Sociomateriality and
						Learning: A Critical Approach

Fenwick, Tara

doi:10.4135/9781473915213.n8

Cited by 95 publications

(167 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Learning analytics is typically concerned with generating profiles of individuals in order to predict the trajectories and personalise the support for individual students. While individuals who learn must take something with them in terms of knowledge and skill, these outcomes of learning are manifested through contextualised, sociomaterial practice (Fawns and O'Shea in press;Fenwick 2015). In other words, learning involves both acquisition and participation (Sfard 1998).…”

Section: Design Orchestration and Student Practicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Bstudents are good at technology^or Bonline students don't engage^). Responsibility and agency are not qualities inherent within the individual student but are relational (Fenwick 2015), distributed across educators, students and environments. This is important not only for designing and orchestrating meaningful learning activities but also for resisting institutional and political forces that use technology as a basis for streamlining, standardisation and efficiency, without considering how these changes manifest in the practices of students and teachers.…”

Section: Postdigital Education?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Postdigital Education in Design and Practice

2018

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Digital education is one of a number of terms (including e-learning, technologyenhanced learning, online learning, blended learning) that have seen increasing use in educational discourse and in the branding of educational programmes. A lack of conceptual clarity around such terms makes it easier for different groups to appropriate them in the service of conflicting agendas. In this paper, I discuss the pros and cons of the tendency to distinguish between digital and non-digital, arguing that while concepts like Bdigital education^can be useful insofar as they encourage people to look closer at the design and practice of teaching and learning, they become problematic when used to close down ideas or attribute essential properties to technology. Considering the implications for understanding institutional initiatives, student practices, and the interplay between teaching design and orchestration, I argue for a postdigital perspective in which all education-even that which is considered to lie outside of digital educationtakes account of the digital and non-digital, material and social, both in terms of the design of educational activities and in the practices that unfold in the doing of those activities.

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Section: Design Orchestration and Student Practicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Postdigital Education?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Postdigital Education in Design and Practice

2018

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“…The learning journeys emerging from the interviews moves beyond traditional conceptions of knowledge as acquisition or transfer, to learning and knowledge as participation within and through interactions with different content, processes, tools, technologies, social relations, and contexts (Fenwick, 2015). Fenwick (2015) suggests that material things are performative; that they act, with other things and forces, to regulate particular forms of participation and to promote particular relations. The editathon developed participants' understanding of how this complex interplay of materials, technology, and social relations is played on Wikipedia and how this in turn influences how consumers engage with information.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hacking History: Redressing Gender Inequities on Wikipedia Through an Editathon

Hood

Littlejohn

2018

IRRODL

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Editathons are a relatively new type of learning event, which enable participants to create or edit Wikipedia content on a particular topic. This paper explores the experiences of nine participants of an editathon at the University of Edinburgh on the topic of the Edinburgh Seven, who were the first women to attend medical school in 19th century United Kingdom. This study draws on the critical approach to learning technology to position and explore an editathon as a learning opportunity to increase participants’ critical awareness of how the Internet, open resources, and Wikipedia are shaping how we engage with information and construct knowledge. Within this, there is a particular focus on recognising persisting gender inequities and biases online. The qualitative interviews captured rich narrative learning stories, which traced the journey participants took during the editathon. Participants transformed from being online information consumers to active contributors (editors), prompting new critical understandings and an evolving sense of agency. The participants’ learning was focused in three primary areas: (1) a rewriting of history that redresses gender inequities and the championing of the female voice on Wikipedia (both as editors and subject matter); (2) the role of Wikipedia in shaping society’s access to and engagement with information, particularly information on traditionally marginalised subjects, and the interplay of the individual and the collective in developing and owning that knowledge; and (3) the positioning of traditional media in the digital age.

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“…Workgroups self-identified as Biosciences and Health Sciences, with each workgroup focussed on a particular configuration of change in curriculum re-development and teaching practices. All participants who were interviewed for the study had completed the GCert, as summarised in In this study, the method of sociomaterial tracing was applied to discern the 'things that matter' (Fenwick, 2015) to the workgroup, that is, to first identify the actors in teaching and learning change -social (discursive, institutional, pedagogical), and material (artefacts, technologies, spatial arrangements), and then trace their associations, interactions, and effects. The strategy for analysis of interview transcripts was chosen to avoid seeking underlying themes or shared conceptions, for to do so would risk limiting professional development within a framing of human intentions and local settings.…”

Section: Setting and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Change and obduracy in university teaching practices: tracing agency in professional development

Hannon¹

2016

CriSTaL

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Research into effectiveness of teaching practices and professional development invites questions of teaching and learning change: how it takes effect and is accounted for, and where its agency is claimed and contested across a range of institutional, disciplinary and pedagogical actors. This article investigates change in teaching practices and professional development through the notion of obduracy (Law, 2003): ordered arrangements that persist in the background and surface in a process of change. In focussing on practice as the object of inquiry, this study is part of a shift away from the study of professional learning drawing on individualist, cognitive traditions towards practice-oriented understandings of change and agency as an effect of social and material arrangements. The setting for this study of teaching practice is two disciplinary academic collectives, or workgroups, in one Australian university. Rather than approaching change as a human-centred and intentional process, the method of sociomaterial tracing was applied to teaching practice undergoing an institutional change process. The study highlights the process in which change is assembled, resisted or accomplished through heterogeneous networks of curriculum, discourses, technologies, and policies. Teaching and learning change, it is argued, involves recognising how obduracy is embedded in distinct networks across the university. The contribution of this study is to draw attention to the agentic role of materials and spaces in the negotiation and stabilisation of teaching practices and in approaches to professional development.

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Sociomateriality and Learning: A Critical Approach

Cited by 95 publications

References 13 publications

Postdigital Education in Design and Practice

Postdigital Education in Design and Practice

Hacking History: Redressing Gender Inequities on Wikipedia Through an Editathon

Change and obduracy in university teaching practices: tracing agency in professional development

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