Innovative learning spaces have emerged in response to the influx of educational technologies and new social practices associated with twenty-first-century learning. Whilst dominant narratives of change often suggest that alterations in the designed environment for learning will result in changed practice, on the ground educators are struggling to align their pedagogical models with new spaces for learning, direct instruction is still common, and technologically deterministic narratives mask a failure to engage with the materiality of learning. This article argues for a non-deterministic theory of things in educational research and calls for a deeper understanding of the flows of matter, information and human-thing dependence, which will render visible the heterogeneous entanglements characteristic of innovative spaces for learning. It highlights that educational designers (e.g. teachers, space planners, architects, instructional designers) are in pressing need of analytical tools capable of supporting their work in ways that promote correspondence between (a) pedagogy, place and people and (b) theory, design and practice. In response, we introduce an analytical approach to framing learning entanglement that accounts for the artefacts, resources and tools available to learners; the choice of tasks and pedagogical models and the social roles and divisions of labour governing any given learning situation. Finally, we practically demonstrate how this approach aids in identifying correspondence or dissonance across dimensions of design and scale levels, in both the analysis and design of complex environments for learning. century competencies and skills' (Scott, 2015, p. 1), direct instruction, inauthentic assessment and rote learning are still common across many contexts, although these practices are not specific to particular sectors or subject areas. For example, in universities, lectures are still common in the early stages of undergraduate courses, and in schools some subject areas are more likely than others to adopt project-based or inquiry-based approaches. What is more, deterministic accounts of tools and spaces for learning tend to focus on identifying generic and decontextualised properties of tools or spaces, without considering the qualities of the objects themselves, and how these, in turn, may influence people, their values and purposeful action.In this article, we argue that those involved in educational design (e.g. teachers, space planners, architects, instructional designers) need analytical tools capable of increasing the correspondence between (a) pedagogy, place and people and (b) theory, design and practice. When we speak of correspondence, we draw on the work of Tim Ingold (2013), who contrasts interaction with correspondence, which he illustrates with a simple sketch: two fixed points with an arrow between them-representing interactionand two lines issuing from each of these points that flex in response to movement in the other-representing correspondence. Understanding how we use this term i...
This paper provides a summary account of Activity-Centred Analysis and Design (ACAD). ACAD offers a practical approach to analysing complex learning situations, in a way that can generate knowledge that is reusable in subsequent (re)design work. ACAD has been developed over the last two decades. It has been tested and refined through collaborative analyses of a large number of complex learning situations and through research studies involving experienced and inexperienced design teams. The paper offers a definition and high level description of ACAD and goes on to explain the underlying motivation. The paper also provides an overview of two current areas of development in ACAD: the creation of explicit design rationales and the ACAD toolkit for collaborative design meetings. As well as providing some ideas that can help teachers, design teams and others discuss and agree on their working methods, ACAD has implications for some broader issues in educational technology research and development. It questions some deep assumptions about the framing of research and design thinking, in the hope that fresh ideas may be useful to people involved in leadership and advocacy roles in the field.
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