprentissage: l’idée elle-même Les tentatives visant à enchâsser l’étude de l’enseignement et de l’apprentissage dans des termes explicitement scientifiques, ne sont pas nouvelles mais elles sont de plus en plus marquées. Des revues, des conférences et des centres de science de l’apprentissage apparaissent de plus en plus fréquemment. Dans la plupart de ces invoca- tions à une science éducative le mot science est toutefois pris dans un sens largement positiviste et progressiste. On ignore en fait les théories, la sociologie et la pratique quotidienne de la science plus récentes au profit d’appels à une apparente rigueur et efficacité scientifiques. Au début de la présente étude, nous examinons un certain nombre d’exemples des recherches de premier plan qui démontent cette idéalisation (e.g. Kuhn, 1996; Latour & Woolgar, 1979; Popper, 1999). Nous avançons ensuite l’idée que l’apprentissage et l’éducation sont de façon incontournable des activités d’interprétation qu’on peut considérer comme science non dans leur substance mais seulement d’un point de vue rhétorique. Dans notre conclusion nous insistons sur la pertinence d’une conception plus large, ouvertement rhétorique et métaphorique de la science, conception qui incluerait la possibilité d’une science humaine explicative. Die Wissenschaft vom Lernen: Die eigentliche Idee Bestrebungen, das Studium von Lehren und Lernen in umfassende wissenschaftliche Begriffe einzupassen sind nicht neu, aber sie sind an Bedeutung gewachsen. Zeitschriften, Konferenzen und Studiencenter befassen sich damit in bemerkenswerter Regelmäßigkeit. Allerdings werden in den meisten dieser Aufrufe von Erziehungswis- senschaften die Wissenschaft selbst meist als fortschrittlich und positivistisch verstanden. Neuere Theorien, soziologische Erkenntnisse und tägliche praktische wissenschaftliche Erfahrungen werden zugunsten angebli- cher wissenschaftlicher Strenge und Effizienz nicht zur Kenntnis genommen. Zu Beginn dieses Beitrags werden wir etliche Beispiele prominenter Wissenschaft betrachten, die diese Idealisierung unterminieren (z.B. Kuhn, *Corresponding author. Learning Sciences Lab, 1 Nanyang Walk, Singapore 616636. Email: [email protected] ISSN 0952-3987 (print)/ISSN 1469-5790 (online)/06/040271–14 © 2006 International Council for Educational Media DOI: 10.1080/09523980600926226 272 L. Rourke and N. Friesen 1996 ; Latour & Woolgar, 1979; Popper, 1999). Daraufhin argumentieren wir, dass Lernen und Erziehung unausweichlich interpretative Aktivitäten sind, die eher nur rhetorisch denn substantiell als Wissenschaft darg- estellt werden können. Wir schließen damit, dass wir für die Relevanz eines breiten und gehemmteren rhetorisch/metaphorischen Wissenschaftskonzepts eintreten, eines, das auch der Möglichkeit einer interpreta- tiven Humanwissenschaft verpflichtet ist. Introduction In 1781, Kant (1724–1804) surveyed the advances of mathematicians and geometers, and he compared their progress to the work of the philosophers with woe. He characterized all of meta- physics to that point as random groping and longed for certain, progressive knowledge (Kant, 1781/2003, p. 17). In the late 1980s, a similar mood took hold among a group of educational researchers. Those who had embraced cognitive science felt their approach presented, as last, a way beyond the random groping of previous research on teaching and learning. Its certain and progressive nature, moreover, would lead to robust improvements to educational practice (e.g. Bereiter & Scardemalia, 1987; Schank, 1990; Kolodner, 1991; Chi, 1992). In 2002, this burgeoning group coalesced into the International Society of the Learning Sciences. The Journal of the Learning Sciences (JLS) is its principal forum, a handbook is forth- coming (Sawyer, 2006), and a handful of learning science graduate programs has popped up around the world. In this article we critique the effort to reconstruct educational inquiry as learn- ing science. In it, we address four questions: 1) What is science, generally considered? 2) What is learning science? 3) Is science something to which all educational researchers should aspire? 4) What might we do instead? In addressing these questions, we argue that: 1) current under- standings and practices of science, as revealed by natural scientists, philosophers, historians, and sociologists of science, are quite different from the nostalgic version held by those most commit- ted to a learning science; 2) relapsing into a positivistic approach to the study of human action ignores major intellectual movements of the twentieth century; and 3) movements under way in this century, including phronetic (i.e. socially responsible) social science, hermeneutic psychol- ogy, and complexity theory, offer more promising ways to understand and affect educational practice. Science To understand the current push for a learning science, we are forced to rehearse a story that was told and retold frequently in the latter part of the twentieth century. The story begins with a list- ing of the attributes of an orthodox understanding of science and ends after each attribute has been abandoned as it has been scrutinized by philosophers, by sociologists, and, in many cases, by scientists themselves. For western chroniclers, the story of the scientific enterprise often begins in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, and its function is to help us distinguish the Dark Ages from the Age of Enlightenment. In the former era, knowing and acting were informed by recourse to sacred texts and their interpreters. In the latter era, these endeavours came to be founded on increasingly formalized and accountable processes of observation, representation, and verification. In this classical formulation, scientists had privileged access to the natural world, a world that was The learning sciences: the very idea 273 objective or pre-existing. Employing an agreed-upon methodology, these trained practitioners described and explained the phenomena that they discovered, and this enabled them to predict and modify outcomes. Learning science To what extent do these principles reflect the understanding of science propounded by learning scientists? As we await a canonical text and codified terminology (e.g. a ‘handbook of learning science’), we will induce this understanding through a survey of some of their practices. Because science is often defined, at its root, in terms of the scientific method, we look for this understand- ing in the methods of the learning sciences. Learning scientists employ several methods of inquiry, most of which have been borrowed from other fields and adapted to educational concerns. One method, however, is emerging within and is unique to the learning sciences. It is referred to variously as design research (Reeves, 2000; Collins et al., 2004; Kelly, 2004; Wang & Reeves, 2004), design experiments (Brown, 1992; Collins, 1992; di Sessa & Cobb, 2004), design-based research (Barab & Squire, 2004; Dede, 2004), or developmental research (Ritchie & Nelson, 1996; van den Akker, 1999). Design-based research (DBR)—the term we settled on for this article—and learning science are reflections of each other or mutually constitutive in the way that ethnography is of cultural anthropology or that conversation analysis is of ethnomethodology. As with science, it is difficult to locate a concise, consensual definition of DBR. Separately, authors attend either to its goals (Collins et al., 2004), to its epistemological commitments (di Sessa & Cobb, 2004), or to its procedures (Kelly, 2004). Where these discussions overlap, there are tensions. To move our discussion forward, we offer our general and somewhat awkward definition: DBR is a method of inquiry whose goal is to contribute equally to educational practice and learning theory through formative case studies of interventions in naturalistic settings. Formalization of the method began with publications in 1992 by Collins and Brown, and much of our analyses will focus on Brown’s germinal and prescient article. Brown trained as an experimental psychologist in the 1960s and had engaged subsequently