Past Events
Learning Communities
September 20, 2006 at 4:00 pm
Todd Hall, room 276
Refreshments will be served following the seminar
Faculty and graduate students are invited to a lecture on learning through communities of practice by Dr. Jean Lave, a social anthropologist interested in social theory. The event, sponsored jointly by the Engineering Education Research Center and the President’s Teaching Academy, will be Wednesday, Sept. 20 at 4 p.m. in Todd Hall, room 276 on the WSU Pullman campus.
Lave, professor of Social and Cultural Studies in Education at the University of California, Berkeley. is a leading researcher in the area of social elements of learning. She has authored three books on the subject including: Understanding Practice (co-authored with S. Chaiklin, 1993); Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (with E. Wenger, 1991); and Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics and Culture in Everyday Life (1988).
“In her work, Lave emphasizes the importance of community in the learning process and argues that students learn contextually from others,” says Denny Davis, chair of the Teaching Academy and co-director of the Engineering Education Research Center. Many faculty members view the student’s social life and their learning as separate worlds. Students are supposed to socialize elsewhere and then come to class to learn. But, Lave and other researchers have found that the social community has a major impact on student satisfaction and retention, and a social connection with a student’s discipline is particularly important.
“Tapping communities of practice is really important to improve learning on the university campus,” he says. “Lave has a lot to offer educators, regardless of their discipline, in how we might enhance learning.