Pedagogy as Possibility: Health Interventions as Digital Openness

Abstract

In this article we propose an approach to digital health tracking technologies that draws on design anthropology. This entails re-thinking the pedagogical importance of personal data as lying in how they participate in the constitution of new possibilities that enable people to learn about, and configure, their everyday health in new ways. There have been two dominant strands in traditional debates in the field of pedagogy: one that refers to processes of teaching people to do things in particular ways; and another that seeks to enable learning. The first of these corresponds with existing understandings of self-tracking technologies as either unsuccessful behavioural change devices, or as providing solutions to problems that do not necessarily exist. When seen as such, self-tracking technologies inevitably fail as forms of intervention towards better health. In this article we investigate what happens when we take the second strand-the notion of enabling learning as an incremental and emergent process-seriously as a mode of intervention towards health through self-tracking technologies. We show how such a shift in pedagogical understanding of the routes to knowing these technologies offer creates opportunities to move beyond simplistic ideas of behavioural change as the main application of digital body monitoring in everyday life. In what follows, we first demonstrate how the disjunctures that arise from this context emerge. We then outline a critical response to how learning through life-tracking has been conceptualised in research in health and human-computer interaction research. We offer an alternative response by drawing on a processual theory of learning and recent and emerging research in sociology, media studies, anthropology, and cognate disciplines. Then, drawing on ethnographic research, we argue for understanding learning through the production of personal data as involving emplaced and non-representational routes to knowing. This, we propose, requires a corresponding rethinking of the epistemological status of personal data and what kind of knowledge it can be claimed to produce. Finally, we take up the implications of this and advance the discussion through a design anthropological approach, through which we refigure the interventional potential of such technologies as lying in their capacity to create possibilities for experiential, and often unspoken, ways of embodied and emplaced knowing.

Perspectives of Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients on Electronic Communication and Patient‐Reported Outcome Data Collection: A Qualitative Study

“…These findings are consistent with published benefits of PRO platform use in clinical practice, including improvement in patient-physician communication, self-efficacy, and treatment plan adherence, as well as greater satisfaction with care and more efficient use of resources (17). Additionally, compared with simply asking patients to complete PRO questionnaires, collection of PRO data paired with a learning experience for the patient was shown to be more successful in engaging patients to use self-tracking technologies (18).…”

“…[17] Additionally, compared with simply asking patients to complete PRO questionnaires, collection of PRO data paired with a learning experience for the patient was shown to be more successful in engaging patients to use self-tracking technologies. [18]…”

Young people learning about health: the role of apps and wearable devices

“…Theoretical background: pedagogy Across disciplines, research on digital technologies has been dominated by a focus on the medium(s) and user/participant responses to varying technological affordances (Couldry 2012;Miller et al 2016). In turn, there is an overwhelming tendency to report on how digital health technologies are either successful or unsuccessful as behaviour change devices (Fors and Pink 2017). It is argued here, however, that we could usefully move away from the methodological certainty of analysing 'positive' and 'negative' effects in order to better understand the role of technology as a resource that opens up new possibilities for young people to learn about and develop their health.…”

“…It is argued here, however, that we could usefully move away from the methodological certainty of analysing 'positive' and 'negative' effects in order to better understand the role of technology as a resource that opens up new possibilities for young people to learn about and develop their health. So, following on from Albury (2013) and Fors and Pink (2017), a pedagogically informed conceptual framing was adopted for this study. In so doing, our approach sought to take into account the broader contexts in which young people learn about health.…”

“…Yet, many of the current conceptual framings of public pedagogies are grounded in its roots in passive media (Reid 2010;Andersson and Olson 2014). As a result, analytical framings tend to be dominated by a focus on audience, power, ideology and/or discourses (Rich and Miah 2014), that do little to move beyond simplistic ideas of behavioural change (Fors and Pink 2017), or acknowledge the role of the individual in shaping their educational experiences (Andersson and Olson 2014). Similar to the experiences of other researchers (see Andersson and Öhman 2017;Rich and Miah 2014;Fullagar, Rich, and Francombe-Webb 2017), we faced challenges in seeking to apply the original concept of public pedagogies to data on apps and wearable devices.…”