AN ENACTIVE APPROACH TO TECHNOLOGICALLY MEDIATED LEARNING THROUGH PLAY

This thesis investigated the application of enactive principles to the design of classroom technolo- gies for young children’s learning through play. This study identified the attributes of an enactive pedagogy, in order to develop a design framework to accommodate enactive learning processes. From an enactive perspective, the learner is defined as an autonomous agent, capable of adapta- tion via the recursive consumption of self generated meaning within the constraints of a social and material world. Adaptation is the parallel development of mind and body that occurs through inter- action, which renders knowledge contingent on the environment from which it emerged. Parallel development means that action and perception in learning are as critical as thinking. An enactive approach to design therefore aspires to make the physical and social interaction with technology meaningful to the learning objective, rather than an aside to cognitive tasks. The design framework considered in detail the necessary affordances in terms of interaction, activity and context. In a further interpretation of enactive principles, this thesis recognised play and pretence as vehicles for designing and evaluating enactive learning and the embodied use of technology. In answering the research question, the interpreted framework was applied as a novel approach to designing and analysing children’s engagement with technology for learning, and worked towards a paradigm where interaction is part of the learning experience. The aspiration for the framework was to inform the design of interaction modalities to allow users’ to exercise the inherent mechanisms they have for making sense of the world. However, before making the claim to support enactive learning processes, there was a question as to whether technologically mediated realities were suitable environments to apply this framework. Given the emphasis on the physical world and action, it was the intention of the research and design activities to explore whether digital artefacts and spaces were an impoverished reality for enactive learning; or if digital objects and spaces could afford sufficient ’reality’ to be referents in social play behaviours. The project embedded in this research was tasked with creating deployable technologies that could be used in the classroom. Consequently, this framework was applied in practice, whereby the design practice and deployed technologies served as pragmatic tools to investigate the potential for interactive technologies in children’s physical, social and cognitive learning. To understand the context, underpin the design framework, and evaluate the impact of any techno- logical interventions in school life, the design practice was informed by ethnographic methodologies. The design process responded to cascading findings from phased research activities. The initial fieldwork located meaning making activities within the classroom, with a view to to re-appropriating situated and familiar practices. In the next stage of the design practice, this formative analysis determined the objectives of the participatory sessions, which in turn contributed to the creation of technologies suitable for an inquiry of enactive learning. The final technologies used standard school equipment with bespoke software, enabling children to engage with real time compositing and tracking applications installed in the classrooms’ role play spaces. The evaluation of the play space technologies in the wild revealed under certain conditions, there was evidence of embodied presence in the children’s social, physical and affective behaviour - illustrating how mediated realities can extend physical spaces. These findings suggest that the attention to meaningful interaction, a presence in the environment as a result of an active role, and a social presence - as outlined in the design framework - can lead to the emergence of observable enactive learning processes. As the design framework was applied, these principles could be examined and revised. Two notable examples of revisions to the design framework, in light of the applied practice, related to: (1) a key affordance for meaningful action to emerge required opportunities for direct and immediate engagement; and (2) a situated awareness of the self and other inhabitants in the mediated space required support across the spectrum of social interaction. The application of the design framework enabled this investigation to move beyond a theoretical discourse

The Contemporary Avant-garde: Classification, Organization, Spatiality and Practices of Resistance

The intention of the thesis is to explore and make visible the sociological importance of contemporary avant-garde music by investigating the ways in which associated cultures are constituted through the interplay between technologically mediated forms of dialogue and destabilizing practices. Through the case study of hauntology, the present work explores the interrelationship between different participant groups (building on, and problematizing, aspects of Becker's Art Worlds) and how they negotiate and collaborate with one another. Methodologically-speaking, the thesis adopts multiple approaches to data collection and analysis in an effort to develop a series of conceptual research tools predicated on the partial connections and assemblages observed during field work. The research is participant-focused, dealing primarily with the ways in which these groups engage in meaning-making activities within their own interpretive frameworks. The empirical focus of the thesis is fourfold. In the first instance, this involves detailing classificatory work on genre and boundary formation as enacted by participants through differing forms of dialogue in a variety of virtual locations. Secondly, an assessment of the organizational structures developed by artists (such as the record label) and audience members (the archive) is undertaken, in an effort to understand how information is collated and stored and how the development of a mediated 'aesthetic', or metadiscourse, is facilitated by these systems. Thirdly, co-operation between social actors is examined in relation to spatial associations and participant-led acts of destabilization (read through the work of Lefebvre). Fourthly, practices of micro and macro-level resistance - including direct political activities, techniques of composition, intertextuality and engagement with cultural theory - are considered in relation to the other empirical foci

Skyler and Bliss

Hong Kong remains the backdrop to the science fiction movies of my youth. The city reminds me of my former training in the financial sector. It is a city in which I could have succeeded in finance, but as far as art goes it is a young city, and I am a young artist. A frustration emerges; much like the mould, the artist also had to develop new skills by killing off his former desires and manipulating technology. My new series entitled HONG KONG surface project shows a new direction in my artistic research in which my technique becomes ever simpler, reducing the traces of pixelation until objects appear almost as they were found and photographed. Skyler and Bliss presents tectonic plates based on satellite images of the Arctic. Working in a hot and humid Hong Kong where mushrooms grow ferociously, a city artificially refrigerated by climate control, this series provides a conceptual image of a imaginary typographic map for survival. (Laurent Segretier

An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form

How well can designers communicate qualities of touch? This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makers’ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designers’ capabilities

The Construction of Shared Knowledge through Asynchronous Dialogue

This thesis investigates how groups of learners use asynchronous dialogue to build shared knowledge together over time. To do this, it takes a sociocultural approach, with a situated focus on learners' social and temporal settings as well as on the tools they employ. It utilises concepts developed to support understanding of knowledge co-construction in face- to-face environments, particularly the social modes of thinking identified by Mercer and his colleagues (Mercer, 1995, 2000, 2002; Mercer & Littleton, 2007; Mercer & Wegerif, 1999) and the improvable objects described by Wells (1999). Analysis shows that, over short periods of time, groups of learners construct shared vocabulary, history and understanding slowly through the use of a series of discursive devices including those identified here as 'constructive synthesis', the 'proposal pattern' and 'powerful synthesis'. Over longer periods they may engage in 'attached dialogue', a form of asynchronous dialogue that is mediated by improvable objects. The development of these improvable objects involves learners engaging in exploratory dialogue that builds into progressive discourse, a coordinated form of co-reasoning in language. While doing this, they actively work to avoid unproductive interaction by consistently shifting responsibility from the individual to the group. Previous studies have suggested that asynchronous dialogue may act to limit learners to cumulative exchanges (Littleton & Whitelock, 2005; Wegerif, 1998). The analysis over time presented here shows that asynchronous exchanges are enriched by the use of textual affordances that are not available in speech. In the case of attached dialogue, groups of learners are prompted to share knowledge, challenge ideas, justify opinions, evaluate evidence and consider options in a reasoned and equitable way. They do this more successfully when their co-construction of knowledge is not solely task-focused but also focuses on tool use and on the development of social knowledge about the group

The role of simulations in the authentic learning for national security policy development: implications for practice

This report is provides examples of practice that illustrate the use of authentic learning and simulations in post-graduate and on-campus learning environments, especially when applied national security policy education. It examines the following areas: The place of authentic learning in postgraduate education. The methods used to simulate policy development, and related activities like strategy planning, in educational environments relevant to national security policy-making. Policy simulation methods that could enhance learning at the College and similar institutions, including teaching skills, technology and resource implications. The roles of technology in enhancing learning in policy development simulations. Ways to assess learning effectiveness through simulation

Technology and the family car: situating media use in family life

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThe thesis describes how family life is organised in the car, with a particular focus on exploring the role and use of mobile technology in this setting. The objective of this research is to use the insights from video ethnographic data collected with families to discuss how social interaction between family members may be situated to technology use. Drawing from the notion of ‘ordinary work’ discussed in ethnomethodology and applying this to naturalistic video data of families in cars, the thesis demonstrates how family activities are locally produced, drawing on background knowledge and common-sense understandings of family members’ work. Using methods from conversation analysis, the research demonstrates how transcribed instances of talk can reveal how parents and children produce their actions and talk to jointly produce activities in relation to media use. The analysis presented in this thesis demonstrates how the family car provides an opportunity for parents and children to come together, and engage in mundane family activities of talk and play while using a range of mobile devices. The thesis draws on richly documented and closely analysed episodes of interaction to demonstrate how family life unfolds in the accomplishment of activities in which interactions are situated, orderly and observable. The production of family life within the car involves talk and embodied action that is artfully placed within interactions between parents, children and technology. The analysis elucidates how the features of negotiation, collaboration and coordination around device-use are placed alongside driving activities. The contributions of this thesis lie in providing a descriptive analysis of the social organisation of family life through technology, developing an understanding of family technology use in a mobile context and highlighting elements of interaction that will inform the development of insights for the design of technology that is sensitive to the nuances of family life, mobility and technology practices.EPSRC and Microsoft Researc