Rethinking Methodology in the Learning Sciences

How one begins to account for learning and the potential of a learning context to support learning is the focus of this special issue. What unites the four reflective papers that form the core of this special issue is a commitment to agent-in-setting as a unit of analysis and to the contention that cognition occurs and is given meaning through the dynamic relations among the knower, the known, and the evolving context through which knowing occurs. Each article is focused around the analysis of particular data collected within the authors' broader investigation of learning in a dynamical learning environment. The fact that these authors have succeeded in raising so many provocative questions speaks to the need for continuing dialogue and deliberation on the evolving enterprise of research in the new learning sciences.