I am looking at the index to the
The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences
. I am surprised to find:
- No entry for "engagement"
- No entry for "aesthetics"
- Only 2 pages under "emotions," one of which refers to this passage:
We need a better understanding of the intertwining of affective, relational, and communicative aspects of learning interactions. How do emotional responses mediate learning, and how do they emerge from learning? (p.29)
Good question!
- Only 2 pages under "narratives"
- Under "motivation," which has 21 sub-headings and 55 page references, there are a handful of possibly relevant subheadings: "Attention and motivation," with 1 page listed, "boredom and motivation," with 2 pages listed, "deep level engagement and motivation," 1 page listed, "emotions and motivation," 1 page listed.
Could someone clue me into to what a learning scientist might call "emotions," aesthetics," "engagement," and "narrative"? Could the field really have attended so little to these issues? I realize that the Handbook is hardly the entire corpus of the field, but I guess I was hoping to find a bit more than I did.
2 comments:
Probably because it's been well known for eons that increased engagement leads to better learning.
There is a ton of research out there on motivation and engagement. You'll have to look at research journals, and try a few more keywords than just engagement, like motivation and attention. The book How People Learn has numerous pages on motivation. There are numerous article by Paul Pintrich for example on motivation and conceptual change: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a784753667
Doug,
Thanks so much for this reference. It is a great starting point for learning about Pintrich's work. I am particularly interested to see that the issue of whether the message was "rhetorically compelling" was identified as a key aspect of the message design in the Dole and Sinatra model and want to learn more about that concept. I love the contrast as well between "cold" and "hot" conceptual change models, the latter accounting for motivational and affective factors in addition to cognitive factors.
Thanks again for putting me on to this.
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