Finding a place for equity in CSCL: ambitious learning practices as a lever for sustained educational change
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Finding a place for equity in CSCL: ambitious learning practices as a lever for sustained educational change Suraj Uttamchandani 1 & Ayesha Bhimdiwala 1 & Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver 1 Received: 12 February 2020 / Accepted: 7 July 2020/ # International Society of the Learning Sciences, Inc. 2020
“I concede that the tangible impact of CSCL on educational practice is very small so far. But this suggests that we must realign our efforts, not abandon our very raison-d’être.” - Wise and Schwarz 2017, p. 455 In their discussion of the future of CSCL, Wise and Schwarz (2017) point to a considerable tension regarding the role of CSCL research in educational change. Critiquing CSCL’s engagement with educational change, they primarily understand change as a matter of scalability and sustainability. Their conciliator character points to design-based research, meta-analyses, research-practice partnerships, and longitudinal research as needed to further connect CSCL with the goal of educational change. In alignment with Hod et al.’s (2018) response to this provocation, we agree that educational change can and should be a central aspirational goal of the CSCL community in the coming decade. However, to the conciliator’s list, we add that centering equity will promote research that that can make a difference. Recognizing that educational equity has multiple, and sometimes contradictory, meanings (Gutiérrez 2009; Nasir 2020; Uttamchandani 2018), we think about equity as a tool to attend to how historical social inequality affects the lived learning experiences of people, focusing not just on equitable outcomes but also processes of learning that empower learners to become authors of their own futures (Gutiérrez and Jurow 2016). As we consider the fundamental goals of education, we therefore argue rather emphatically that CSCL should not give up on educational change. We recognize that globally, education is inequitable and not always successful for all students (Chzhen et al. 2018). We position education as a social good. Learning environments in general and CSCL environments in particular must therefore be responsive to the epistemic diversity of learners. Epistemic diversity refers to the different ways of knowing in a discipline “e.g., perspectives, meanings, practices, values—that are historically and culturally constituted” (Agarwal and SenguptaIrving 2019, p. 351). We argue that educational equity can be a boundary object (Star 1989)
* Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver [email protected]
1
Center for Research on Learning and Technology, School of Education, Indiana University, 201 N Rose Ave, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA
Uttamchandani S. et al.
for supporting CSCL’s sustained presence in conversations about educational change. This is a timely goal, particularly in light of widening inequality and the increasing need for global citizenship education (Politics of Learning Writing Collective 2017; UNESCO 2014). In particular, we believe that CSCL is well-positioned to support the implementation of ambitious learning practices for all lea
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