Learning Sciences - History

History

Several significant events have contributed to the international development of the learning sciences. Perhaps the earliest history can be traced back to the cognitive revolution.

In the United States, an important effort to create a graduate program in the learning sciences took place in 1983 when Jan Hawkins and Roy Pea proposed a joint program between Bank Street College and the New School for Social Research. Called "Psychology, Education, and Technology" (PET), the program had a planning grant supported by the Sloan Foundation. In the end the program would have required new faculty, though, and the institutions involved never established such a program. Roger Schank's arrival at Northwestern University in 1988 helped start the Institute for Learning Sciences. In 1991, Northwestern initiated the first learning sciences doctoral program, designed by and launched by Roy Pea as its first director. The program began accepting students in 1992, and after Pea became dean the program directorship was taken over by Brian Reiser. Since that time, a number of other high quality graduate programs in Learning Sciences began to appear around the world, and the field is continuing to be recognized as an innovative and influential area for education research and design.

The Journal of the Learning Sciences was first published in 1991, with Janet Kolodner as founding editor. Yasmin Kafai and Cindy Hmelo-Silver took over as editors in 2009. The International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning was established as a separate journal in 2006, edited by Gerry Stahl and Freiderich Hesse. These journals, while relatively new in the field of Education research, rapidly escalated and continue to place in upper ranks of the Educational Research section of the SSCI impact factor rankings.

The Institute for the Learning Sciences hosted the first International Conference for the Learning Sciences (ICLS) in August 1991 at Northwestern University (edited by Lawrence Birnbaum, and published by the AACE but no longer available). The first biennial meeting of the ICLS also took place at Northwestern University, in 1994. The International Society of the Learning Sciences was established in 2002.