In this chapter, the authors illustrate on mathematical problem-solving activities within families how the functions and structures of their mathematics at home are dependent on values, and how interacting values during problem situations came to shape what counted as solutions. These values examples from family math illustrate the complex…

In recent years, learning scientists have attended more and more to the study of learning as a uniquely human endeavor that occurs in the context of cultural practices and that is linked to values and future imagined selves. In so doing, the field has taken considerations of identity seriously. In this chapter, the author explores some of the…

Globalization is affecting nearly every aspect of life, from communications to work, but its effects on diasporic communities are ones that will pose challenges both for immigrant students and their schools in the coming years, as students try to navigate schools and the ways of Western schooling. By drawing on his previous scholarship on diaspora…

This chapter argues that for the science of learning to become a fully "human" science, it needs to move from viewing learning from an exogenous perspective to an endogenous one. Taken from Latin, the term "endogenous" translates roughly to "from within," and in the meaning the author gives to it here, it refers to a perspective on learning from…

In their earlier work, the authors explained how the co-construction perspective has been heuristic in the study of organizational change and educational reform, often providing more nuanced analyses and findings than "technical-rational" models that dominated the field previously (Datnow, Hubbard, & Mehan, 2002). In framing organizational change…

Learning sciences research has been focused primarily on studies of design innovations for schools and on knowledge that develops during brief periods of time (e.g., as a result of the implementation of a science or mathematics unit). This chapter advances the argument that research on learning should also focus on how learners initiate and…

A central task of evaluation is to use systematic inquiry to judge the merit, worth, and significance of programs. As a field in education, evaluation began to mature during the 1960s, when policy makers began funding researchers to study the impact of Great Society programs. Since that time, evaluation and policy-making have been intertwined,…

Economies make their demands, and by necessity, people adjust, learn, and survive. People adjust to tight circumstances with passion and ingenuity. Necessity and its passions are the stuff of reality and generally more than schools or educational research can handle. Mainstream theories of learning have captured economic constraints only…

This article contributes a framework for analyzing learning as an expansive process in which persons come to partly transcend marginalization. Expansive learning is a kind of learning that partly transcends marginalization through changed participation and recognition by others of participants in their changed communities. This article draws on…

In this chapter, the authors argue for a perspective on learning as the organizing of access to valued social futures. Why think of learning in terms of organizing? Such a perspective, they believe, follows from a particular view of the human sciences, one that sees people as always engaged in organizing, collectively, the conditions for and…

O'Connor and Penuel (2010) argue that viewing research in education as a human science requires explicit attention to social, cultural, historical, and institutional dimensions of human activity, to the agency of participants in learning research, and to the importance of incorporating "emic" perspectives that shift the voice of the representation…

In this chapter, the authors focus on a multiyear teacher-researcher collaboration. They analyze the collaboration as oriented toward "phronesis," or wise action used to solve practical problems. The three practical problems they emphasize in this chapter are: (1) How did they use their work together to improve teaching and learning? (2) How did…

Neither experimental nor design research in education is as well developed in Japan as in the United States. Yet Japanese educational practice employs a type of educational research called "lesson study" that is credited for instructional improvements, including the shift from "teaching as telling" to "teaching for understanding" in science and…

Youth participatory action research (YPAR) brings young people together with adult researchers to identify, study, and act on relevant social problems. In this chapter, the author draws on examples from a recent YPAR project, called Tracing Transitions, whose aim was to study the impact of school closure on students. After defining YPAR in terms…

This chapter presents a discussion of impediments, obstacles, and immobilities. It draws heavily on a prior study of queer street-involved youth, a "needs analysis" that was supposed to precede the establishment of dedicated housing for homeless "queer and questioning" youth. The purpose of this chapter is to identify and consider several specific…