Epistemic roles of materiality within a collaborative invention project at a secondary school

In this study, we examined maker‐centred learning from an epistemic perspective, highlighting the agentic role of material engagement and artefacts in learning and creativity. The use of physical materials plays a crucial role in maker activities where the socio‐epistemic aspects of knowledge creation entangle with the designing and making of physical artefacts. By taking a case study perspective, we analysed video data from nine design sessions involving a team of students (aged 13 to 14) developing an invention. First, we analysed knowledge that was built during the process. Our analysis revealed how design ideas evolved from preliminary to final stages and, together with the expressed design problems and conversations preceding the ideas, formed an epistemic object pursued by the team. Next, we included non‐human agencies into the analysis to understand the role of materials in the process. Features of materials and human design intentions both constrained and enabled idea improvement and knowledge creation, intermixing meanings and materials. Material making invited the students to not only rely on human rationalisation, but also to think together with the materials.In this study, we examined maker-centred learning from an epistemic perspective, highlighting the agentic role of material engagement and artefacts in learning and creativity. The use of physical materials plays a crucial role in maker activities where the socio-epistemic aspects of knowledge creation entangle with the designing and making of physical artefacts. By taking a case study perspective, we analysed video data from nine design sessions involving a team of students (aged 13 to 14) developing an invention. First, we analysed knowledge that was built during the process. Our analysis revealed how design ideas evolved from preliminary to final stages and, together with the expressed design problems and conversations preceding the ideas, formed an epistemic object pursued by the team. Next, we included non-human agencies into the analysis to understand the role of materials in the process. Features of materials and human design intentions both constrained and enabled idea improvement and knowledge creation, intermixing meanings and materials. Material making invited the students to not only rely on human rationalisation, but also to think together with the materials.Peer reviewe

From an experimental paper to a playful screen : How the essence of materiality modulates the process of creation

The article seeks to develop a better understanding of the contribution of materiality in a discourse between a creator (content producer) and an interface, dealing with analogue and digital artefacts. Focus is in the materiality of the two different art-creation learning processes, acrylic painting and digital painting. The objective of this paper is to consider especially the affect and meaning of these two different content creation modalities and intra-action within that. Through reflective autoethnographic consideration, the purpose is to consider the essences of materials manifesting and modulating the processes of content creation as a posthumanist phenomenon. It will be shown that the creation processes with paper are more experimental whereas the processes with digital screen are more playful. There is a growing need to deeper understand the cultural change of material cultures and the people's intra-action with the materials also enabling arts creation. This paper will widen our limited understanding and deepen our theoretical perspectives of the essence of materials which then avails confronting analogue and digital when developing teaching and learning in the posthuman era especially in early education. Practitioner Notes What is already known about this topic There is a growing interest in the new materialism and posthuman thinking amongst educational technology research and development. Reading analogue versus digital is well-documented. What this paper adds New materialist thinking offers a useful perspective in education for looking at the essence of analogue and digital materiality modulating content creation. Characterising the nuances in analogue and digital production can help in evaluating their educational potential. Implications for practice and/or policy As practitioners we should critically question the political vision of education digitalisation especially concerning early childhood education. There is a need to move beyond debates about analogue versus digital to look at more specific examples of their advantages (and disadvantages) in developing posthumanist education and intra-active pedagogy especially for young children.Peer reviewe

Cognitive Dispositions in the Psychology of Peter John Olivi

This chapter discusses Peter John Olivi’s (1248–1298) conception of the role of dispositions (habitus) in sensory cognition from metaphysical and psychological perspectives. It shows that Olivi makes a distinction between two general types of disposition. Some of them account for the ease, or difficulty, with which different persons use their cognitive powers, while others explain why people react differently to things that they perceive or think. This distinction is then applied to Olivi’s analysis of three different psychological operations, where the notion of disposition figures prominently; estimative perception, perceptual clarity, and the perception of pain and pleasure. The chapter argues that Olivi uses cognitive dispositions in an interesting way to explain individual differences between persons, and that they reveal the dynamic nature of his conception of human psychology.peerReviewe

"Causa Sui": Awareness and Choice in the Constitution of the Self

This paper argues that the conception of the self as constituted by its act of awareness of itself emerges from the confl uence of three medieval ideas: Augustine’s concept of endogenous attention, Avicenna’s concept of primitive selfawareness, and Olivi’s concept of refl exivity as a necessary feature of personhood. It is Descartes who by his rejection of a distinction between a substance and its principal attribute and his weaving together of these three strands of thought who creates a conception of the self which still plays a central role in contemporary discussions