Abstract
In this chapter, we will focus on articulations of teaching and learning and relate these to technological shifts and social paradigms. We will briefly describe the changes of technology of learning from SYSTEM 1, which is characterized by rather stable structures, national curricula, classroom teaching, printed school textbooks, and assessment standards (developed during 1945–2000), to SYSTEM 2, which is characterized by dynamic (global) change, the development of digitized media, cognitive systems, mobile learning, and the idea of individual agency (2000→). During these two periods of time, quite different teaching and learning strategies can be articulated: “designed information and teaching” versus “multimodal and distributed designs for learning.” However, most current theories of learning are still founded on theories of meaning developed in an era constituted by SYSTEM 1, and the assumptions of stable systems and the reproduction of forms, processes, and actions. Today, different kinds of platforms, tablets, games, apps, and collaborative problem-solving design have contributed to individual production, new communicative patterns, and information access to such a degree that we could say that “information is no longer the problem.” Information is ubiquitous and cheap. What is at stake is rather to connect people in meaningful communicative settings. The formation and transformation of knowledge and the role of multimodal and distributed designs for learning as a theoretical approach will then be discussed in relation to SYSTEM 2.
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Notes
- 1.
Earlier phases can be described as follows: (1) SOCIALLY DISTRIBUTED EDUCATION (to 1850). For many centuries before industrialization, education was socially distributed in relation to clan and feudal societies, where the mimetic principle (to learn by doing like others and “memorizing” by heart) and the rhetorical tradition (to develop the capacity to speak well according to different social arenas) were the dominating practices; (2) PROTO-SYSTEM (1850–1945), the construction of nations, the beginning of mass education built on logo-centric principles in school textbooks (the verbal language as the way of representing knowledge) and class hierarchies at the beginning of the industrialized era.
- 2.
Today, we can notice a vivid discussion about metaphors such as “storing” in relation to memory. Critics see memory as an active practice to produce meaning rather than a passive practice to “store and retrieve” memories. And some would rather talk about “remembering/memorizing” than “memory.”
- 3.
Vygotskij himself used the term “historical/cultural” perspective, which later was changed to a “sociocultural” perspective in the West.
- 4.
- 5.
I have been inspired by the French philosopher Ricœur (1983). His reading of time in Augustine and poetics in Aristotle resulted in the volumes about time and narrative.
- 6.
Both games and simulations may be seen as representations of the real world. However, there are some specific differences between them: games are based on a rather coherent organizing principle, while simulations often are based on a representation of a part of something.
- 7.
See, for example, Collaborative Assessment Alliance, which started after the development of twenty-first century skills and the new PISA directives. In Sweden, Stockholm University is one of the partners, working with different communities where teachers collaboratively develop different (virtual) tasks in relation to the curriculum. Also here, we can make a distinction between the design for learning (making the virtual cases) and the design in learning or the students’ design of their collaborative problem-solving activities.
- 8.
In doing multimodal-oriented empirical research, we can focus on different kinds of material, for example, the communicative processes, but also the representational artefacts/texts.
- 9.
This differs from a structuralist view of the sign, where the sign acquires its meaning from its place in a grammatical structure.
- 10.
This model makes a clear analytical distinction between the primary and secondary transformation unit. Of course, in reality, these two processes can be blurred in different ways.
- 11.
See also Werler and Wulf (2006) and their research about “hidden dimensions in education.”
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Staffan Selander, N. (2016). Conceptualization of Multimodal and Distributed Designs for Learning . In: Gros, B., Kinshuk, ., Maina, M. (eds) The Future of Ubiquitous Learning. Lecture Notes in Educational Technology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-47724-3_6
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