User:CTL.life.wiki/Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE) Center

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

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 improve education, training, and self-directed learning.

LIFE researchers represent a broad range of fields, including neurobiology, psychology, education, anthropology, and sociology. LIFE research often crosses disciplinary boundaries. Through regular meetings, videoconferences, collaborative research, and writing projects, LIFE affiliates discover “conceptual collisions” that challenge assumptions, theories, and methods, leading 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 undergraduate and graduate students and post-doctoral fellows develop both the depth and breadth of knowledge necessary to conduct interdisciplinary research.

Research Initiatives
LIFE research is organized into three related research initiatives, each of which explores the importance of social interaction in learning, why it is so powerful, and how it works. Each initiative has strategic driving questions researchers are working to answer.

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

LIFE Networks
LIFE researchers work within and across defined networks that focus on understanding various social aspects of learning. Networks focus collaboration and support cooperation across disciplinary and institutional boundaries. Members of each network may address multiple questions within LIFE’s three primary research initiatives, and researchers work within multiple networks. The LIFE networks are:


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

LIFE Collaboration Mechanisms
Several mechanisms for collaboration among LIFE researchers ensure that new knowledge created – about theories of learning, design principles for education interventions, and new tools for education research – is shared inside and outside the center.

Theory Kitchen
Theory Kitchen activities provide a space for theoretical conversations that link and leverage the empirical findings of LIFE research. Researchers from a variety of disciplinary perspectives forge new theoretical models explaining what underlies social learning across a variety of domains, ages, and settings.

Design Studio
Design Studio provides support for LIFE researchers who are creating and studying research tools, techniques, and educational interventions. The focus of this line of research is on characterizing the design processes used to structure and sustain collaborations across multidisciplinary teams.

Research Commons
Research Commons supports LIFE researchers and others in the learning sciences by focusing on the systematic development and dissemination of tools and techniques for education research and practice. The goal of Research Commons is to create and share (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.

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 studies the processes involved in LIFE’s empirical research to inform the broader implementation and scaling of research-based educational interventions.

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 intended 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.

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

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