Why “Learning Trajectories for Everyday Computing?"

September 02, 2016

What’s in a name? When we proposed our project to NSF in early 2015, we called it “Learning Trajectories for Integrating K-5 Computer Science and Mathematics.” Although the name wasn’t the greatest, it was reasonably descriptive and apparently good enough for NSF. But once we were funded and got going, we decided we wanted a better name, one that would express the larger program of work in which the project is embedded. After some ado, we came up with “Learning Trajectories for Everyday Computing” (LTEC). We’d like to explain the thinking behind this name.

We wanted “Learning Trajectories” in the name in order to signal the basic approach to research and development we are pursuing. We think a learning trajectories approach – as first described by Simon ¹ and more recently elaborated by Clements and Sarama² and Confrey, Maloney, and Corley³ – has great promise for organizing both research into how children learn and also the design and development of instructional materials and other tools that teachers can use to promote children’s learning. (Roughly speaking, we think of a learning trajectory as a hypothesis about learning that has (i) a target goal and (ii) tasks designed to help learners reach that goal, which are arranged in some order along (iii) a learning path. The learning trajectory concept builds on ideas first articulated in Ralph Tyler’s “rationale”⁴.) So, “learning trajectories” is central to our thinking and needed to be in the name.

The “Everyday Computing” part is a little more complicated.

“Everyday” reflects two big ideas. One is John Dewey’s thesis that education should work to connect children’s experience to disciplinary knowledge⁵. We believe that learning is more meaningful, long-lasting, and useful when it connects to children’s everyday lives. The “everyday” in “Everyday Computing” reminds us to root our work in children’s everyday lives.

The word “Everyday” is also part of the name of an important tool we are using in the project, Everyday Mathematics, the elementary program from the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project. Everyday Mathematics 4 (EM4), the current edition, serves the project as an exemplar of Common Core State Standards-aligned instructional materials. Since the aim of the project is to explore the development of learning trajectories for integrating computational thinking with Common Core-aligned mathematics instruction at K-5, which is already complicated enough, we wanted to simplify things a bit by stipulating that for the purposes of this exploratory project, we’re taking EM4 as an embodiment of the Common Core. (Full disclosure: Many of us at UChicago, LTEC’s PI and one of the Co-PIs included, have worked on EM for many years.)

We think of “computing” very broadly. Here’s how the LeadCS⁶ toolkit defines the term:

Computing is a term often used to describe computer science and information technology-related activities. This broad and inclusive term is also used to indicate a wide range of computer science-related (but separate) fields and areas of study, like computer science, computer engineering, software engineering, information systems, information technology, and information science. These allied fields all involve the creation or adaptation of technology rather than simply using technology. The Association for Computing Machinery (an international educational and scientific computing society) defines computing as any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computers.

In our context, “Everyday Computing” means computer science applied to the everyday world. It wasn’t so many years ago that computing was an activity outside of the normal daily lives of kids (and adults). For some, computing was something (if they were fortunate) that happened for a half-hour every couple of weeks on a shared pool of school computers. For others, it was just something they might have heard about or seen in a movie montage. Today, while equal access to computers is still an issue, computing is pervasive. From the palm of your hand to big data in the cloud, computing is now a tangible part of our everyday lives. We wanted our project’s name to reflect this.

At the urging of our NSF reviewers and program officer, we have adjusted (some might say “narrowed”) the scope of our current, exploratory work to computational thinking (rather than all of computer science or computing). But we believe that one cannot think of computational thinking in isolation from computer science more broadly – and our long-term goals are about computer science, not only computational thinking. So consider this post an elaborate handshake. We are LTEC and it’s our pleasure to make your acquaintance.

References