The Materiality of Learning

Abstract

The modern practice of schooling is and always has been inextricably intertwined with its materials: from Froebel gifts, Montessori object boxes, and Waldorf architecture, to Madeline Hunter's lesson plan format, the Blackboard learning management system, and Smart Technologies' Interactive Whiteboard. The particular technologies teachers use in the classroom appreciably shape and "influence the formation of learning and affect thinking and theorizing about education in general" (Sørensen, 2009, p. 7). Yet the formative significance of materiality to the social project of education has received surprisingly little theoretical attention. Waltz (2006) points out that "this is especially curious given the serious work that has gone into the development and use of things as educational tools" (p. 52). Even educational technology literature has remained relatively immune to the work of science and technology studies (STS) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT) scholars who, for example, observed early that technologies are often unfaithful to their creators and thus produce unanticipated effects beyond the (educational) aims intended. Estrid Sorensen's (2009) The Materiality of Learning: Technology and Knowledge in Educational Practice offers one corrective, methodological step toward addressing this theoretical deficiency, reframing "learning not as social but socio-material" (p. 5). Sørensen's book is a reworking of her 2005 dissertation, which examined the contribution of learning materials in constituting school practices in two Scandinavian grade 4 classrooms. Using an ANT-informed ethnographic approach, she observed teacher-student interactions "performed" with, around, and through a variety of established technologies-blackboard, chalk, notebooks, chairs, a bed-loft, and a bell-as well as several new media technologies-a blog, a conferencing system, and an online virtual environment called Femtedit. Sørensen's intent is to provide a methodological approach to studying the materiality of learning in order to discover "how digital and traditional learning materials influence educational practice in general, and Catherine Adams is an assistant professor in the Department of Secondary Education. Drawing on phenomenology, philosophy of technology, and critical media scholarship, her research investigates changes in teachers' practices, students' learning approaches, and knowledge representation in the wake of digital technology integration.

Artefacts that talk: Mediating technologies as multistable signs and tools

“…Technological tools are both 'materialized actions' (Schraube, 2009) and resources for the materiality of learning (Sorensen, 2009), as well as active agents able to transform malleable humans.…”

The salience of liminal spaces of learning: assembling affects, bodies and objects at the museum

“…Increasing attention is being given in education to the materiality of learning and to sociomaterial assemblages (Fenwick and Landri, 2012;Introna, 2013;Sorensen, 2009) whereby "entanglements" of the social and the material (e.g. discourses, bodies, objects, architectures, climates) can be traced.…”

Volumen 2 | Número 2 | Julio-Diciembre 2016 | Completo

“…Un salón de clases, por ejemplo, está arreglado de una manera particular para llevar a cabo partes particulares de las prácticas educativas en el contexto mayor que es una escuela (Sørensen, 2009). También hay otras clases de arreglos sociales, tales como las legislaciones, recomendaciones, reglas y agendas.…”