POSTHUMANIST PERSPECTIVES ON LEARNING Where the learning sciences have a long-standing emphasis on tools and materials as important for the study of learning, recent material turn across literacy, early childhood, discourse, and mathematics education studies suggests paradigmatic shifts in how we approach research on learning. To advance our understanding of how these shifts can help uncover ongoing learning and collaborative processes, essential work is needed to clearly articulate the implications of posthuman and materialist views of learning for the learning sciences and CSCL community. To initiate this conversion, this workshop is organized around three themes: (a) reconsidering relationships between humans and the material world, (b) exploring methodological and theoretical implications, and (c) probing how materials shape learning and participation in ways that have been undertheorized in the learning sciences to date.
Workshop Content
This workshop seeks to reconsider the relationship between the human and the material world, explore methodological and theoretical implications, and the implications for how materials shape both learning and participation in ways that have been undertheorized to date in the learning sciences. The workshop is organized around three main themes with focal questions that we intend to explore in the workshop:
Theory: How can we reconcile posthuman and materialist approaches with key concepts in education, including learning, collaboration, development, and agency? How do we leverage skepticism to advance our understandings of posthuman and materialist perspectives on learning? How do these approaches resonate and extend distributed cognition and embodied/situative approaches to learning in CSCL and the learning sciences?
Methods: How do we capture and analyze onto-epistemological approaches to learning and development, including intra-action as well as broader repetition and transformation patterns that influence the learning process? How can new technological advances for capturing movement of sound, heat cameras, and other machine-readable data points capture learning processes and advance our understanding of the same?
Design: What would designing within posthuman education look like and what does this mean for the conceptual understanding of design principles? What approaches to child-nature relations can support a holistic understanding of the onto-epistemological nature of learning and development?
Expected Outcomes
The workshop will contribute to a fuller understanding of how posthumanist approaches to learning can contribute to the theoretical, methodological, and design understanding of learning in the learning sciences and CSCL community. Specifically, the workshop is structured to address three key topics: 1) To explore how posthuman theories guide empirical methodological approaches to the study of learning, 2) theoretical arguments for introducing and progressing posthuman theories in the learning sciences and CSCL community, and 3) consolidating key issues, topics, and challenges toward a special issue and/or book proposal.
* Contact for further information and questions about the workshop
Important Dates
Apply by: May 17th, 2019 Workshop: June 17, 2019 Participation Procedure We invite leading and emergent scholars in the learning sciences and CSCL community who are interested in and are working on advancing posthumanist perspectives on learning and their implications for the field. In this workshop, participants will collectively explore how posthumanist approaches can uncover overlooked inequities in education, develop and discuss posthuman methodological approaches, and forge directions for the design of intra-active learning environments. Participants are invited to join as:
Presenters who share their own work (in progress): Selected presenters will be key leaders in the learning sciences and CSCL as well as those from other disciplines, including literacy studies, early childhood education, and material culture studies.
Commentators who provide feedback to presenters: Commentators will be emerging learning sciences and CSCL scholars, especially graduate students wrestling with materialist and posthuman views on learning, as well as scholars who are skeptical about these approaches.
We aim to bring together a diverse group of scholars whose interests and experiences range across posthumanist contexts, including skeptics. We expect participants to reflect on existing posthumanist threads in the learning sciences and CSCL, which may include their own or other scholars’ work, and to look toward the future to create concerted action steps that strengthen posthumanist perspectives in the field.
In addition to the CSCL workshop registration, to help prepare a high-quality workshop we request all workshop participants to register via our online survey by May 17th, 2019.
Date: June 17, 2019 Location:Ecole Normale Supérieure 15, parvis René Descartes, 69007 Lyon, France
Workshop Schedule
8:30 AM – Welcome: Organizers frame the workshop and ask participants to introduce themselves.
8:45 AM – Theory: Presenter-participants and organizers share examples of posthuman and materialist perspectives taken in their work, including completed research, ongoing work-in-progress, and demonstrations of methods and their posthumanist theoretical alignment. Following the presentations, a collective discussion around assumptions solicits feedback from the participants and a commentary of speculation and scepticism.
10:00 AM – Break
10:15 AM – Methods: Participants break into small groups, each joined by at least one presenter, to analyze a data excerpt (e.g., video vignette) from a posthumanist perspective using one of the demonstrated methods. The organizers will create the groups before the workshop based on participant experiences. During the data session groups particularly consider shifts from (a) social/material interaction to material/social more-than-human intra-action, (b) learning seen as a linear progression to one of transformative and materialized repetition, and, (c) an emphasis on human agency in the design process to an emphasis on critical material design.
12:00 PM – Share-out: Small groups reconvene to discuss and analyze methodological approaches and their theoretical assumptions in order to identify areas of further inquiry of particular productive nature. The emergent discussion, captured on a Google document, will be projected shared with all participants.
12:30 PM – Lunch break
1:30 PM – Design: The organizers will facilitate a 30-minute craft activity using fiber materials. This activity is part of a larger project inquiring the gendered materiality of STEM education. Based on this activity and the preceding theoretical and methodological considerations, participants return to their small groups and consider how onto-epistemological approaches may drive design for learning in a range of contexts, including schools and out-of-school organizations, including museums, libraries, community technology centers, makerspaces, and workplace settings. Participants will share summaries of their discussions with the whole group.
3:30 PM – Break
3:45 PM – Bringing it all together: The whole group reflects on the produced collective learning from the workshop to consolidate key issues, topics, and challenges toward a special issue and/or book proposal.
5:00 PM – Conclusion
Workshop Background Recent findings in the field of quantum physics identified that the instruments used to understand phenomena define the ontology of matter and assert that the materiality of past, present, and future is constantly reconfigured (Barad, 2003; Barad, 2007; Van Der Tuin & Dolphijn, 2012). This calls into question many of the assumptions undergirding the field of education. These findings suggest blurrier notions between people and materials–how they respond to one another and mutually shape each other through intra-action (Barad, 2003). Furthermore, notions of agency (i.e., the ability to act) are now being seen as not resting solely with humans but as coming about through intra-action among unspecified, changing, and entangled components contrary to actions between bounded objects (Barad, 2003; Grosz, 2010; Jackson & Mazzei, 2012). This presents an opportunity for the CSCL community to broaden traditional notions of collaboration and to consider more active roles materials can take beyond mediating people-to-people collaboration. Collectively these threads have been taken up within material culture studies (e.g., Ingold, 2012; Tsing 2015), cultural studies (e.g., Behar, 2016; Shabbar, 2016), and literacy studies, which have started to build on these perspectives to question the role of materials as drivers of processes through which people learn (e.g., Hultman & Taguchi, 2010; Taguchi, 2009; 2014; Taylor & Ivinson, 2013; Jackson, 2013; Jackson & Mazzei, 2013; Kuby & Rowsell, 2017; Wargo, 2017; 2018; Wohlwend, Keune, & Peppler, 2019). Particularly within education, new materialist and posthuman perspectives, encompassing ethico-onto-epistemological approaches, investigate the overlooked inequitable workings of materials for educational possibilities (e.g., Ivinson & Renold, 2013; Thiel, 2015; Jones et al., 2016; Thiel & Jones, 2017; Wohlwend, Peppler, Keune, & Thompson, 2017; Keune & Peppler, 2018), new ways of conceiving the nature of STEM disciplines (de Freitas & Sinclair, 2013; 2014), as well as methodological innovations (Kuntz & Presnall, 2012; Mazzei, 2013a; 2013b; Koro-Ljungberg, 2016). Across this shared work, these scholars question the mediational roles of materials as subordinate to people, instead flattening hierarchies among people and materials and recognizing more-than-human forces and rhythms of actions (e.g., de Freitas, 2017) in the production of people, materials, and learning possibilities.
These ideas radically rupture the traditional role of materials as mediational means and sources of internalization important to the field of learning sciences and CSCL. These emergent perspectives suggest at least three broad shifts (a) from social/material interaction to material/social more-than-human intra-action, (b) learning seen as a linear progression to one of transformative and materialized repetition, and finally, (c) an emphasis on human agency in the design process to an emphasis on critical material design. Despite the promise to uncover learning processes that have thus far gone unnoticed, these perspectives remain peripheral to the learning sciences and CSCL communities. Emerging work began to explore synergies and tensions between posthuman and more traditionally employed theoretical approaches to learning, including constructionism and mediated discourse theory. For example, posthuman theory of learning can broaden constructionist perspectives of materials as cognitive drivers to show the co-development of people and materials (Keune & Peppler, 2018) and can present world making possibilities of material-child intra-actions that extend what can be perceived as learning from mediated discourse perspectives (Wohlwend, Keune, & Peppler, 2019). Collectively, this work suggests that deepening posthuman perspectives in the learning sciences requires the development of methodological approaches that are aligned with these views, strengthening theoretical arguments that address key skepticisms, and forging directions for the design of intra-active learning environments. Therefore, it is our intention to use this workshop as a collaborative space to advance our current understandings of the implications of materialisms and other posthumanist views of learning within the learning sciences.
REGISTER NOW Workshop Background Recent findings in the field of quantum physics identified that the instruments used to understand phenomena define the ontology of matter and assert that the materiality of past, present, and future is constantly reconfigured (Barad, 2003; Barad, 2007; Van Der Tuin & Dolphijn, 2012). This calls into question many of the assumptions undergirding the field of education. These findings suggest blurrier notions between people and materials–how they respond to one another and mutually shape each other through intra-action (Barad, 2003). Furthermore, notions of agency (i.e., the ability to act) are now being seen as not resting solely with humans but as coming about through intra-action among unspecified, changing, and entangled components contrary to actions between bounded objects (Barad, 2003; Grosz, 2010; Jackson & Mazzei, 2012). This presents an opportunity for the CSCL community to broaden traditional notions of collaboration and to consider more active roles materials can take beyond mediating people-to-people collaboration. Collectively these threads have been taken up within material culture studies (e.g., Ingold, 2012; Tsing 2015), cultural studies (e.g., Behar, 2016; Shabbar, 2016), and literacy studies, which have started to build on these perspectives to question the role of materials as drivers of processes through which people learn (e.g., Hultman & Taguchi, 2010; Taguchi, 2009; 2014; Taylor & Ivinson, 2013; Jackson, 2013; Jackson & Mazzei, 2013; Kuby & Rowsell, 2017; Wargo, 2017; 2018; Wohlwend, Keune, & Peppler, 2019). Particularly within education, new materialist and posthuman perspectives, encompassing ethico-onto-epistemological approaches, investigate the overlooked inequitable workings of materials for educational possibilities (e.g., Ivinson & Renold, 2013; Thiel, 2015; Jones et al., 2016; Thiel & Jones, 2017; Wohlwend, Peppler, Keune, & Thompson, 2017; Keune & Peppler, 2018), new ways of conceiving the nature of STEM disciplines (de Freitas & Sinclair, 2013; 2014), as well as methodological innovations (Kuntz & Presnall, 2012; Mazzei, 2013a; 2013b; Koro-Ljungberg, 2016). Across this shared work, these scholars question the mediational roles of materials as subordinate to people, instead flattening hierarchies among people and materials and recognizing more-than-human forces and rhythms of actions (e.g., de Freitas, 2017) in the production of people, materials, and learning possibilities.
These ideas radically rupture the traditional role of materials as mediational means and sources of internalization important to the field of learning sciences and CSCL. These emergent perspectives suggest at least three broad shifts (a) from social/material interaction to material/social more-than-human intra-action, (b) learning seen as a linear progression to one of transformative and materialized repetition, and finally, (c) an emphasis on human agency in the design process to an emphasis on critical material design. Despite the promise to uncover learning processes that have thus far gone unnoticed, these perspectives remain peripheral to the learning sciences and CSCL communities. Emerging work began to explore synergies and tensions between posthuman and more traditionally employed theoretical approaches to learning, including constructionism and mediated discourse theory. For example, posthuman theory of learning can broaden constructionist perspectives of materials as cognitive drivers to show the co-development of people and materials (Keune & Peppler, 2018) and can present world making possibilities of material-child intra-actions that extend what can be perceived as learning from mediated discourse perspectives (Wohlwend, Keune, & Peppler, 2019). Collectively, this work suggests that deepening posthuman perspectives in the learning sciences requires the development of methodological approaches that are aligned with these views, strengthening theoretical arguments that address key skepticisms, and forging directions for the design of intra-active learning environments. Therefore, it is our intention to use this workshop as a collaborative space to advance our current understandings of the implications of materialisms and other posthumanist views of learning within the learning sciences. References
Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of women in culture and society, 28(3), 801-831.
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Behar, K. (Ed.). (2016). Object-oriented feminism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
de Freitas, E., & Sinclair, N. (2013). New materialist ontologies in mathematics education: The body in/of mathematics. Educational studies in mathematics, 83(3), 453-470.
de Freitas, E., & Sinclair, N. (2014). Mathematics and the body: Material entanglements in the classroom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
de Freitas, E. (2017). The temporal fabric of research methods: Posthuman social science and the digital data deluge. Research in education, 98(1), 27-43.
Grosz, E. (2010). Feminism, materialism, and freedom. In D. Coole & S. Frost (Eds.) New materialisms: Ontology, agency, and politics, 139-157. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Hultman, K., & Lenz Taguchi, H. (2010). Challenging anthropocentric analysis of visual data: A relational materialist methodological approach to educational research. International journal of qualitative studies in education, 23(5), 525-542.
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Jones, S., Thiel, J. J., Dávila, D., Pittard, E., Woglom, J. F., Zhou, X., ... & Snow, M. (2016). Childhood geographies and spatial justice: Making sense of place and space-making as political acts in education. American educational research journal, 53(4), 1126-1158.
Keune, A. & Peppler, K. (2018). Materials-to-develop-with: the Making of a Makerspace. The British Journal of Educational Technology, 0(0), pp. 1-14. doi: 10.1111/bjet.12702
Kuntz, A. M., & Presnall, M. M. (2012). Wandering the tactical: From interview to intraview. Qualitative inquiry, 18(9), 732-744.
Koro-Ljungberg, M. (2016). Reconceptualizing qualitative research: Methodologies without methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Kuby, C. R., & Rowsell, J. (2017). Early literacy and the posthuman: Pedagogies and methodologies. Journal of early childhood literacy, 17(3), 285–296.
Mazzei, L. A. (2013a). Materialist mappings of knowing in being: Researchers constituted in the production of knowledge. Gender and education, 25(6), 776-785.
Mazzei, L. A. (2013b). A voice without organs: Interviewing in posthumanist research. International journal of qualitative studies in education, 26(6), 732-740.
Shabbar, A. E. (2016). Queer Bathroom Graffiti Matters: Agential Realism and Affective Temporalities. Rhizomes: Cultural studies in emerging knowledge, (30).
Taguchi, H. L. (2014). New materialisms and play. SAGE handbook of play and learning in early childhood, 79-90. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Taguchi, H. L. (2009). Going beyond the theory/practice divide in early childhood education: Introducing an intra-active pedagogy. New York, NY: Routledge.
Taylor, C. A., & Ivinson, G. (2013). Material feminisms: New directions for education. Gender and education, 25(6), 665-670.
Thiel, J. J. (2015). Vibrant matter: The intra-active role of objects in the construction of young children’s literacies. Literacy research: Theory, method, and practice, 64(1), 112-131.
Thiel, J. J., & Jones, S. (2017). The literacies of things: Reconfiguring the material-discursive production of race and class in an informal learning centre. Journal of early childhood literacy, 17(3), 315-335.
Tsing, A. L. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Van der Tuin, I., & Dolphijn, R. (2012). New materialism: Interviews & cartographies. Utrecht, Netherlands: Open Humanities Press.
Wargo, J. M. (2017). Rhythmic rituals and emergent listening: Intra-activity, sonic sounds and digital composing with young children. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 17(3), 392-408.
Wargo, J. M. (2018). Writing with wearables? Young children’s intra-active authoring and the sounds of emplaced invention.Journal of Literacy Research, 34, 337-356.
Wohlwend, K., Keune, A., & Peppler, K. (in press). We Need it Loud: Looking at Preschool Making from Mediated and Materialist Perspectives. In M. Sakr & J. Osgood (Eds.) Postdevelopmental Approaches to Early Childhood Art. London, UK: Bloomsbury.
Wohlwend, K., Peppler, K., Keune, A., & Thompson, N. (2017). Making sense and nonsense: Comparing mediated discourse and agential realist approaches to materiality in a preschool makerspace. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 17(3), 444-462. doi: 10.1177/1468798417712066
Register Now We invite leading and emergent scholars in the learning sciences and CSCL community who are interested in and are working on advancing posthumanist perspectives on learning and their implications for the field. In this workshop, participants will collectively explore how posthumanist approaches can uncover overlooked inequities in education, develop and discuss posthuman methodological approaches, and forge directions for the design of intra-active learning environments. Participants are invited to join as presenters who share their own work (in progress) or as commentators who provide feedback to presenters. We aim to bring together a diverse group of scholars whose interests and experiences range across posthumanist contexts, including skeptics.
Register to participate via our online survey by May 17th, 2019.
https://tinyurl.com/ybe2z4mq In addition to the CSCL workshop registration, to help us prepare a high-quality workshop we request all participants to register via our online survey by May 17th, 2019. In the online form, please enter your name, affiliation, and contact information. Please also indicate whether you would like to join the workshop as presenter or commentator. If you would like to join as presenter please also provide a short abstract of your work (up to 250-words). All participants will be asked to offer key questions to consider during the workshop. We are looking forward to receiving your submission!