Cathrine Hasse, DPU, University of Aarhuscaha@dpu.dk, ISCAR 2014

Culture, technology and ‘the new’ in learning practices

Future Technology, Culture and Learning

Interdisciplinary research focusing upon research at the convergence of emerging technology and cultural learning processes.

http://edu.au.dk/en/research/research-areas/future-technology-culture-and-learning/

Culture, technology and ‘the new’ in learning practicesISCAR 2014 Platinum Lounge Tuesday 14.30-15.30 + 16.00-17.00

Speakers:1430-15.30Cathrine Hasse (FTCL)Seth Chaiklin (UCC)Louise Boettcher (FTCL)Ann-Therese Arstorp (FTCL)

Culture, technology and ‘the new’ in learning practicesISCAR 2014 Presidents LoungeTuesday 16.00-17.00 + 16.00-17.00

Speakers (Continued):16.00-17.00Cathrine Hasse (FTCL)Seth Chaiklin (UCC)Louise Boettcher (FTCL)Ann-Therese Arstorp (FTCL)Continued papers and discussions

Technology as mediating artefact IIISCAR 2014

Professor Cathrine Hasse, Aarhus University, Denmark, caha@dpu.dk

Projects entangling cultural learning processes and technologies

• The Niels Bohr project – 1996-2002(The Danish Research Counsel)

• The Cultural Dimensions of Science2002-2005(The Danish Research Counsel)

• UPGEM 2005-2008(European Commission, 6th FP)

• The Technucation Project - 2011-2015(The Danish Research Counsel)

There is a connection between how artefacts mediate and how they are learned

• 1. Dispositions of humans and non-humans are in flux –this makes fixed ‘literacy’ of technology impossible.

• 2. Different ‘glocal’ dispositions makes technologies ‘multistable’ in local professional cultures

• 3. There are processes of cultural learning behind any stabilisation of mediating technologies

The analytical field: STS, Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, Postphenomenology +

Anthropology:• Methods• Methodology• Theory

The empirical field: Everyday life in organisations, institutions etc. From physics education at

the Niels Bohr Institute, to 5000 physicist at CERN to hospitals and schools.

• There is a social reality out there, separate from our knowledge of it, which is nevertheless acessible to investigation and understanding

• (Davies, A.C. Reflexive Ethnography 1999, 213).

The analytical and the empirical field

The analytical field: Three perspectives on mediation

“The postphenomenological perspective focuses on multistable human-machine relations embodiment and perception

The cultural-historical perspective focuses on cultural

artefacts and collective activities

The STS perspective conceptualizes relations between science and technology

Mediating technologies in the empirical and the analytical field1. Technological mediation enables new

activities and visions (e.g in physics)2. Technology as sign and tool (Rolltalk, iPads

in schools, Paro robot3: Technology as multistablechange agent

Audio representation

Visual representation

Touch screen Interactivity Customization Personalization

Books No Yes No No No No

PC books Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes

E-books* Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Technology hype: Careful studies of effects?New technologies = new possibilities=new collective technological literacy?

Table 1Overview of affordances of three main reading tools for children.E-books can be downloaded to various devices, including smartphones, Kindle and iPads.

Kucirkova, N. (2013) Children's interactions with iPad books Front Psychol. 2013 (4) 995

Both Hasse and Turkle found that the Paro robot changed care practices in American and Danish nursing homes (Hasse 2013)

iPads and robots in schools have material effects on learning

“Parents asked more storyrelated questions and used more distancing prompts when reading without electronic features; conversely, both parents and children used more behavior-related speech when reading with electronic features.”.

Parish-Morris J., Mahajan N., Hirsh-Pasek K., Golinkoff R. M., Collins M. F. (2013). Once upon a time: parent–child dialogue and storybook reading in the electronic era. Mind Brain Educ. 7, 200–211

A study on 165 parent–child dyads reading battery-operated, touch-sensitive children's electronic console books or traditional books.

Technology as change agent?

1: Mediation: tools and signs

2. Practical Activity: creating and using tools and signs in practical work

Re-searching the Potential of Cultural-Historical Psychology, Michael Cole, Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, University of California, San Diego, Talk Presented at Department of Social Psychology, London School of Economics, May 16, 2007

Cultural Historical Activty Theory

Foundational Principle 1: Mediating technological artefacts

• Artefacts are always material and ideal• Artefacts can be tools or signs• Tools are externally oriented towards goals

and physical objects – control from the outside

• Signs control from the inside – internal oriented – feed back and control users

• (Vygotsky 1978, 1997, Cole 1996)

Artifacts are material objects, created in the process of goal directed human actions. They are ideal in that their material form has been shaped by their participation in the interactions of which they were previously a part and which they mediate in the present. (Cole1996, pp. 117–118).

2.Foundational principle:

Practical Activity

Shaped and chosen by whom?

Empirical studies of technology-in-useEthnographer as the so-called subject and

apparatus of research (Hasse 2014)

The subject, the instrument,and the so-called object of research are always already entangled, and observation is an evolvingentanglement of matter and the meaning that matters for others.Participant observation = relational agency (Edwards 2010)

Technology as change

agent of perception

and practical activity

Artifacts are no longer “shaped by their participation in the interactions of which they were previously a part and which they mediate in the present”. (Cole1996, pp. 117–118).

In search of new theories:

What is postphenomenology?

Some ancestors in phenomenology:Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur (Ihde in Expanding Hermeneutics 2002)

Ihde appropriates three key concepts from ‘classical’ phenomenology:The late Husserl's notion of a lifeworld; Phenomenology's distinctive concern with embodiment;The notion of multistability, which Ihde refers to occasionally using Husserlian terminology as eidetic variation.

New Frontiers in Technological LiteracyBreaking with the Past

Edited by John R. Dakers

Artefacts that talk: Mediating technologiesas multistable signs and tools

2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1755-6341 Subjectivity Vol. 6, 1, 79–100

iPads and robots are not just tools. They are also“signs that canact as active agents in changing not only work life but also embodied subjectivitiesand professional identities” (Hasse 2013:80).

iPads and robots as ‘innovation’ in Danish Schools and nursing homes

Relational agency in Danish Schools as participant observer

• A change in material hermeneutics and stabilities (Ihde 2002)

• iPads and robots are stabilised as different signs for different people with different perceptual effects for politicians, teachers, management and students

• The participant observer as an embodied apparatus has to move around and transform relata-within-phenomena through relational agency

Studying multistable mediation

Learning varied ways of perceiving the tools are not materialized and unified in the visual display of the artefact.

Through embodied learning in the situated practice of work the original intended mediation become unstable and restabilised in a pattern of variation.

Basic question: Are all technological artefacts multistable in their learned mediations ?

• 1. Variation in mediation• 2. AIST engineers: Paro as a medical tool in the nursing homeParo is a therapeutic robot baby harp seal, intended to have a calming effect on and elicit emotional responses in patients of hospitals and nursing homes

• 3. Politicians: • Paro as a sign of innovation

• 4. Staff: Paro as a learning tool for reorganising (emotional) work

Actions orient us as different practicesof material-discursive boundary making. Politicians: InnovationTeachers: New complex learningNursing staff: New complex learning

Relational agency : Studying mattering matter that matters to others (A. Edwards 2010)

Participant observation is learning to align with what matters to others

Cathrine Hasse, University of Aarhus,

Department of Education, Program for

Future Technologies, Culture and learning.

Mail: caha@dpu.dk

Relational agency : Studying mattering matter that matters to others

On nested frictions in cultural ecologies

C. Hasse. Springer 2014 (December)

An Anthropology of Learning

1. What is the connection between how artefacts mediate and how they are learned?

2. Are all technological artefacts multistable in their learned mediations ? 3. Is a shared ‘technological literacy’ possible? 4. Can we make a new ‘situated technological literacy’ in the analytical field? 5. How does different ‘glocal’ dispositions influence the ‘multistability’ in local professional cultures6. What are the processes of cultural learning behind any stabilisation of mediating technologies