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Dr John HannonLa Trobe University

Colloquium:

Contextual ApproachesStellenbosch 27 July 2015

A socio-material approach to research into professional & academic development

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1. Dualistic legacies: theory separated from practice

2. Socio-material approaches: theorising from practice

3. Focus on materials and spaces: Learning & knowledge as material practices enacted across hybrid spaces

International study: The flow of new knowledge practices (Lead, Tai Peseta, U. Syd)

Approaches to knowledge: Risks for PD

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http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maslens_Inland_Sea_of_Australia.jpg

Rethinking materials

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Rethinking spaces

Mark Poster: the new "the mode of information" heralded a radical decentring of the subject

In this world, the subject has no anchor, no fixed place, no point of perspective, no discreet center, no clear boundary. … In electronically mediated communications, subjects now float, suspended between points of objectivity, being constituted and reconstituted in different configurations... (Poster, 1990: 11)  

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Digital technologies require a rethinking of spaces of work, teaching and learning across hybrid spaces

Rethinking spaces

So…

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Theorising complex issues

My Instagram network, Andy Lamb

How do knowledge practices - pedagogies - occur across hybrid spaces?

Theory draws on established competing disciplinary traditions (Kandlbinder 2014)

Theorising is uncertain, messy, a

thinking process that requires effort

and strategies to build explanations

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Dualistic approaches to knowledge

Dualistic approaches world “out-there”, pre-formed and awaiting observation human-centred agency, intention and action

(Goodyear, Carvalho & Dohn 2014)

Methods: (i) positivist: subject/object separation(ii) constructivist: human/phenomena separationDualistic methods are analytic binaries that construct separate realms

human/world, theory/practice, subject/object, physical/digital, online/offline

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Socio-materialist approaches to knowledge world is co-evolving, performed and co-emergent decentred focus on materials and their relations: objects, technologies,

activities, texts, and discourses heterogeneity: phenomena are gatherings of - natural, technical, human

and non-human elements

Methods: Assemblages: tracing material relations via an empirical process (Mulcahy

2014) Asking: how do things hold together? (Fenwick 2012)

Co-constitution of social and material in everyday life: things are effects of connections and activity

a relational ontology: “people and things only exist in relation to each other” (Orlikowski & Scott 2008: 456)

“The whole is always smaller than its parts” Latour et al (2012)

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Starting question: How is teaching and learning knowledge put into practice in a disciplinary workgroup?

Unit of analysis: Three disciplinary “workgroups” (5-7 academics each) of GCHE completers

Method: interviews, focus groups, artefacts of practice

Data: 20 participants over 3 disciplinary workgroups

Study: Knowledge practices

Hannon & Al-Mahmood (in progress) Theorising spaces of academic work in higher education: digital and physical configurations

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(Dis)connections in practice

So previously they had to go external, we had to send them extra passwords, they’d lose their passwords.

Now we got a direct integration with Moodle, the problem is that you can’t actually directly go into their resources so you’ve got to send them to a whole big study area and expect a first year to find it, I can’t even navigate the system: I can, but it’s a nightmare

Building Physiologycurriculum

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Tracing assemblages

SpacesLMS (VLE); Publisher’s resource space Physio teaching workspace online Informal “hallway conversations”

How are materials and spaces connected?

What actions are enacted from these connections?

MaterialsPhysio curriculumDigital content, video lectures ...School ‘directives’Strategic targets

Rob Swatski CC, Share, Adapt: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rswatski/4769246175

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Enactments: logics of practice

Following “logics” of practice (Mol 2008)Practices have their own logic, or discourses, rationale or ‘modes of ordering’ (Mol 2008: 8; Hannon 2013)These mix up/are assembled in spaces of teaching & learning

Building Physiologycurriculum

So previously they had to go external, we had to send them extra passwords, they’d lose their passwords.

Now we got a direct integration with Moodle, the problem is that you can’t actually directly go into their resources so you’ve got to send them to a whole big study area and expect a first year to find it, I can’t even navigate the system: I can, but it’s a nightmare

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Consequences for professional development

Digital technologies enable distinct ‘logics’ of practice to converge onto one pedagogical space

PD is enacted in multiple logics: As technological – enacted as ‘solutionism’

As institutional, enacted via ‘deficit’ model. Eg. early/late adopters (Rogers 2003)

As pedagogical, theorising from practice

Risks: Overshadowing of a pedagogical voice (agency)

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Critiquing business as usual (TINA)

Claiming pedagogical space for PD recognise a-theoretical strand in educational technology researchRecognise knowledge as materialised in practices over hybrid spaces theorising: from a human-centric intentionality focus to a process of assembling material & human agencies

Who is afraid of the ontological wolf?

Knowledge practices dissolve the dualism of theory & practice, “first by subsuming theoretical knowledge under a generalised concept of practice, but at the same time making knowledge the very model case of practice” (Eduardo de Castro 2015)

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ReferencesAnderson, C. (2008). The end of theory: The data deluge makes the scientific method obsolete. Wired Magazine 16 (7). Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/ magazine/16-07/pb_theory Bennett, S. & Oliver, M. (2011). Talking back to theory: The missed opportunities in learning technology research. Research in Learning Technology 19 (3), pp. 179–189 Biesta, G. (2007). Why “what works” won’t work: Evidence-based practice and the democratic deficit in educational research. Educational Theory, 57(1), 1-22. Czerniewicz, L. (2010). Educational Technology – Mapping the Terrain with Bernstein as Cartographer. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26, 523-534. De Castro, E. (2015) Who is afraid of the ontological wolf? Some Comments on an Ongoing Anthropological Debate. The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 33 (1) , pp. 2-17Fenwick, T. (2012). Matter-ings of Knowing and Doing: Sociomaterial Approaches to Understanding Practice (pp. 67-83). In P. Hager, A. Lee and A. Reich, (eds.), Practice, Learning and Change: Practice-Theory Perspectives on Professional Learning. Dordrecht, Springer.Goodyear, P. Carvalho,L. & Dohn, N. (2014) Design for networked learning: framing relations between  participants’ activities and the physical setting. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Networked Learning 2014, Edited by: Bayne, S., Jones, C., de Laat, M., Ryberg T. & Sinclair, C., 7-9 April, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh. Hannon, J. (2013) Incommensurate practices: Sociomaterial entanglements of learning technology implementation, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 29 (2), pp. 168-178Hannon & Al-Mahmood (under submission) Theorising spaces of academic work in higher education: digital and physical configurations

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ReferencesJones, M & Sheridan, L. (2015) Back translation: an emerging sophisticated cyber strategy to subvert advances in ‘digital age’ plagiarism detection and prevention, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 40:5, 712-724, Kandlbinder, P. (2014). Theorising teaching and learning in higher education research. In J. Huisman & M. Tight (eds.). Theory and Method in Higher Education Research II (pp.1 - 22) Emerald Group PublishingLatour B, Jensen P, Venturini T, Grauwin S, Boullier D. (2012) The whole is always smaller than its parts. The British Journal of Sociology 62 (4), pp. 590-615Law, J., Afdal, G., Asdal, K., Lin, W.-y., Moser, I., & Singleton, V. (2014). Modes of syncretism: Notes on noncoherence. Common Knowledge, 20(1), 172-192. Mol, A. (2008). The Logic of Care: Health and the Problem of Patient Choice. London, Routledge.Orlikowski, W., & Scott, S. (2008). Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organisation. The Academy of Management Annals, 2(1), 433-474.Mulcahy (2014): Re/assembling spaces of learning in Victorian government schools: policy enactments, pedagogic encounters and micropolitics, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 36 (4), pp. 500-514Poster, M. (1990). The Mode of Information: Poststructuralism and Social Context. Cambridge, UK., Polity Press.Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of Innovations. New York, Free Press.Trowler, P. (2012) Wicked issues in situating theory in close-up research, Higher Education Research & Development, 31:3, 273-284. Verran, H. (1998) Re-imagining land ownership in Australia. Postcolonial Studies 1(2), pp 237- 254.

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Thank you

John HannonLa Trobe University

Melbournehttps://latrobe.academia.edu/JohnHannon