Estrid Sørensen

The mind and distributed cognition: The place of knowing in a maths class

A standing dispute in theories of cognition concerns whether cognition unfolds as mental processing of representations or as distributed cognition, as social and non-representational. The disagreement can be seen as a dispute about the spatial location of knowing: does knowing take place in the mind or brain, or is it situated in social practice? I argue that approaches to distributed cognition overreact when rejecting that cognition is isolated and placed in the mind. Based on Latour’s concept “circulating references” I show that shifts in the spatial patterns of knowing appear in a maths classroom. The process of knowing shifts between distributed cognition being dispersed between a number of socio-material phenomena and being placed in the individual pupil mind. Instead of aiming for a theoretical foundation of knowing as located either in the mind or beyond, I suggest on the basis of the practice theoretical analysis presented that where, when and how cognition is located should be kept as an empirical question.

Circulation of Authorisations in the Classroom: A Socio-Material Process

Authority in educational settings is generally taken to belong to the teacher—to reside inside a human. At the same time, the use of new technology in schools is said to challenge authority. How is authority produced and maintained in classrooms not just through engagement among humans, but also through engagements between humans and non-human elements? In a computer-enhanced primary school classroom where the construction-based learning platform Lego Robolab is used, authority is achieved in a close coordination of humans and materials. Authorisations are made available through socio-material coordination: authority is generated as an ongoing interactive process through which social as well as material participants grant each other authority. Authority is achieved though a simultaneously fragile and extensively entangled circulation of authorisations among children, teachers and Lego Robolab. However, the presence of these particular actors is not a sufficient condition for authority to emerge. Emotions are important in bringing these actors together: expectations, trust and interest activate circulations of authorisations. Moreover, authority is not granted once and for all. Authorisations circulate in the classroom, handing over authority from one participant to the next. Rather a stable human possession, authority can be conceptualised as a processual and socio-material phenomenon, while also involving emotions and inter-personal relations.

Configuration of Ontologies: An Inquiry into Learning Designs

The paper discusses the materials involved in the learning environment 5th Dimension, which over the past few decades has been broadly applied as an Activity Theory-based after-school programme. The 5th Dimension is established around a number of artefacts: a maze, a wizard, a constitution etc. These artefacts are often described in the 5th Dimension literature, but enquiries are rarely made as to how these artefacts actually contribute to the 5th Dimension activity. Instead the literature usually takes as a point of departure the aims of 5th Dimension, and looks at how the artefacts work as means to these aims. This paper takes a different stance. On the basis of Actor-Network Theory it abstains from taking as a point of departure human aims and objects. Instead it focuses on the way in which the artefacts are designed and how they are supposed to work as part of the structure of the 5th Dimension activity. It analyses the “inscriptions” (Akrish, 1992) built into the classic 5th Dimension artefacts, and argues that a certain logic is built into these artefacts independent of the Activity Theory-founded aims of the learning environment. It is argued that the inscriptions contain a Fordist logic, and on the basis of Lee’s (2001) discussions of current childhood, it is questioned whether these types of inscriptions are timely. The paper ends with a short discussion of Wartofsky’s (1979) concepts of artefacts.

Helen Verran: Pionierin der Postkolonialen Science & Technology Studies

Die Akteur-Netzwerk Theorie (ANT) folgt dabei dem Prinzip der generellen Symmetrie, argumentierend, dass methodisch von einer Unterscheidung von Materie und Form verzichtet werden soll. Seit Ende der 1990er Jahren haben sich Vertreter dieses und anderer monistischen Ansatze dem Begriff ,Ontologie‘ zugewendet, um Distanz zu einer rein epistemologischen Konzeption von Wissen einzunehmen. Unter diesen Befurwortern findet sich auch die in Melbourne lehrende Helen Verran. Verran gilt als Pionierin der postkolonialen Science- & Technology Studies und ihr Werk wird international zunehmend einflussreicher. Im deutschsprachigen Raum initiierte sie zusammen mit Richard Rottenburg ein STS-Afrika-Netzwerk, wurde daruber hinaus jedoch hier bislang wenig rezipiert. Zentral in Verrans Projekten sind immer das politische Engagement und das Interesse daran, Moglichkeiten zu entwickeln, in denen kontroverse Realitaten neu konzipiert werden konnen. Verrans Arbeiten gehoren wegen ihrer theoretischen und methodologischen Beitrage zu den Schlusselwerken der STS. Drei Aspekte sind kennzeichnend 1 Vgl. hierzu auch die Beitrage von Kirschner, Schubert und Van Loon i. d. Bd.

Computerspil—virkelighed eller fiktion?

The current discussions about the impact of computer games point the relation between reality and fiction out as a central theme. This is disproportional to the poor theoretical understanding of th...