Affordance theory provides a useful lens to explore the action opportunities that arise between users and technology, especially in education. However developments in the theory have resulted both in confusion and misapplication, due partly to issues related to affordance theory's ontology. This paper outlines two competing perspectives on affordances by Gibson and Norman, before arguing that Latour's theory of 'actants' provides a useful middle way between these competing positions. This 'actant affordance' provides new opportunities for undertaking educational technology research that focuses on the network of negotiations taking place between actants (student, teacher, technology, pedagogy, etc.) rather than studying causality or simple binaries.
The educational imagination is the capacity to think critically beyond our located, daily experiences of education. It breaks away from the immediacy of personal understanding by placing education within wider, deeper and longer contexts. Boundaries of the Educational Imagination develops the educational imagination by answering six questions: Each question goes on a journey towards limit points in education so that educational processes can be placed within a bigger framework that allows new possibilities, fresh options and more critical engagement. These questions are then pulled together into a structuring framework enabling the reader to grasp how this complex subject works.
Where do we place the emotional in the analytical structures we have to think about education? The question sounds strange, combining in one sentence emotions and feelings with analysis and thinking. It also sounds dubious, automatically placing the emotional within the analytical when emotions are more like the colours analysis live in. We could use an old favourite like Basil Bernstein to help us. One of his deep insights was that instructional discourse is embedded within a regulative discourse. By regulative discourse Bernstein meant the rules of social order around moral values, behaviour, orderliness, character, identity and attitude. By instructional discourse Bernstein meant the way knowledge is taught -the way it is selected, sequenced, paced, and assessed. Regulative discourse holds the instructional discourse within it. The moral and social order gives the ordering framework within which the teaching of knowledge takes place.Can we place the emotional within the regulative as a subgroup? Can we say that emotions are a part of the regulative discourse around "conduct, character and manner" (Bernstein 2000, p.34). This could be helpful, as it would give us a place, within the massive architectonics of Bernstein for emotions, and it would be a very powerful place. But many of us would balk at seeing the emotional as a part of the moral order. There is something very different about how the emotional works to the moral, although they definitely can come together. There are people who are emotionally intelligent, but morally manipulate this sensitivity. You can be emotionally gifted and morally abusive. Also, there have been strong cases made out for holding onto a moral position no matter what your feelings or emotions are about the case. The moral order is about duty to follow a principle, no matter what your feelings are, or so Kant would have us believe with the categorical imperative. Where can we look to find a theory that holds 'knowledge', 'morality' and 'emotions' together in some kind of synthesis within education? Curiously, within the Western tradition, we find solid accounts of how knowledge, morality and emotions work together in the ancient Greek, Christian, and Jewish traditions, and these accounts extend into the enlightenment era.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.