This chapter reviews the implications of learning sciences (LS) research for schools, including assessment, curriculum, teaching practice, and systemic transformation. A central theme of this review is the role of technology in education – its history, its failings and successes, and how future technology designs can be grounded in LS. The chapter then describes some trends and opportunities in the field of LS research, including the integration of individual and sociocultural research approaches; the ways that LS research can contribute to equity and diversity in learning and in schools; and the sociology and history of LS as a discipline.

The learning sciences (LS) is an interdisciplinary field that studies teaching and learning. This chapter explains how the thirty-three chapters are organized. The chapter is grouped into four key themes: (1) a shift from thinking of knowledge as facts and procedures to a conception of knowledge as situated in visible practice; (2) an expansion of a view of learning from purely cognitive to a sociocultural view that also incorporates collaboration and conversation; (3) the role of technology in learning; (4) research methodologies used in LS. The chapter closes with a short history of the field of LS from the 1980s through the present.

This chapter describes the intellectual foundations that have influenced the learning sciences (LS) from its beginning, and identifies the core elements that unify many chapters of this handbook. Its theoretical influences include pragmatism, constructivism, sociocultural theory, situated learning, and distributed cognition. The chapter organizes LS research into two levels of analysis: the individual or elemental, and the sociocultural or systemic. The chapter reviews the methodologies that have been used to study each level of analysis and summarizes research findings at each level. LS research bridges research and practice and combines elemental and systemic perspectives on learning across a range of timescales of human behavior.

Most educators believe that creativity and the arts should be an important part of the school day. But the arts have been struggling to hold their place in the curriculum. The No Child Left Behind Act, with its mandatory annual testing on math and reading, has increased pressure on schools to demonstrate that their students are proficient in math and reading. Low math and reading scores in some school districts have led to an increasing emphasis on teaching these basic skills. When these pressures are combined with tight budgets, as is often the case in districts with high percentages of underprivileged students, administrators often choose to dedicate a larger percentage of the budget to math and literacy instruction. In exchange, the amount invested in arts education is reduced or removed completely.

It is ironic that the arts are losing their place in school curricula at the same time that creativity is increasingly in demand around the globe. In the last several decades many of the world's most developed countries have shifted from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy (e.g., Bell, 1973; Drucker, 1993). Scholars of the knowledge age have argued that creativity, innovation, and ingenuity are today more important than ever before. Florida (2002) argued that “we now have an economy powered by human creativity” (pp. 5–6) and that human creativity is “the defining feature of economic life” (p. 21). Several best-selling books have extended Florida's argument to the international arena. Dan Pink, in A Whole New Mind (2005), argued that any activity that does not involve creativity will someday be automated; ultimately, the only jobs remaining will be those requiring creativity. Tom Friedman, in The World is Flat (2005), argued that creativity is becoming increasingly important due to increasing global competitiveness. And Tony Wagner, in Creating Innovators (2012), argued that schools need to change to better educate young people to become innovators.

Early in this new century, educators began to realize that if the economy was no longer an industrial-age factory economy, then our schools were designed for a quickly vanishing world (Bereiter, 2002; Hargreaves, 2003; Sawyer, 2006b).