Chapter 9 Everyday Expertise Learning Within and Across Formal and Informal Settings by Heather Toomey Zimmerman and

nd Philip Bell In this chapter, Zimmerman and Bell (Jonassen & Land, 2012) present the idea that there is more to learning than just trying to narrow it down to one item. the everyday expertise theoretical framework allows for learning to have multiple dimensions individual, social, and cultural which results in a broad consideration of how people learn within and across learning environments. From my almost 10 years of teaching I have had countless numbers of siblings as well as a few twins. One thing that I have noticed is that not everyone learns the same way. Even in the case of the twins where almost all of their backgrounds where the same, they both had a different way of looking at problems and solving them. It was almost as if the twins, and every other student I have had in my classroom, has their own unique language that as I teacher I need to decipher so I can talk to them. This Everyday Expertise learning theory takes all these background items into account and helps accomplish different kinds of analyses of the learning environment. In this chapter, it was stated that, This call [for a new framework] was motivated by research findings that conclude that learners do not act with equal competency in all settings that they participate in, even if the content is the same from a researchers perspective. The last part of this sentence just jumped out at me and re-affirmed what I knew from my experience as a teacher that not everyone learns the same way. Our students have more to them than just what the researchers are looking for! The Everyday Expertise theory builds on the students: sociocultural views, ecological models of psychology and distributed perspectives on thinking and doing. However, to put it more simply, it basically describes our students learning as three planes: the individual plane, the cultural plane, and the social plane. These three planes are linked and, a benefit of using the everyday expertise framework with its three analytical planes is that researchers avoid essentializing learners by presuming individuals have stereotypical traits because of their membership in ethnic or cultural groups. There have been many times where a parent or another teacher has told me that Johnny or Suzie has to be a trouble maker (or a good kid) because their older siblings (or parents, remember small town USA here) were like that before. I usually do not listen to those people in that way because I know from experience that not everyone is the same. My two younger brothers and I have had extremely similar childhood experiences but when people find out that we are brothers, they usually do not believe it because we are so different! This theory says that while some similar characteristics may still be there (which is true of me and my brothers), each person is unique. So when the chapter stated that, Not only can everyday expertise be used to understand learning within or across certain spaces, but it can also help designers to develop learning environments that connect youth, backgrounds, and values to the goals of formal and informal institutions, I could really relate to it. It goes back to that language I talked about earlier. When I am talking to my brothers or my students, I have to take into account all of the experiences I have had with them in order to find the best possible way to convey a topic or idea to them. Everyday Expertise was a new theory that I had not heard before. However, the points that the chapter brought up I could really relate to within my personal and professional life. These points I have also been using within my classroom as I do my best to help create life skills that I think my students will need in order to be successful when they leave high school.

Jonassen, D. H., & Land, S. M. (2012). Theoretical foundations of learning environments. New York: Routledge.