User:CTL.life.wiki/Learning in Formal and Informal Environments (LIFE) Center -- Draft 3/4/09


 * DRAFT- do not cite or quote*

The Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE) Center is a National Science Foundation-supported Science of Learning Center that researches how people learn in a variety of different settings. LIFE represents a collaboration between the University of Washington in Seattle and Stanford University and SRI International, Inc., both in the San Francisco area. Other institutions across the country also participate.

Founded in the fall of 2004, LIFE is devoted to uncovering how humans learn in and out of school, from birth to adulthood, with an emphasis on the social foundations of learning. The center’s goal is to integrate and transform the science of learning in ways that change and improve education, training, and self-directed learning.

LIFE researchers represent a broad range of fields, including neurobiology, psychology, education, anthropology and sociology, and many of the issues LIFE investigates arise from their interactions. Through regular meetings, videoconferences, collaborative research, and writing projects, LIFE affiliates discover “conceptual collisions” that challenge assumptions, theories and methods, and lead to interdisciplinary learning research and, ultimately, theoretical syntheses.

Mission
LIFE has defined two missions that reflect an interest in the social foundations of learning:


 * The center samples learning across situations and ages and uses multiple methods to find and research the principles underlying how people learn socially. The results spark conceptual collisions and eventually lead researchers to consolidate and formulate conclusions out of the resulting findings and viewpoints.


 * The center collaborates with other researchers and institutions to promote improved understanding of and support for learning. It also helps students and post-doctoral fellows develop both the depth and breadth of knowledge necessary to conduct interdisciplinary research.

Research Initiatives
Three research initiatives arise from the LIFE center’s missions that explore the importance of social interaction in learning, why it is so powerful, and how it works.

Initiative 1: Mechanisms that Underlie the Effects of Social Factors on Learning
 * What key factors and mechanisms underlie the effects of social interaction on learning?
 * What processes are involved in developing a sense of self and identity and how does this impact learning and social participation?

Initiative 2: Socio-Cultural Practices That Support Learning
 * What are the types of social practices that advance or impede learning and how do they operate in both informal and formal learning environments?
 * How do the features of a learning environment constrain the social practices that learners can use or create?

Initiative 3: Socially Centered Designs that Enhance Learning
 * How can we embody critical features of social interaction in technologies and educational experiences to help people learn?
 * How can we design technologies and educational experiences that enhance and connect learning in informal and formal environments and enable people to adopt and adapt them?

LIFE Networks
LIFE is organized into groups of researchers called networks that focus on understanding various social aspects of learning. Members of each network may address multiple questions within LIFE’s three primary research initiatives. The LIFE networks are:


 * Early Language Learning
 * Technology-Mediated Learning
 * STEM Learning
 * Social Cognition

Education, Collaboration, and Outreach (ECO)
LIFE’s Education, Collaboration, and Outreach (ECO) efforts aim to translate LIFE researchers’ empirical findings into theoretical and practical capacity building in the learning sciences. In addition to direct outreach efforts, such as facilitating partnerships with corporations, outside research groups, and academic institutions, reaching out to scientific and education visitors, and presenting “hot topics” workshops, ECO has conceived four vehicles to synthesize the empirical research produced by LIFE collaborators and help scale innovative research-based interventions.

Theory Kitchen
The LIFE Theory Kitchen is designed to increase theoretical conversations that link and leverage the empirical findings of LIFE researchers. Researchers participating in the Theory Kitchen meet on a bi-monthly basis, drawing from the results of LIFE studies and a variety of disciplinary perspectives to forge new theoretical models explaining what underlies social learning across a variety of domains, ages, and settings.

Design Studio
The LIFE Design Studio seeks to complement the work of the Theory Kitchen by designing and studying research tools, techniques, and educational interventions, some at the scale of large testbeds. The focus on this line of research is on characterizing the design processes used to structure and sustain collaborations across multidisciplinary teams. The LIFE Design Studio also convenes on a bi-monthly basis.

Research Commons
The LIFE Research Commons supports the Theory Kitchen and Design Studio by addressing the shared needs that have surfaced for LIFE research studies and for others in the learning sciences. The LIFE Research Commons will focus on the systematic design of general tools and techniques with a focus on creating and sharing (a) data capture tools and techniques for following learning across settings, (b) representational tools and infrastructures for collaborative research to allow for the study of how different moments of experience accumulate across settings and stabilize as learning, and (c) bridging tools for educators that allow them to coordinate learning across settings.

Implementation Research/Research on Practice
Implementation Research/Research on Practice is a line of collaborative work that informs the translation of LIFE findings into large-scale, high-impact interventions by exploring how the implementation of LIFE’s research activities impacts relevant actors. Research on practice studies the features of a learning activity or environment that may enable or constrain the implementation of an intervention. Implementation research investigates how the implementation of an intervention mediates the intervention’s observed impact. By analyzing interactions between and among researchers and educators and linking these with research outcomes, implementation research and research on practice shed light on the importance of organizational contexts in the learning sciences.

LIFE Collaborators
LIFE is operated as a distributed center across campuses, with researchers sharing responsibility for various facets of LIFE’s work.

LIFE Center Management

 * Director, Pat Kuhl, University of Washington
 * Co-director, John Bransford, University of Washington
 * Co-director, Dan Schwartz, Stanford University
 * Theory Kitchen, Andrew Meltzoff, University of Washington
 * Research Commons, Roy Pea, Stanford University
 * Collaboration and Outreach, Nora Sabelli, SRI International

LIFE Leadership Team

 * Brigid Barron, Stanford University
 * Philip Bell, University of Washington
 * Na’ilah Suad Nasir, Stanford University
 * William Penuel, SRI International
 * Byron Reeves, Stanford University
 * Dan Schwartz, Stanford University
 * Reed Stevens, University of Washington
 * Nancy Vye, University of Washington

LIFE Center Advisory Boards
LIFE is advised by several boards, including a Scientific and Technical Review Board (STRB), an ECO Advisory Board, and a LIFE advisory committee. In addition, LIFE’s external evaluation team studies how the center’s interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaborations impact innovation in the learning sciences.

Partnerships
The LIFE center partners with researchers and institutions in the learning sciences field to conduct joint research, fund graduate training, and develop new courses and workshops to introduce the use of learning science research tools to a broader audience. In particular, the center seeks collaborations with minority-serving institutions. LIFE’s outside collaborators include:
 * Boeing
 * Center for Informal Learning in Schools (CILS)
 * Kenan Institute at North Carolina State University
 * Center for Language Minority Education Research at California State University, Long Beach, and Long Island University, Brooklyn
 * Norfolk State University
 * University of Texas at San Antonio

Links

 * http://life-slc.org
 * http://www.clmer.csulb.edu/
 * http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5567
 * http://scil.stanford.edu/
 * http://ilabs.washington.edu/
 * http://depts.washington.edu/cogstudy/everydaycognition/
 * http://ctl.sri.com/
 * http://www.ncsu.edu/kenan/start.html