Cathrine Hasse

Gender Diversity in Play With Physics: The Problem of Premises for Participation in Activities

The lack of women engaging themselves in science has been thoroughly discussed in feminist and nonfeminist science studies. It has remained a mystery why so few female students take professional careers as scientists. Though more and more female students enroll in physics studies, for example, they seem to disappear before they reach academic positions. Instead of discussing this as a query of gender inequality in this article, I discuss the more general issues of inclusion and exclusion in communities of practices. I argue that selection mechanisms in a group of students can be connected to their premises for engaging themselves in an activity. As students have different embodied experiences, they also have different premises for engaging themselves. What seems like the same practice can, in fact, be analyzed as practices belonging to different activities. This approach might bring us a small step further in the discussions of the relations between gender and science.

Institutional Creativity: The Relational Zone of Proximal Development

In this article I argue that creative acts cannot be confined to the individual. Creativity can be seen as a meeting between an individual and a wider activity system. This argument is related to the claim that a zone of proximal development (ZPD), the concept connected to the culturalhistorical psychologist Lev Vygotsky, is both an internal and an external relation between an actual and a potential developmental zone. I shall suggest that institutions can facilitate creative potential and development if the associated members are trained or already have potential developmental zones answering to the actual development of the members of staff. The argument is supported by two case studies—one from fieldwork in an institution of higher education, and one from an institution for the mentally handicapped—and supplemented with a few historical examples.

Learning and transition in a culture of playful physicists

It has been argued that in higher education academic disciplines can be seen as communities of practices. This implies a focus on what constitutes identities in academic culture. In this article I argue that the transition from newcomer to a full participant in a community of practice of physicists entails a focus on how identities emerge in learning how to highlight certain aspects of personal life histories. The analysis of interviews with 55 physicists shows that physicists often perceive experiences in their childhood as the first step into their professional identities as physicists. These experiences involve recollections of the ability to think scientifically (e.g., ‘go beyond the surface’), and the ability to play with toys which can be connected to the practical life of physics. The process of identity formation can be described as developing in a relational zone of proximal development, where old-timers recognize particular playful qualities in newcomers as a legitimate access to a physicist identity. The article discusses how play which physicsts connects with a scientific mind can constitute a relational zone of proximal developments in a community of practice as a particular “space of authoring” in a physicist culture, which cut across other cultural differences.RésuméIl a été admis que les disciplines de l’éducation supérieure peuvent être considérées comme des communautés de pratique. Cela pose la question de savoir comment se constituent les identités dans la culture académique. Dans cet article, pour mettre en évidence la transition de nouveau venu à participant à part entière dans une communauté de pratique de physiciens, j’examine non seulement la manière dont des identités émergent au travers des pratiques, mais aussi les aspects biographiques que les participants identifient comme ayant facilité leur transition. Une cohorte de 55 physiciens a été interviewée et leurs analyses ont été comparées à des données supplémentaires, notamment tirées d’une observation participante d’étudiants en physique. Les physiciens identifient souvent des expériences de leur enfance comme premiers pas vers leur identité professionnelle de physiciens. Ces expériences requièrent une pensée de type scientifique et une capacité à jouer liée avec les pratiques de la physique. Le processus de formation identitaire peut être décrit comme se développant dans une zone relationnelle de développement proximal, dans laquelle les aînés reconnaissent les qualités ludiques des nouveaux venus comme légitimant leur accès à l’identité de physicien. L’article discute la manière dont le jeu, que les physiciens associent à l’esprit scientifique, constitute une zone de développement proximal dans une communauté de pratique, comme «espace d’auteur» dans la culture des physiciens-laquelle peut par ailleurs dépasser d’autres différences culturelles.

The Method of Culture Contrast

In this article, we suggest that research is a practical activity building on local category systems belonging specifically to research (etic categories) as well as categories belonging specifically to the national culture of the researcher (emic categories) (Pike 1967). Much cross-cultural research can be argued to rest on what has been called implicit comparisons (Nader 1994) of such categorisations. We assume that research of local activities, such as schooling and higher education, is influenced by the researchers emic and etic categorisations. To get beyond the risk of reproducing the researchers cultural background (i.e., emic categorisations) in the analysis of cross-cultural comparisons we suggest that the categorisations the researcher use in her tests and fieldwork descriptions are taken to be part of the research itself, rather than simply being an underlying (taken for granted) framework on which the research is conducted. First we present a recent study of European universities as culturally diverse working places and we present an approach in which the researchers emic and etic categorisations can be challenged when contrasted with each other (Hasse & Trentemøller 2008). Second, we argue for the need for a shared understanding among researchers in international projects. We present the method of culture contrast as one way of dealing with the inevitable problem of different perceptions of words and their meanings. This method does not rest on the approach employed in traditional cross-cultural studies where a generalized category, as a tertium comparationis, is identified and tested in two (or more) different cultural settings. Through a reflexive process of research, we show how patterns of connections can be contrasted and thus made explicit leading to new and surprising challenges of the researchers emic categorisations. We illustrate the case with examples of different understandings of three terms, hierarchy, family, and sexual harassment, in the Understanding Puzzles in the Gendered European Map (UPGEM) project.

Situating Technological Literacy in the Workplace

The developing discourse centered around the definition of technological literacy has been taken up from many quarters and between conflicting perspectives (Kahn & Kellner, 2006; Keirl, 2006). While the array of different technologies and applications that might be considered gives rise to differing disciplinary viewpoints (Liddament, 1994), there remains a lack of an adequate framework from which to view technology and its use within a particular context of practice. Seeing this as central to the development of professional disciplines immediately places technology literacy not simply as something useful for ensuring that certain technologically mediated tasks can be adequately satisfied but rather, because of technology’s pervasive quality, as something that encompasses the nature of working life itself.

The cultural context of science education

In this chapter we argue that national cultural historic developments influence science education and gendered teaching and scientific career paths from primary school to higher education. The argument is based on a number of field studies spanning over recent studies in physics practiced at university institutes in Denmark, Italy, Poland, Finland and Estonia to a study of physics education in primary schools in Denmark and a comparison between physics students’ possibilities for embarking on a physicist education in Demark and Italy. The influence of national culture on the relation between gender and physics education is complex and profound. Results are not testable in any simple way; yet, we contend that the cultural diversity found affects male and female emotions and motivation to study science as well as their possibilities to become outstanding scientists. The empirical data are discussed within the framework of cultural- historical activity theory. In the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s theory of a zone of proximal development he discussed how human capacity for development can be aided by other human beings. He does not explicitly discuss how the developmental zone is related to cultural influence. We shall argue that the zone of proximal development in science education from a cultural perspective becomes a relational zone of proximal development.

Technological literacy for teachers

Abstract Ongoing developments in educational technologies place increasing demands on teachers who have to make decisions on a daily basis concerning how, when, and where to make use of technologies in classrooms. Building on results from the Danish project Technucation, this paper argues that there is a marked need for a teacher-specific version of the technological literacy developed by the International Technology Education Association (ITEA). ITEA defines technological literacy as the ability to ‘use, manage, assess, and understand technology’. The Technucation project found that teachers were not simply in need of knowledge about how to manage technical challenges, they would also benefit from awareness of how new technologies change relations, identities, and complex power structures. The paper explicitly addresses this issue of the new skills and analytic capabilities that teachers need in order to engage effectively with technological development. The type of enhanced technological literacy teachers may benefit from is represented in the paper through its presentation of the TECS-model, developed in the course of the Technucation project: hands-on skills in handling Technology (T); capability to analyse changes in Engaged relationships (E); capability to analyse Complex power-informed pathways (C); and capability to analyse long-term Shifts in professional identities (S). The paper argues that attention to all of these areas should be included in the education of technological literacy to pre-service teachers.

Posthuman learning: AI from novice to expert?

Will robots ever be able to learn like humans? To answer that question, one first needs to ask: what is learning? Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus had a point when they claimed that computers and robots would never be able to learn like humans because human learning, after an initial phase of rule-based learning, is uncertain, context sensitive and intuitive (Dreyfus and Dreyfus in A five stage model of the mental activities involved in directed skill acquisition. (Supported by the U.S. Air Force, Office of Scientific Research (AFSC) under contract F49620-C-0063 with the University of California) Berkeley, February 1980. (Unpublished study). Washington, DC: Storming Media. https://www.stormingmedia.us/15/1554/A155480.html. Accessed 10 Oct 2017, 1980). I would add that learning also builds on prior learning, and that from the outset (birth), human learning is a socio-cultural materially grounded collective epistemology. This posthuman acknowledgement shifts the focus from the individual learner to learning within collective phenomena. Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1980) do not seem to emphasise the essentially social and cultural nature of the human condition. Learning theory (especially the Vygotskyan perspective), new materialism (especially as presented by the physicist Karen Barad) and postphenomenology (especially as presented by Don Ihde) have emphasised in different ways the materially based socio-cultural nature of human learning. They thereby point towards a ‘posthuman’ learning that is far from the machine-like or enhanced creature envisioned by singularists. Until robots are essentially social and ground their epistemologies in socio-cultural materiality, I suggest that human-like AI is not possible.

The Vitruvian robot

Robots are simultaneously real machines and technical images that challenge our sense of self. I discuss the movie Ex Machina by director Alex Garland. The robot Ava, played by Alicia Vikander, is a rare portrait of what could be interpreted as a feminist robot (and there are spoilers ahead for any readers unfamiliar with this movie). Though she apparently is created as the dream of the ‘perfect woman’, sexy and beautiful, she also develops and urges to free herself from the slavery of her creator, Nathan Bateman. She is a robot created along the perfect dimensions as a Vitruvian robot but is also a creature which could be interpreted as a human being. However, the point I want to raise is not whether Ava’s reaction to robot slavery is justified or not but how her portrait raises questions about the blurred lines between reality and fiction when we discuss our robotic future. A real version of Ava would not last long in a human world because she is basically a solipsist, who does not really care about humans. She cannot co-create the line humans walk along. The robots created as ‘perfect women’ (sex robots) today are very far from the ideal image of Ava. They are sexist, primitively normative and clearly ‘wax-doll machines’. So though Ava’s dimensions are perfect she, like the Vitruvian Man, remains a fiction. In real life, however, we may have to deal with an increasing solipsism stemming from people engaging with machines like sex robots. In this case, it is human and not robotic solipsism we need to worry about.

Teknologiforståelse i et kulturperspektiv

Uden kulturpavirkninger ville menneskelige samfund vaere forudsigelige. Nye teknologier er en af det allermest indgribende kulturpavirkninger, der skaber forandring i menneskers liv. Nye teknologier aendrer vaner, vaerdier, handleviden og institutionsliv generelt. Pa trods af denne gennemgribende indflydelse pa vores hverdagsliv er teknologiforstaelse ikke noget, vi laerer om i skolen. Mange far heller ikke undervisning i det pa deres videregaende uddannelser. I denne artikel diskuterer jeg hvilken undervisning i teknologiforstaelse, der er behov for, hvis fremtidens unge skal kunne handtere udfordringer fra teknologiens kulturpavirkninger.