Title: Ecologies of Minds: What a Dynamic Systems View of Cognition Means for Education
Abstract: Dr. Julia Svoboda approaches the study of cognition the way a biologist approaches an ecosystem — as something dynamic, adaptive, and irreducibly contextual. Trained first as an ecologist and evolutionary biologist and then as a science education researcher, she combines these perspectives in her research on how students learn.
In this talk, Svoboda makes the case for dynamic systems models as the right framework for understanding student learning. She argues first that these models have greater explanatory power than simpler alternatives, and second that they shift attention from what students lack to what they can do when environmental conditions support them. When we treat cognition as dynamic and context-dependent, students stop looking like minds in need of remediation and start looking like minds with genuine potential to grow and change. That shift, she argues, matters for how we design research, interpret what we see in classrooms, and ultimately how we treat the people we teach.
Bio: Julia Svoboda’s research explores the learning and teaching of biology across many grade levels and settings. Her research investigates model-based reasoning as a biological practice that can support deep understanding and thinking in biology students. Her scholarship intersects with the philosophy of biology to explore what makes biology unique and how the biological sciences interface with other disciplines within STEM and across the social sciences and humanities to solve complex problems. Julia holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Biology.
Host: Prof. Ryan Stowe