The Education Department of the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies at UCLA announces a new doctoral program in the Learning Sciences. Applications are now being accepted for students who wish to begin their studies in the fall of 2009.
The learning sciences refers to interdisciplinary approaches to studying learning in real-world settings, with the dual aims of understanding and improving learning and human development.
At UCLA, the learning sciences embraces a range of disciplines and approaches to the study of learning, including educational psychology, cognitive science, anthropology, applied linguistics, and sociology. Our faculty pursues a broad range of questions in a diverse variety of settings, including schools, after school settings, museums, higher education, and other organizations.
LS@UCLA focuses around three themes. Each theme reflects a commitment to the kind of work we do, and these multiple themes are intertwined in each faculty member’s research.
Learning in Cultural Contexts
One of the things that has always separated the learning sciences from earlier approaches to the study of learning has been a focus on the contexts in which learning happens: learning math is different from learning English, learning in school is different from learning in an after-school club. Where learning happens and what is being learned profoundly affect how learning happens. To this learning sciences approach, scholars at UCLA bring a strong background and focus on cultural and historical theories of learning, how those theories inform the design of learning environments, and how the study of those environments can develop theory.
Social Justice and Equity
A hallmark of UCLA’s GSE&IS that the learning sciences program shares is a commitment to social justice and equity in all of our work. We are committed, through our work in urban schools and through our scholarship, to achieve educational equity for the students who make up our community, particularly students who have been historically oppressed. With an understanding that educational outcomes are intertwined with historical, social, political and economic processes, we are also committed to broadening the traditional scope of the learning sciences to better understand and address educational inequity and injustice within the context of such systemic processes
Tools for Learning
The tools available for learning constitute a key feature of any learning context. Tools mediate how people interact with each other, and thus how they can learn. Tools include material resources, like paper or whiteboards, and technological resources, like websites, computer software, or media. Social structures, norms, and routines can also be thought of as cultural tools that can be recruited to support learning. Learning sciences scholars at UCLA are engaged in designing material and technological tools to support learning, and in identifying and developing cultural tools that learners bring with them to school and other settings that can support the learning of diverse groups of people.
The core of the LS@UCLA program is housed in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, the premiere public school of education in the United States. The learning sciences specialization can be earned within any of the five doctoral programs in our Education department. See the application materials for specific instructions.
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