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Representationalism and Power: The Individual Subject and Distributed Cognition in the Field of Educational Technology

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Abstract

Distributed cognition, as it considers how technologies augment cognition, informs technology integration in education. Most educational technologists interested in distributed cognition embrace a representational theory of mind. As this theory assumes cognition occurs in the brain and depends on the internal representation of external information, it is informed by a mind/body dualism that separates the individual student from material things. Alternatively, the theory of the extended mind describes the mind as a dynamic system of interactions inclusive of human agents, technologies and other material things. Refusing the mind/body dualism, if one element is removed, the quality of cognitive activity declines. Across the cognitive sciences, there are debates between these representational and extended theories that have implications for what it means to be a student and for technology integration. However, distributed cognition research in educational technology ignores these debates. Instead, this research is conditioned by the discursive practices of a neoliberal assemblage of political, commercial and pedagogical institutions. In this era of high stakes testing, as the individual student is measured, evaluated and otherwise made subject through these practices, this assemblage expresses a tacit commitment to, and is productive of, the subjectivity of the individual student and thus benefits from the representational theory of mind. In this way, regardless of the recognized legitimacy of the theory of the extended mind, sustained by neoliberalism the field of educational technology will not soon question the veracity of the representational theory of mind or the mind/body dualism upon which it depends.

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Notes

  1. The theory of the extended mind is one choice from among many and it has many variations. What I discuss may be closer to “radical embodied cognitive science” (see: Chemero 2013).

  2. Neoliberalism, as a theory of political economy, emphasizes market deregulation, privatization, reduced government spending, matters of accountability and market-driven competition (De Lissovoy 2013; Egea 2014; Peters 2011). Neoliberalism is associated with the economic policies of President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher in the 1980s. In the field of education, neoliberalism is associated with efforts to privatize public schooling, the deskilling of teachers and with the accountability movement.

  3. In discourse analysis, to “trace” is to consider the relations of power through which contemporary discourses emerge from and appropriate aspects of, historically specific discourses (Olssen 2014).

  4. Across the cognitive sciences, there are proponents of an extended mind that entertain theories of representationalism—theories of mind that assume an embodied subject (Spackman and Yanchar 2014). Such positions are consistent with an intellectual history of distributed cognition that takes little notice of this contradiction. It combines aspects of cognitive psychology and the representational theory of mind, tracing to Descartes, with an ecological psychology, tracing to Charles Darwin and Henry James (Chemero 2013).

  5. Needing to forge some kind of connection between mind and body for explanatory purposes, there are historical references to the pineal gland. More recent references are to the cerebral cortex (Toulmin 1982).

  6. Including situated learning (Sawyer and Greeno 2009) and sociocultural psychology (Valsiner and Rosa 2007) there are numerous epistemological challenges to representationalism.

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Shutkin, D. Representationalism and Power: The Individual Subject and Distributed Cognition in the Field of Educational Technology. Stud Philos Educ 38, 481–498 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-019-09674-z

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