Situated Learning Theory and Its Application

Thinking Aloud on My Research Interest

Context for the Research Interest:

We live in a complex world and we are complex beings with multiple identities where each identity is tied to a particular communities of practice. As a consequence of this complexity there are numerous academic disciplines and each discipline studies particular aspect of this complex world in detail. To live meaningfully and to make meaning of this complex world in which we live; each individual should be able to harness the essence of these disciplines as and when needed to act as efficiently as possible. But How? For example: A farmer needs to have access to the essence of various disciplines under Agricultural Science or Animal Husbandry while practicing farming; same farmer needs to have access to the essence of political science while participating in a democratic process; again the same farmer needs to have access to the essence of economics in order to carefully manage his/her resources or to even decide which crop to grow or to cater to which market, same person may need the understanding of geography in order to decide where to invest or buy a property with his/her hard earned money. Similarly the purpose of many other disciplines like medicine, education, linguistics, business administration etc

Research Questions

1. How can we effectively train individuals to be able to identify problems in their everyday life and enable them to situate it within one or more relevant academic disciplines to seek scientific answers or solutions?
2. What are the affordance of different theories of ‘How people learn?’ for such a training of individuals?
3. What are the affordance of research methodology and existing information technologies for such a training of individuals?

A sample lesson plan based on Constructionism

Mini-projects #1 - Constructionism

Gaol: Pick a non-STEM domain (e.g, photography, history, etc.) and identify learning challenges that novices
may potentially face while learning a specific concept and content relevant to that domain. Design a mini
lesson plan (around 30 min long) using constructionism theory to help the novice learn the domain
related concept(s) and content(s).

Domain Chosen	Political Science or Civics as usually referred in school textbooks.
Learning Difficulty Chosen	Specific learning challenge that novices face in this domain is to do the critical analysis of political debates and compare the political representatives contributing to the debate based on the nature of arguments they make.
Relevance	This is an important skill expected of citizens in democratic society in order to assess their political representatives.
Resources	Video(1hr length) of live parliament debate on demonetisation sourced from Loksabha TV and the transcript of same(Multiple copies). Sticky notes.
Pre-Class Activity Est Time: 2 hr	Students are required to watch the debate, list down the participants in the debate and against each participant have to write their comments on the nature of arguments that each participant is making.
In-Class Activity Est time: ½ hr	In the class students will discuss with peers, agree upon and give points(0-100) to each political representative based on the above six criteria referred in the image. That is 1.Inform : How well a political representative is contributing towards informing the group with evidence, examples, explanations etc 2.Question: How well a political representative is contributing towards raising valid and appropriate questions. Similarly of other criteria. In the process students will build a collaborative chart such as below using sticky notes and the transcript. Criteria Political Rep 1 Political Rep 2 ……. Inform Sticky notes with excerpts from transcript Sticky notes with excerpts from transcript Question Sticky notes with excerpts from transcript Sticky notes with excerpts from transcript …... Sticky notes with excerpts from transcript Sticky notes with excerpts from transcript Total Points XX XX
Post-Class Activity	Students will post their reflection notes on their comparison of political representatives before class and after class.