Knowledge and Interaction: A Synthetic Agenda for the Learning Sciences

Decades of research in the cognitive and learning sciences have led to a growing recognition of the incredibly multi-faceted nature of human knowing and learning. Up to now, this multifaceted nature has been visible mostly in distinct and often competing communities of researchers. From a purely scientific perspective, "siloed" science―where different traditions refuse to speak with one another, or merely ignore one another―is unacceptable. This ambitious volume attempts to kick-start a serious, new line of work that merges, or properly articulates, different traditions with their divergent historical, theoretical, and methodological commitments that, nonetheless, both focus on the highly detailed analysis of processes of knowing and learning as they unfold in interactional contexts in real time.

Knowledge and Interaction puts two traditions in dialogue with one another: Knowledge Analysis (KA), which draws on intellectual roots in developmental psychology and cognitive modeling and focuses on the nature and form of individual knowledge systems, and Interaction Analysis (IA), which has been prominent in approaches that seek to understand and explain learning as a sequence of real-time moves by individuals as they interact with interlocutors, learning environments, and the world around them. The volume’s four-part organization opens up space for both substantive contributions on areas of conceptual and empirical work as well as opportunities for reflection, integration, and coordination.

Andrea A. diSessa is Corey Professor of Education Emeritus and Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. He is a member of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association.

Mariana Levin is Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education in the Department of Mathematics at Western Michigan University.

Nathaniel J. S. Brown is Associate Research Professor of Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation at the Lynch School of Education, Boston College, USA.