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

Information Disorder Machines

Weaponized narrative is an attack that seeks to undermine an opponent’s civilization, identity, and will. By generating confusion, complexity, and political and social schisms, it confounds response on the part of the defender. A fast-moving information deluge is an ideal environment for this kind of adversarial attack. A firehose of narrative attacks gives the targeted populace little time to process and evaluate. It is cognitively disorienting and confusing – especially if the opponents barely realize what’s occurring. Opportunities abound for emotional manipulation undermining the opponent’s will to resist. The following report captures the goals, subject matter expert inputs, raw data, and findings of Arizona State University’s Threatcasting Lab Workshop exploring the future of Weaponized Narrative. The findings exposed multiple threat areas and the coming of information disorder machines (IDMs) that could harm individuals, organizations, and even the entire United States of America. To empower people and organizations to disrupt, mitigate and recover from these potential threats the findings in this report identify not only specific threats but also provide recommendations through which organizations and individuals can disrupt, mitigate, and recover from the future of effects of IDMs.https://digitalcommons.usmalibrary.org/aci_books/1038/thumbnail.jp

Stag - Vol. 15, No. 10 - February 26, 1964

The Stag, the official student newspaper of Fairfield University, was published weekly during the academic year (September - June) and ran from September 23, 1949 (Vol. 1, No. 1) to May 6, 1970 (Vol. 21, No. 20).https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/archives-stag/1189/thumbnail.jp

Camera Clubs and Fine Art Photography: Distinguishing Between Art and Amateur Activity

This research examines a medium of symbolic communication--photography--to understand how the social context of the use of that medium shapes its social meaning. Camera club photography is compared with photographic activity which is institutionally legitimized as art, in order to elucidate how art world legitimization shapes the nature of photographic activity. The distinctive featues of art as a communicational system, as manifested in photography, are described. A variety of research methods were employed. Data on camera club activities were gathered through participant-observation over a three year period. Observations of art photography activities such as exhibit openings and conferences were conducted. Interviews augmented observational data: 10 camera club members and 19 art photographers make up the interview sample. Pertinent documents were analyzed as well. Art and camera club photographic activities diverge. Art photography is highly personal and concentrates on representations of artists\u27 ideas. Successful artists contribute innovations to the field. Art photographs do not convey easily interpretable meanings. Successful work is described as mysterious and interpretations involve viewers\u27 own personal reactions to ambiguous content. Conversely camera club photographs are direct, their content straightforward. Camera clubs carry on the pictorialist tradition in photography, updated with borrowings from commercial portraiture, nature and travel photography. Camera club photographers demonstrate their competence through skillful reproduction of the camera club aesthetic code. Innovation and personal self-expression are devalued. Art photography has been constructed in contradistinction to all other uses of the medium. The accessibility of photographic technology to amateurs and professionasl alike, and the ease with which competence in the medium may be attained are inverted in art photography. Art photography transforms this democratic medium into a pursuit requiring special criteria for admission. The relationship between camera club and fine art photography may be described in terms of folklorists\u27 distinctions between folk art and fine art. While innovation attends art world legitimization, the club context frames amateur photography as a traditional activity, maintaining aesthetic values distinct from the art world. Both highly skillful uses of the medium, the social contexts of camera club and fine art photography shape the social meaning of these activities

Final report : evaluation study of the Indiana Department of Education Gifted and Talented Program

"September 15, 1986."Cover title.Bibliography: p. 151-153

‘Tír na Scáile’ (Shadowlands): an exploration into the intercultural dimension of the therapeutic relationship

This study is concerned with the intercultural dimension of the therapeutic relationship, the main research question being: “How, in an English context, is the therapeutic work between a ‘white’ Irish client and a white English therapist/counsellor conceptualized or understood?” Due to a tendency in transcultural literature, training, research and practice to define racial and ethnic difference in terms of skin ‘colour’, underlying historical, socioeconomic and political racialization processes have remained largely unexamined. In addressing this gap, the study specifically explores the transgenerational impact of a joint colonial history on the present-day therapeutic relationship between ‘white’ Irish clients and white English therapists/counsellors from a client perspective. The ‘white’ Irish clients’ lived experiences, perceptions and understanding of cultural difference at interweaving societal, interpersonal and intrapsychic relational levels were captured. Using a constructivist grounded-theory approach, a cooperative inquiry was undertaken with seven ‘white’ Irish therapists/counsellors who lived and had therapy in England. The data were systematically analysed to produce findings grounded in the clients’ words and lived experiences. The findings were presented to a group of white English therapists/counsellors during the course of a dialogic workshop. They indicate that the historical-colonial relational dynamics and the legacy of the associated racialization processes live on unacknowledged in the present-day therapeutic relationship between the ex-colonized and ex-colonizer. The findings have implications for training, research and practice. They clearly indicate that the experience and effect of felt racial and ethnic difference reach far ‘beneath’ that which is perceived. Particularly significant was the identified need to reexamine constructs such as ‘race’, ‘colour’, ‘white’, ‘black’, ‘difference’ in light of the deeper historical, socioeconomic and political processes that produce them. Importantly, the study highlights the need for psychotherapists/counsellors to incorporate the greater cultural and historical context, together with its inherent power processes and structures, into the conceptualization of their client work. In doing so, the capacity to integrate information from multiple disciplines is deemed essential