Symposium 3: Content and Language Integrated Learning: Shifting Boundaries and Terrain Mapping

European policies mandate encouraging plurilingualism in a digitally enhanced world. This mandate is placing increased demands on higher educational practitioners and institutions to prepare today’s learners with new linguistic skills. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) policy appears to resonate strongly with European aspirations and goals of educating citizens and promoting lingual diversity, pluriculturism, and mobility within the European Union. Whilst offering a potential solution through the interweaving of content and language in a dual-focused educational approach, CLIL is at risk of becoming a ‘buzz word’ without evidence-based research on emerging CLIL practices. This paper suggests a framework for practice-based research in the initial steps of CLIL implementation into HE curriculum and considers expansive learning theory as a theoretical and analytical framework to advance knowledge creation. The deliberate construction of a transciplinary networked learning community is advanced as the outcome and vehicle as the first initiative for CLIL implementation. The partnering and convergence of the knowledge expertise of language experts and subject experts in collaborative reflective practice enhances networked learning within and beyond the institutional boundaries, professional development and learner multiliteracies, including languages, culture, content and digital media. The context for this study is within tertiary architectural education in France where students study architecture in the first language, French, and Language and Communication Skills in the additional language of English as a separate discipline. This lack of convergence appears at odds with the emerging trend and evolution of transdisiplinarity in architectural education and practice where academia and associated professions of architecture, design and engineering increasingly teach, practice and research collaboratively. This desk-based research first examines the significance of CLIL in the European context, its variants, along with the challenges and drawbacks in crossing disciplinary boundaries. The implications for language and disciplinary practitioners and their role are discussed. Transdisciplinary collaborative work, teaching and learning can bridge language and knowledge barriers between the different disciplines in and through the fusion of language learning of, for, and through the languages of architectural practice and content, leading to innovation in curriculum development. Relational agency, in other words  calling on the capacity of individuals to jointly work and learn with other practitioners, pedagogies, theories and resources distributed within institutional settings, given that a supportive learning community is possible, can lead to enhanced professional agency, in other words the capacity to act effectively informed by appropriate professional knowledge.. This paper concludes that further research is needed on relational agency within collective activities, such as networked learning communities to advance CLIL implementation

Exploring Digital Lifeworlds: Doing Postphenomenology in Networked Learning Research

Networked Learning (NL), originally presented by Goodyear et al. (2004), has recently been reimagined to embrace a richer, more context-sensitive understanding that incorporates the entangled, emergent and “messy” nature of learning (NLEC, Gourlay, Rodríguez-Illera, et al., 2021). Postphenomenology was cited as one of the multiple methodological frameworks relevant to this redefinition. Matthews (in NLEC, Gourlay, Rodríguez-Illera, et al., 2021) recommends postphenomenology for its focus on human-nonhuman mediation and questions of agency in sociotechnical networks. Similarly, Thestrup & Gislev (in NLEC, Gourlay, Rodríguez-Illera, et al., 2021) draw on postphenomenology to reconceive the learning network as a media ecology where “technology, not being neutral, but multistable (Ihde 1990), mediates the perceptions and actions of the participants (Verbeek 2005), and by that co-shapes the space, the connections, and the network” (p. 346). But what is postphenomenology? This workshop will introduce participants to postphenomenology as a philosophy of technology, a theoretical framework, and a pragmatic approach to doing NL research.  Postphenomenology emerged from philosopher Don Ihde’s (1975, 1979) early phenomenological investigations of specific technologies being used in everyday life: chalk, eyeglasses, telephones, etc. His inquiries led to several key discoveries including the occurrence of distinct forms of human-technology-world relations (embodiment, hermeneutic, alterity and background) which can be further characterized by their amplification-reduction structure. Today, Ihde’s approach to studying technologies “phenomenologically, i.e., as belonging in different ways to our experience and use” (1993, p. 34) is known as postphenomenology and has evolved into an increasingly popular posthuman form of qualitative inquiry in education and the social sciences (Aagaard, 2016). As a theoretical framework, postphenomenology views technology not as a neutral tool but as an active mediator in shaping and co-constituting human actions, perceptions, and interpretations including interactions with others and their world (Ihde, 1990; Verbeek, 2005). Peter-Paul Verbeek (2005) expanded postphenomenology to include key insights from Actor-Network Theory, drawing especially on the work of Bruno Latour (1992, 2002), and thereby broadening its theoretical reach to include the morality of hybrid beings and the ethical design of things.  As an approach to research, postphenomenology allows for in-depth explorations of how digital technologies mediate educational experiences (Aagaard, 2017; Adams & Turville, 2018). It is especially well-suited to studying how technologies shape ethical actions and decisions (Verbeek, 2011, 2023). Through “investigating how technologies help to shape human practices, perceptions, and interpretative frameworks, [postphenomenology] makes visible a moral dimension of technology itself” (Verbeek, 2023, p. 49). Postphenomenology employs a variety of phenomenological and empirically grounded methods to capture the everyday, lived experiences of different technologies including disciplined observation of humans employing specific technologies (Aagaard & Matthiesen, 2016), “interviewing objects”  (Adams & Thompson, 2016) and “thing writing” (Adams & Yin, 2017). Here, doing postphenomenology demands an out-of-the-corner-of-one’s-eye attentiveness to everyday life, “an ear for meaning and an eye for materiality” (Aagaard & Matthiesen, 2016, p. 41, emphasis in original). Postphenomenological analysis often begins by first reconstructing “posthuman anecdotes”, that is, descriptions of human-technology-world interactions as they are lived, then subjecting these “reassembled resemblings” (Adams & Thompson, 2016, p. 31) to a set of postphenomenological analytic tools to help untangle how humans and different technologies in use are mutually shaping and co-constituting each other. Analytics include studying breakdowns (e.g., the “broken hammer” strategy), attending to the invitational quality of things, and discerning the spectrum of human-technology-world (HTW) relations (Adams & Turville, 2018; Adams & Thompson, 2016).

Barriers to organisational development in higher education lifelong learning initiatives

From an economic human capital perspective, higher education lifelong learning initiatives should include the professional development of individuals as well as organisational development. This indicates the dissolving of boundaries between individual and organisational development and that successful professional development occurs at both individual and aggregated levels. Based on the networked mode, higher education institutions could be closely linked to their surrounding society, embracing a two-way relationship with a hybrid character, including multiple connections with branches and/or organisations. In such initiatives, formal education and informal work-related tasks are blurred and both are emphasised as equally important. In focus are collaborative features and the idea to link theoretical reasoning to authentic organisational problems. To offer higher education lifelong learning for organisational development, Mid Sweden University initiated a project called BUFFL in collaboration with eight organisations belonging to an established network of banks and insurance companies. This paper aims at reporting barriers to organisational development in higher education lifelong learning. It answers the following research question: Which barriers could be identified when implementing a hybrid and networked approach to higher education lifelong learning for organisational development? A case-study-inspired approach was conducted. In total, 328 registrations from the collaborating organisations were documented in the BUFFL courses. In addition to open-ended questions and Likert scale questions in the course evaluations, the methods also included conversations with leading representatives of the collaborating organisations. Although several barriers were highlighted in line with the innovation resistance theory, the main barrier seems to be that no organisation applied lifelong learning as a tool for strategic organisational development. The study suggests that a crucial barrier breaker to reduce or eliminate the main barrier is a course on strategically managed competence development for leading representatives of participating organisations. A combined focus on individuals and organisations could also stimulate leading representatives to take a holistic approach to the organisation’s competence development. This includes increased responsibility to ensure that investments in the competence area are beneficial for the organisation. Bringing company-relevant data as input to the courses could ensure the establishment of strong links between theoretical perspectives and work-related practices

The Role of Power Relations and Identification in Collaborative Knowledge Construction at Single Gender Online Forum

This short paper describes a research project that aims at exploring how identification and power relations contribute to learners’ knowledge construction in single gender online forum. This multiple case studies take place at five online classes in two female universities in Saudi Arabia. Data is collected from semi-structured interviews and group discussions. Qualitative content analysis of online discussions is used to investigate the extent in which collaborative knowledge construction was achieved by participants utilizing Gunawardena et, al. 1997 tool. In addition, Foucault discourse analysis is used to explore learners’ power relations and identification. The initial findings of the pilot study suggest that learners have imposed several power relations strategies in the discussion’s forum such as maintaining norms of online discussions; (2) maintaining norms of a good classmate; (3) criticizing, comparing and assessing each other's posts; (4) displaying personal information; (5) checkingothers' intellectual activities and messages; (6) comparing between oneself and others' actions and ways of thinking; (7) categorizing oneself and others ; and (8) excluding and including others. These behaviors were organized under three themes: normalisation, surveillance, and classification. Initial findings also showed that participants revealed parts of their identities while interacting with each other. The research will continue to investigate how these practices are influenced by the social and cultural settings and how this contributes to the quality of knowledge construction in online discussion forum

Machine (network) learning in K-12 classrooms: Exploring the state of the actual with Actor-Network-Theory

In times when machine learning (ML) and other artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are expanding the role and definition of network learning in schools, this short paper reports from a practice-centred research project that explores how K-12 teachers affect and are affected by educational technologies with AI. Accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, data-driven and decision-making systems with ML are already entering various educational policy and practice realms, often underpinned by promises of automation and personalization. A growing number of research, drawing from the theoretical orientations and empirical approaches from Science & Technology Studies is increasingly unpacking such promises as well as addressing controversies directly related to the constitutions of ML AI in education. Still, little research explores the adoption of data-driven AI technologies in classrooms from a socio-material, networked learning stance. This short paper introduces such work (in progress) drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Sweden. Guided by the ontological and methodological approaches of Actor-Network-Theory (ANT), the study focuses on the interactions in K-12 classrooms between commercial ML technologies and teachers. Methodologically this means engaging with both human and non-human actors through ethnographic approaches striving for very specific descriptions of interactions within the actor-network and its enacted realities. Preliminary findings from the first of two envisaged case studies in which a ML-based teaching aid in mathematics was tried out in 22 classrooms indicate how compensatory and contradictory actions and accounts emerge within the network of heterogeneous actors. Human actors seem to compensate for the algorithmic actions of the specific educational technology with ML. This is however not a fait accompli but a continuous and unsettled process in the making between humans and the (non-human) technology. Preliminary results also suggest how controversies of ML algorithms in teaching aids, such as their lack of transparency and algorithmic “governance” play out in authentic learning contexts. In conclusion, the paper argues that theoretical and methodological principles of ANT grant for non-deterministic narrative of the heterogeneous nature of educational practice and have the potential to open the black-box of machine learning in the emerging networked learning settings of K-12 classrooms

Responsible management and the global grand challenges: A social systems perspective

The eight  research articles in this edition of BESS examine the empirical and theoretical aspects of social systems and individual behaviours. The issue also initiates a theoretical discourse on the ethical dimensions of economics as a discipline, pointing out how mainstream economics tends to overlook environmental and social concerns. The various articles emphasise unethical conduct among individuals and organisations as a pressing issue. BESS's recent research in management, economics, decision-making, and accounting underscores the need for scholars to research the interplay among managers, organisational behaviours, decision-making processes, and contemporary and systemic social and environmental dilemmas commonly called global grand challenges

Politicization as Signification: Drag Performance as Hermeneutics

Judith Butler’s seminal book, Gender Trouble, categorizes drag performance as indicative example of gender performance. In it, they categorize drag performance along binary lines of gender “opposites”. I argue that Butler’s theory does not hold if the nuance inherent to drag performance is taken into consideration. In examining its complexity, I establish that the artform and its performers are politicized. Through this politicization, I explore how drag performers and drag performance are signified and are able to be understood hermeneutically as a way to expand Butler’s initial theory

Editorial: Queering the Soma

According to Richard Shusterman, “the body is both shaped by power and employed as an instrument to maintain it—how bodily norms of health, skill, and beauty, and even our categories of sex and gender, are constructed to reflect and sustain social forces” (Shusterman 2020, 247). In this issue, authors consider somatic identities and behaviors that subvert somatic normativity, with a special focus on gender and sexuality. Most work in somaesthetics has been devoted to heteronormative identities, behaviors, and histories. There has been little devoted to those that fall outside this narrow category. This issue is dedicated to intersections between queerness and somaesthetics, broadly construed. Each author supplies a unique perspective on queering that pertains to gender, sexuality, and somaesthetics as a philosophical approach to experience. With this issue, we strive to continue expanding somaesthetics as an inclusive, open-ended, and melioristic approach to inquiry

On the Beauty of Tangoing: Review of A Somaesthetics of Performative Beauty: Tangoing Desire and Nostalgia by Falk Heinrich

The Routledge Research in Aesthetics series has published a new and original volume that aims to apply the concept of beauty to the first-person experiences of dancing the Argentinian tango. This attempt by Falk Heinrich is novel

Editorial: Somaesthetic Self-Care and the Politics of Taste and Transformation/Methodologies for Exploring Embodiment and Aesthetics

Volume 9 (2023) takes the form of a double issue. Its first part is titled: “Somaesthetic Self-Care and the Politics of Taste and Transformation.” The thematic focus of the second issue is “Methodologies for Exploring Embodiment and Aesthetics.