Toward a Descriptive Science of Learning Practices

对教学实践的严格理解需要发展一种描述性科学，这种科学能够捕捉复杂学习情境的多个认知和社会方面。 这个项目建立在现有的微观分析方法，认知和社会学，与严格的既定标准，在这些传统中应用的仔细考虑。我们将通过分析特定学习情境中的一组特定实践（参考实践）来探索这些方法的前景和局限性。指称是所有人类交流的基本特征。它是我们在共同的环境中启动和实现对物体的共同取向的手段，因此是学习的一个组成部分。通过提供一个帐户的互动如何完成参考在一个特定的情况下，我们希望有助于我们发展的理解人们如何学习。我们的目的是研究学习的做法，在手术室（OR）的忙碌繁忙的教学医院，重点是医学生的早期经验与内窥镜手术。在这种手术中，外科医生使用光纤透镜在患者体内观察和操作。这带来了多重感知挑战，特别是对新来者。试点工作表明，这是一个丰富的网站，检查参考实践，因为他们涉及到学习。此外，这些手术代表了一个分析上紧凑的活动周期，有助于使描述学习内容和方法的高度雄心勃勃的任务变得易于管理。 初步调查显示，建立共享参考并不总是容易完成的。参与者可以继续进行，就好像已经建立了一个共同的参考，即使他们是面向场景的不同方面。手术后的采访突出了研究参与者如何在自然环境中展示他们的理解的复杂性。 该项目将包括一系列的六个连续的研究，每个阶段的实地考察，参与者访谈和分析。在手术室录音时，将采用民族志实地调查的标准方法。术后访谈将与参与者进行，使用手术视频作为讨论对象。这些访谈将有助于增强我们对手术室中使用的参考实践的解释，并记录所显示的解剖学和专业知识的形式。将举行一年两次的项目小组会议，对数据进行合作分析。这些数据会话的结构将鼓励一种有纪律的注意形式。 社区建设活动的计划，以促进其他研究人员在其他学习环境中工作的描述技能的发展。

Rigorous understanding of teaching and learning practices requires the development of a descriptive science that captures multiple cognitive and social aspects of complex learning situations. This project builds upon available micro-analytic methods, both cognitive and sociological, with a careful regard for the established standards of rigor applied within these traditions. We will explore the promise and limitations of these methods by analyzing a particular set of practices (referential practices) in a particular learning situation. Reference is a fundamental feature of all human communication. It is the means by which we initiate and achieve a common orientation to objects in our shared environment and as such is an integral part of learning. By providing an account of how interactants accomplish reference in a particular situation, we hope to contribute to our developing understanding of how people do learning. Our intent is to study learning practices in the operating room (OR) of a busy teaching hospital, focusing on medical students' early experiences with endoscopic surgery. In such surgeries, surgeons use fiber-optic lenses to view and operate within the patient's body. This poses multiple perceptual challenges, particularly to newcomers. Pilot work shows that this is a rich site for examining referential practices as they relate to learning. Furthermore, these surgeries represent an analytically compact cycle of activity, helping to make manageable the highly ambitious task of describing the content and methods of learning. Preliminary investigations have revealed that establishing shared reference is not always easily accomplished. Participants may proceed as if a common reference has been established even though they are orienting to different aspects of the scene. Post-surgical interviews highlight some of the complexities of studying how participants display their understandings in natural settings. This project will consist of a series of six sequential studies, each involving phases of fieldwork, participant interviews, and analysis. Standard methods for ethnographic fieldwork will be employed when taping in the OR. Post-surgical interviews will be conducted with the participants, using the video from the surgery as an object for discussion. These interviews will serve both to augment our interpretations of the referential practices utilized in the OR and to document the forms of anatomical and professional expertise displayed. Biannual project teams meetings will be conducted to do collaborative analysis of the data. These data sessions will be structured to encourage a disciplined form of noticing. Community building activities are planned to foster the development of descriptive skills by other researchers working in other learning settings.