RANSITIONS    ESEARCH    ROUP

 

The Transitions Research Group is a collective of faculty and graduate students within the College of Education at Michigan State University. The group is dedicated to understanding and supporting the learning and development of children, adolescents, and adults during transitions from one educational context or social practice to another.

The group is organized around a special set of research commitments:

• A general commitment to studying and facilitating transitions, between (and also within) the school and other institutions such as the family, the community, and the workplace. Broadly defined, transitions are changes in the relation between learning/developing individuals and evolving social organizations, whether they be highly local practices, more enduring activities, institutions, or entire societies.

• A particular commitment to studying and facilitating forms of transition that people reflect on, often struggle with, and sometimes invoke public discussion and debate about. Therefore the genesis of knowledge and skills during these transitions is tied to the development of identity (change in sense of self, shift in social position, sense of becoming something or someone new).

• A methodological commitment to the premise that adequate causes and explanations for transition are not found in individuals or in social organizations alone. Learning/developing individuals create social organizations of various sorts. The social organizations in turn transform their participants' learning/development and sometimes that of future generations. Therefore units of analysis for research and educational interventions needs to explicitly incorporate the recursive relationship between persons and social organizations.

• An educational commitment to facilitating societal and individual transformation in addition to the reproduction of previously existing cultural forms.

• An ethical commitment to avoid using our research as the source of a particular notion of individual or social progress, and rather use our research to understand and promote notions of progress with their origins in particular communities.