From a learning sciences perspective: The importance of theory for facilitating learning in universities

This chapter considers the question of how the Learning Sciences can help university educators develop teaching practices that can enable all students across increasingly diverse cohorts to become agentic learners and world-makers. It defines theory as a vehicle for questioning present practices and imagining alternative worlds; building on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and Dialogic theory, it further discusses concepts as the intermediate sensitising tools that theory offers to educators for such world-making work. Through discussing a set of intertwined challenges facing university educators—teaching diverse student populations in equity-oriented ways that enable agentic learning and a horizontal expansion of all students' repertoires of knowledge and practice—I outline an approach to teaching and learning with, through and on theory, which I term 'multi-modal cognitive simulations'. Three conceptual tools from the Learning Sciences are used to illustrate how theory can support agentic learning in universities.