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Dr John HannonLa Trobe University

SoTL@UJ:

Approaches to Knowledge University of

Johannesburg 23 July 2015

Challenging dualism: shaping pedagogies for digital spaces through a socio-material approach

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1. Spaces: Learning & knowledge within bounded spaces vs across hybrid spaces

2. Dualistic approaches to knowledge: risks for pedagogies & PD in higher education

3. Socio-material approaches: a focus on practices. Theorising from practice vs theory separated from practice

International study: The flow of new knowledge practices (Lead, Tai Peseta, U. Syd)

Rethinking knowledge practices

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Disconnections

So previously they had to go external, we had to send them extra passwords, they’d lose their passwords.

Now we got a direct integration with Moodle, the problem is that you can’t actually directly go into their resources so you’ve got to send them to a whole big study area and expect a first year to find it, I can’t even navigate the system: I can, but it’s a nightmare

Building Physiologycurriculum

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Disconnections

Building Physiologycurriculum

So previously they had to go external, we had to send them extra passwords, they’d lose their passwords.

Now we got a direct integration with Moodle, the problem is that you can’t actually directly go into their resources so you’ve got to send them to a whole big study area and expect a first year to find it, I can’t even navigate the system: I can, but it’s a nightmare

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… consider doing anything in the world (whether at home, on the road, or in organizations) that does not in some way or another entail material means (e.g., bodies, clothes, food, spectacles, buildings, classrooms, devices, water pipes, paper, telephones, email, etc.).

Orlikowski and Scott (2008: 455)

“people and things only exist in relation to each other” (p. 456).

Rethinking things

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http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maslens_Inland_Sea_of_Australia.jpg

Rethinking materials

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Public Domain: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arnhem_land_locator.png

Rethinking enactments & realitiesTwo material enactments of land title (Verran 1998)

“corpus of stories and the songs, dances and graphic designs which go along with the ceremonial elaboration of these stories” (p. 248)

“written components of land titles…and surveys and grid making, titles offices, a vast enterprise which continually underpins the performance of testimony over land titles” (p. 250)

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Rethinking spaces

Mark Poster: the new "the mode of information" heralded a radical decentring of the subject

In this world, the subject has no anchor, no fixed place, no point of perspective, no discreet center, no clear boundary. … In electronically mediated communications, subjects now float, suspended between points of objectivity, being constituted and reconstituted in different configurations... (Poster, 1990: 11)  

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Digital technologies require a rethinking of spaces of work, teaching and learning across hybrid spaces

Rethinking spaces

So…

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Wickedity

TAME issuesEducational issues, are rarely “tame”, that is, available for rational, algorithmic handling

WICKED issues“not necessarily ill-defined but rather are ones where different parties have different, but equally well defined, ideas about what the problem actually is” (Trowler 2012: 273). Nerovivo: Attribution, Share alike.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dominik99/407716865/

The digitisation of education spaces

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A wicked problemBack translation: “an emerging cyber strategy” (Jones & Sheridan 2014)

English Original:While many universities around the world would probably claim that their publicly stated policies and procedures will act as a deterrent to any student contemplating plagiarism, their publication alone is unlikely to cut any sway with would-be plagiarists.

Spanish Translation: Mientras que muchas universidades en todo el mundo demandarían probablemente que sus políticas y procedimientos público indicados actuarán como impedimento a cualquier estudiante que comtempla plagio, su publicación solamente es poco probable cortar cualquier sacudimiento con los plagiarios supuestos.

Retranslation into English: Whereas many universities anywhere in the world would demand probably that their indicated policies and procedures public will act like impediment to any student who comtempla plagiarism, its publication is only little probable to cut any shaking with the supposed plagiarists.

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Theorising complex issues

My Instagram network, Andy Lamb

How do knowledge practices - pedagogies - occur across hybrid spaces?

Theory draws on established competing disciplinary traditions (Kandlbinder 2014)

Theorising is uncertain, messy, a

thinking process that requires effort

and strategies to build explanations

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Under-theorising: The terrain of educational technology research

Mapping the “terrain” of the educational technology literature (Czerniewicz 2010):multiple discourses that show a lack of coherenceconcepts and processes for enquiry are “multi-paradigmatic”, encompassing “the human sciences, the learning sciences, the behavioural sciences, the physical sciences and the technological sciences” (p. 524))located “two distinct theoretical approaches – constructivism and instructivism” (p. 528)her hope: the associated paradigms – interpretivism and objectivism – are not incommensurate as practised in this field

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Dominant strands in educational technology research

1. Evidence-based practice (Learning Sciences, ID tradition): from medical to educational research (Biesta, 2007), studies of interventions for specified ends (uncertain in education – in health the patient may die)

2. Big data: Anderson’s (2008) call for massive data to replace theory, “out with every theory of human behavior, from linguistics to sociology. Forget taxonomy, ontology, and psychology”

3. Design research: call for a “pragmatic” orientation of instructional design. A utilitarian, instrumentalist approach to learning technology research - a role of theory “has been actively marginalised by calls for applied design work” (Bennett & Oliver 2011: 179).

Educational technology research under-theorised (Bennett & Oliver, 2011; Jones & Czerniewicz, 2011; Phillips, Kennedy & McNaught, 2012)

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Dualistic approaches to knowledge

Dualistic approaches world “out-there”, pre-formed and awaiting observation human-centred agency, intention and action

(Goodyear, Carvalho & Dohn 2014)

Methods: (i) positivist: subject/object separation(ii) constructivist: human/phenomena separationDualistic methods are analytic binaries that construct separate realms

human/world, theory/practice, subject/object, physical/digital, online/offline

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Connections

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pont_des_Arts.jpg CC BY-SA

How do practices and entities emerge, take effect, stabilise; persist?

“The whole is always smaller than its parts” Latour et al (2012)

KNOWLEDGE LEARNING TECHNOLOGY

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Socio-materialist approaches to knowledge world is co-evolving, performed and co-emergent decentred focus on materials and their relations: objects, technologies,

activities, texts, and discourses heterogeneity: phenomena are gatherings of - natural, technical, human

and non-human elements

Methods: Assemblages: tracing socio-material relations via an empirical process

(Mulcahy 2014) Asking: how do things hold together? (Fenwick 2012)

Co-constitution of social and material in everyday life: things are effects of connections and activity

a relational ontology: “people and things only exist in relation to each other” (Orlikowski & Scott 2008: 456)

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Starting question: How is teaching and learning knowledge put into practice in a disciplinary workgroup?

Unit of analysis: Three disciplinary “workgroups” (5-7 academics each) of GCHE completers

Method: interviews, focus groups, artefacts of practice

Data: 20 participants over 3 disciplinary workgroups Physio FY curriculum for 1700 students

Study: Knowledge practices

Hannon & Al-Mahmood (in progress) Theorising spaces of academic work in higher education: digital and physical configurations Hannon, J., & Al-Mahmood, R. (2014). The place of theory in educational technology research. Proceedings ascilite Dunedin 2014 (pp. 745- 750

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Tracing knowledge practices

absolutely terrifyingThere’s also the fact that they’re asking staff to do these things and it’s absolutely terrifying. I’m a trained Physiologist, I can dissect a mouse, [G] can take blood and take a biopsy and all of these things. I had no idea how to create a video and edit a video and do all of these things

I sometimes wonder if what the directive from the university is, is based on what is best for teaching and learning or if it’s just what’s best for the university

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Tracing knowledge practices

SpacesLMS (VLE); Publisher’s resource space Physio teaching workspace online Informal “hallway conversations”

How are materials and spaces connected?

What actions are enacted from these connections?

MaterialsPhysio curriculumDigital content, video lectures ...School ‘directives’Strategic targets

Rob Swatski CC, Share, Adapt: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rswatski/4769246175

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Enactments: logics of practice

Following “logics” of practice (Mol 2008)Practices have their own logic, or discourses, rationale or ‘modes of ordering’ (Mol 2008: 8; Hannon 2013)These mix up/are assembled in spaces of teaching & learning

So previously they had to go external, we had to send them extra passwords, they’d lose their passwords.

Now we got a direct integration with Moodle, the problem is that you can’t actually directly go into their resources so you’ve got to send them to a whole big study area and expect a first year to find it, I can’t even navigate the system: I can, but it’s a nightmare

Building Physiologycurriculum

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Consequences for professional development

Digital technologies enable distinct ‘logics’ of practice to converge onto one pedagogical space

PD is enacted in multiple logics: As technological – enacted as ‘solutionism’

As institutional, enacted via ‘deficit’ model. Eg. early/late adopters (Rogers 2003)

As pedagogical, theorising from practice

Risks: Overshadowing of a pedagogical voice (agency)

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Critiquing the way things are

Claiming pedagogical space for PD recognise a-theoretical strand in educational technology researchRecognise knowledge as materialised in practiceanchor PD over hybrid spaces of knowledge & learningtheorising: from a human-centric intentionality focus to a process of assembling material & human agencies

Who is afraid of the ontological wolf?

Knowledge practices dissolve the dualism of theory & practice, “first by subsuming theoretical knowledge under a generalised concept of practice, but at the same time making knowledge the very model case of practice”

(Eduardo de Castro 2015)

Business as usual, TINA

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ReferencesAnderson, C. (2008). The end of theory: The data deluge makes the scientific method obsolete. Wired Magazine 16 (7). Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/ magazine/16-07/pb_theory Bennett, S. & Oliver, M. (2011). Talking back to theory: The missed opportunities in learning technology research. Research in Learning Technology 19 (3), pp. 179–189 Biesta, G. (2007). Why “what works” won’t work: Evidence-based practice and the democratic deficit in educational research. Educational Theory, 57(1), 1-22. Czerniewicz, L. (2010). Educational Technology – Mapping the Terrain with Bernstein as Cartographer. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26, 523-534. De Castro, E. (2015) Who is afraid of the ontological wolf? Some Comments on an Ongoing Anthropological Debate. The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 33 (1) , pp. 2-17Fenwick, T. (2012). Matter-ings of Knowing and Doing: Sociomaterial Approaches to Understanding Practice (pp. 67-83). In P. Hager, A. Lee and A. Reich, (eds.), Practice, Learning and Change: Practice-Theory Perspectives on Professional Learning. Dordrecht, Springer.Goodyear, P. Carvalho,L. & Dohn, N. (2014) Design for networked learning: framing relations between  participants’ activities and the physical setting. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Networked Learning 2014, Edited by: Bayne, S., Jones, C., de Laat, M., Ryberg T. & Sinclair, C., 7-9 April, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh. Hannon, J. (2013) Incommensurate practices: Sociomaterial entanglements of learning technology implementation, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 29 (2), pp. 168-178Hannon & Al-Mahmood (under submission) Theorising spaces of academic work in higher education: digital and physical configurations

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ReferencesJones, M & Sheridan, L. (2015) Back translation: an emerging sophisticated cyber strategy to subvert advances in ‘digital age’ plagiarism detection and prevention, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 40:5, 712-724, Kandlbinder, P. (2014). Theorising teaching and learning in higher education research. In J. Huisman & M. Tight (eds.). Theory and Method in Higher Education Research II (pp.1 - 22) Emerald Group PublishingLatour B, Jensen P, Venturini T, Grauwin S, Boullier D. (2012) The whole is always smaller than its parts. The British Journal of Sociology 62 (4), pp. 590-615Law, J., Afdal, G., Asdal, K., Lin, W.-y., Moser, I., & Singleton, V. (2014). Modes of syncretism: Notes on noncoherence. Common Knowledge, 20(1), 172-192. Mol, A. (2008). The Logic of Care: Health and the Problem of Patient Choice. London, Routledge.Orlikowski, W., & Scott, S. (2008). Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organisation. The Academy of Management Annals, 2(1), 433-474.Mulcahy (2014): Re/assembling spaces of learning in Victorian government schools: policy enactments, pedagogic encounters and micropolitics, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 36 (4), pp. 500-514Poster, M. (1990). The Mode of Information: Poststructuralism and Social Context. Cambridge, UK., Polity Press.Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of Innovations. New York, Free Press.Trowler, P. (2012) Wicked issues in situating theory in close-up research, Higher Education Research & Development, 31:3, 273-284. Verran, H. (1998) Re-imagining land ownership in Australia. Postcolonial Studies 1(2), pp 237- 254.

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Thank you

John HannonLa Trobe University

Melbournehttps://latrobe.academia.edu/JohnHannon