Sociocultural Perspectives on TEL & Knowing

Sutherland, R., Lindstrom, B. and Lahn, L. (2009)

Learning and Knowing as Situated and Social Activity

p.40 The basic assumption that learning and knowing are situated in human practices does not only mean that context or situation has an influence. It also reflects a non-dualist ontology that does not dissociate the human from the world, an ontology that says that the person is constituted in social practice; at the same time social practice is constituted in social interaction.

Vygotsky's ZPD discussed this relation between the person and the social context: What the child can perform in collaboration or with assistance at one point he or she later can do on their own. Performance comes before competence, and competencies develop through participation in social practices.

p.41 Lave & Wenger 's LPP as a mechamism of learning. Trajectory of participation is from periphery to the centre of the community, but different people will pursue different trajectories - there is not just one route. Learning is a central dimension of such trajectories of participation.

Learning then, in a sociocultural perspective, is the appropriation and mastering of symbolic/discursive and cultural tools within social practices. This appropriation is a process characterised by increasing coordination between the tools and the user(s) of the tools, from an initial encounter and exploration of the tools to the tools becoming transparent to the user.

Educational Digital Technologies and Learning

Passey (2014) Educational Digital Technologies and Learning.

Begins by explaining that many studies have failed to show that technology specifically enhances learning due to the many variable. But observes that 'inclusive technology enhanced learning' is possible if each person's difference is taken into account.

Learning can be:

• Neurobiological (the way that biological structure enables learning)
• Cognitive (processes that occur internally that constitute ways of learning)
• Emotional (approaches we individually take in understanding and being involved in our own learning, and short- and long-term interests we take in that learning)
• Social (ways that learning occurs in different social settings and circumstances)
• Societal (long-term interests and opportunities that drive our commitment to learning)

p.14: Learning is concerned with choice on the part of the learner; imposing learning through a singular approach or concept or theory may not do this choice justice. When educational digital technologies are involved, choice of learning adopted by the learner becomes not only more important, but provides for more potential - so long as those supporting learning can recognise the potential range of alternatives and options, and these are also made available to the learner.

p.20: Words used to describe learning can be groups into two taxonomies

• higher-level category termes 'aspects' of learning (referring to perspectives, aspects or domains, and
• lower-level category caned 'elements' of learning *referring to much more specific processes of learning within each aspect.

 

Aspects of learning

 

p.21 Megacognitive Concerns - leading to deeper and wider learning

This aspect of learning consists of elements becoming recognised as fundamental to developing 'expert learners', deeper and wider learning, concerned with learning that goes beyond the ability to just memorise facts or understand a topic range. These elements encompass abilities that enable learners to transfer their learning both within and across subject or interest domains, with applications of involvement in real and authentic learning situations.

Three key elements fundamental to effective learning (Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000):

1. Knowing about the 'big picture' - having a sufficient overview of a field to understand how additional details fit within a wider canvas, being able to reposition understanding or ideas on the basis of comparison, contrast, match and integration with that wider picture and building it further.
2. Transfer of learning - recognising that learning in one setting can have potential value in other settings, being able to draw on previous knowledge through a 'past' transfer, or thinking about how to use learning in possible 'future' transfer situations/
3. Reflecting on previous learning - on knowledge and ideas, selecting and accessing appropriate mechanisms to do this, and considering the way new knowledge and ideas fit within an existing canvas, perhaps challenging, adding to or reinforcing previous details.

 p.22 Engaging learners in meaningful and authentic learning is also important (1997).

 p.23 Cognitive Concerns - Content and Process

This aspect concerns elements affecting impact of information or external stimuli on the internal mind, forms of sensory stimuli engaging learners, ways in which information is handled within an existing internal information context, and ways a learner can demonstrate or use acquired learning.

Three distinct areas in cognitive aspect (Childs, 1973):

1. Internalisation - how knowledge and ideas are engaged, and how they are brought into mind
2. Internal cognitive processes - active processes in mind, manipulating knowledge and ideas, allowing them to be considered in the context of existing knowledge and ideas already held in mind, and integrating into a wider learning canvas
3. Externalisation - ways the learner makes their learning known to others.

Internalisation: three fundamental elements:

• Attention - the focus on the activity, willingness to give attention to task, and level of focus on accessible knowledge or ideas.

• Sensory stimulus - the form of accessible knowledge or ideas, and how the learner engages through one or more senses, in turn stimulating interest and interaction. Gardner (1991) identified nine distinctive forms of sensory stimuli:
• Visual
• Auditory
• Kinaesthetic
• Emotional
• Social
• Textual
• Musical
• Interpersonal - interaction between the learner and one or more others
• Intrapersonal - interaction within the mind of the learner, where discussion is internal

• Acquisition or reception - the learner recognises knowledge or ideas have impinged upon the consciousness, are accepted into the mind, in a form that can be taken further and handled through a range of internal cognitive processes.

p.24 Internal cognitive processes: can be defined through:

• Subject knowledge. The educational curriculum requirements across a range of different subject areas in primary and secondary education in England refers to:
• Searching
• Summarising
• Generating or developing ideas
• Hypothesising
• Imagining
• Gaining skills
• Gaining understanding

• Ways knowledge can be handled or manipulated. Using Bloom (1956), knowledge might be handled in six different ways:
• Acquisition
• Comprehension
• Application
• Analysis
• Synthesis
• Evaluation 

• Approaches to thinking and thinking skills.
• Creativity
• Enquiring
• Questioning
• Conceptualising - allowing ideas or knowledge to be shaped within a set of dimensions or criteria
• Comparing
• Reasoning
• Interpreting - allowing understandings to emerge not necessarily stated within originating material

• Elements concerned with memorisation.
• Rehearsal - abilities to consider existing knowledge and ideas, to recognise differences or additions that might be of interest or value, then access these from long or short-term memory.
• Retention - retaining knowledge in memory in appropriate forms, e.g. visual auditory, textual, emotional or social.
• Recall - abilities to recall knowledge and ideas from memory, through associations or hooks from mental schemas.

p.26 Externalisation: forms learners use to externalise their understandings include:

• Writing
• Reporting
• Speaking
• Presenting
• Drawing
• Completing
• Moving - using motor and manipulative skills to move items into order, or to move them into patterns of sequences that show knowledge and understanding

Metacognitive Concerns - Recognising How We Can Learn

This aspect includes elements concerned with ways learners learn to learn and know how to learn. It covers elements describing how learning strategies can be identified, adopted or chosen, or ways information or knowledge are transferred from one scenario or situation to another. Two broad areas and six specific elements (Presseisen, 2001)

• Monitoring task performance - recognising how a task is proceeding:

• Keeping place and sequence - identifying different stages, milestones reached
• Detecting and correcting errors - reflecting on work as it proceeds, reviewing what has been done, identifying errors and correcting them as far as possible
• Pacing of work - using concepts of time and scope, recognising an end point, and at any one time the effort that might be needed to accomplish the task and levels of detail relating to possible scope and quantity of feasible output.

• Selecting and understanding appropriate strategy - having a range of strategies to be drawn on, selected and tried out in the context of any learning task:

• Focusing attention on what is needed - selecting appropriately from a range of strategies, and matching needs of the task with strategies that might be used.
• Relating what is known to material to be learned - using previous experience, drawing on techniques used and applied in those previous situations.
• Testing the correctness of a strategy - recognising if a strategy selected is appropriate, whether a result appears to be feasible, reasonable or correct, and perhaps selecting alternatives allowing feasibility of outcome to be checked. 

Social Concerns - the Roles of Others

This aspect includes elements concerned with ways learners interact with others. Different forms of interaction allow different forms of engagement and output, allowing learners to access or use information, as well as share it, or work co-operatively with others. 

• Pask (1975) identified key roles of social interactions in developing understanding through discussion (where, in a series of interactions, the focus shifts as understanding builds)
• Vygotsky (1978) highlighted the importance of social integration for ideas and knowledge to become learned
• Lave & Wenger (1991) developed the idea of 'communities of practice', and the role that engagement with specific communities have, as well as the roles of discussions and interactions that take textual forms as well as those happening through spoken forms.
• Twining and McCormick (1999) identified 12 different forms of social interaction in which learners might be involved:

• Instruction: a teacher indicates what learners should do, how they should o it, and what is expected as outcomes

• Explanation and illustration: a teacher explains ideas or concepts, verbally, and may illustrate these with gesture, images or other resources

• Direction - a teacher offers overall ideas of what needs to be done, and what is expected, without giving precise detail

• Demonstration: a teacher provides a demonstration as an example of what happens, or what learners should do

• Discussion: a teacher elicits ideas from learners, picks up on specific points, and encourages other learners to contribute ideas or comments

• Scaffolding: a teacher provides a series of steps, or a number of interim stages or frameworks, to help learners approach an activity in a structured way

• Questioning: a teacher asks questions, and elicits responses from learners, either to closed or open questions

• Speculation: a teacher offers a scenario, together with different ideas about outcomes or implications

• Consolidation: a teacher reviews a previous topic or activity, exploring the extent to which learners appear to have remembered details or grasped concepts

• Summarising: a teacher pulls out key points, messages, or ideas, providing an overview as a summary of a topic or activity

• Initiating and guiding exploration: a teacher introduces a topic or activity, and indicates possible ways to explore, with ideas of how to begin or approaches that might be taken

• Evaluating learners' responses: a teacher provides feedback to learner responses, and indicated features concerned with quality of those responses and how improvements might be brought about

Societal Concerns - Long-term Drivers and Purpose

This aspect includes elements concerned with reasons why certain information is selected or recognised as being more fundamentally interesting or useful than other information; reasons concerning how information is perceived in terms of its longer-term interests and potential usefulness within particular societal, cultural or wider environmental contexts. McFarlane (1997) highlights the importance of meaningful and authentic learning, and the need for learners to consider how their learning relates to situations they regard as real, not only in the immediate but also in the longer term.

• Lipman (1995) describes ways learning might relate to learners' concerns abaout caring, defined through five distinctive elements:

• Appreciative - of caring or being cared for
• Active - involving positive action concerned with caring
• Normative - caring thinking considered as a norm or standard
• Effective - feelings or emotions aroused in relation to caring
• Empathetic - empathy (such as agreement, belief, or understanding) associated with caring

• Moseley et al (2005) described four overarching long-term concerns which thinking might be contextualised by learners:

• Education - relevance to other aspects of or longer-term concerns for further involvement in education, or concerned with education in the wider sense
• Citizenship - implications for ways in which people live, relate, or behave within a wider society
• Work - concerned with the realm of work, either in the present, or potentially for the future
• Recreation - related to outside interests, hobbies, or games, concerned more with recreation than with work

 

p.31 Using a Learning Framework to identify where specific elements of learning are located

By detailing the range of elements of learning within each of the broad aspects, and bringing these together into a single framework, the taxonomic representation produced can be used as a way to record elements of learning where evidence indicates uses, outcomes or impacts when certain digital technologies or resources are used, or when a learning activity takes place.

Learning framework showing hotspots reported by teachers when online resources supporting curriculum-wide needs are used to support learning and teaching (Passey, 2011)

Parchoma (2006) A Proposed e-Learning Policy Field

Parchoma, G. (2006) A Proposed e-Learning Policy Field for the Academy. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 18 (3) pp.230-240.

Field theory states that there are three stages to organisational change:

1. Unfreezing: destabilising the status quo
2. Moving: identifying and evaluating the relative strengths of foces within a social field, considering available options and initiating incremental change
3. Refreezing: process of returning to a sense of stability in the changed environment

Critiques of field theory highlight the following weaknesses in its use as a model for understanding organisational change:

1. It takes a linear, simplistic and mechanistic approach
2. It can only support small-scale, incremental change and is therefore not appropriate for large-scale transformational change is needed
3. It naively excludes issues of power and politics within organisations
4. It constitutes a top-down approach to change management, thus lacking relevance to the culture of contemporary organisations

More recently these critiques have been countered, and Parchoma argues that it is a useful framework for understanding the disruptive potential of e-Learning in the academy.

The Knowledge Economy

As increasing numbers of countries move towards knowledge-based economies, the importance of human capital - shareable knowledge, leadership capacity and creativity of a human involved in creative activity - will continue to grow. In the foreseeable future, workers who create and use knowledge to add new value to products and services will be "a prominent and perhaps the dominant group in the workforce" (Alcaly, 2003, p.9). The growing demand for higher education will therefore place significant physical demands on tertiary institutions in terms of rising enrolments and increasing numbers of adult learners, and the competing responsibilities in the lives of adult learners will lead to increased demand for distance learning options.

Disruptive technologies and organisational failure

A disruptive technology is defined as any technology capable of "overturning the established order" (Norton, 2000, p.129). The "irony" of disruptive technologies is that "in the face of a disruptive technology, good management can contribute to organisational failure" (p.130). The reason for failure is that disruptive technologies:

• do not serve the needs of existing organisatianl structures
• do not support existing business incentives
• do not provide avenues to "increase profit margins on existing products", and 
• do not meet the needs of an organisation's most valued customers (p.130).

Disruptive technologies gain advantage via newcomers’ creations of “bare-bones product[s],” initially distributed to “the low end of the market” (p. 130). The newcomers “then improve the
package over time while still charging a lower price. At some point the over-served established market will start to turn to the minimalist newcomer, and all bets are off for the leaders” (Christensen, p. xvii).

A parallel in Higher Education

To date, Faculty responses to e-Learning competition from the private sector tend to lack a sense of urgency "due to [faculty] belief in the quality and rigor of their own programs" (Olcott & Scmidt, p.269). However, leaders of traditional universities may wish to consider the extent to which e-Learning is driving a "transformational market" within Higher Education (Olcott & Schidt, p.269). The educational sector cannot hope to escape the influence of the new economy, including its disruptive technologies; therefore, universities may need to consider how to adapt to this influence.

Many new players, institutions that specialise in e-Learning (e.g. Phoenix and Athabasca) have focused their attention on the least profitable "customers" in the educational sector: undergraduates. They are the least profitable because they do not contribute to the "most lucrative part of the market addressed by the traditional universities" (Archer, Garrison & Anderson, 1999, p.18). As research is the currency of traditional universities, the predominant source of tenure and promotion for faculty, and as undergraduate students rarely contribute to this currency, emphasis on undergraduate teaching may be less valued. Those who cannot access a conventional university program for geographic, economic or academic reasons are a particularly unprofitable group, but their educational aspirations have created an opportunity for the emergence of distance education as a disruptive technology. As long as distance education almost exculsively served this unprofitable market segment, within traditinoal universities it was marginalised in continuing education and of little interest to the academy at large.

However, a driving force behind the increased emphasis on the development of an entrepreneurial culture with the academy has been accelerated competition among universities. While traditional universities have focused on securing funds for recruiting renowned professors and the most talented students, newcomers in the arena of higher education have focused their efforts on providing access to higher education via e-Learning.

External social forces

Five powerful forces warrant consideration in change management strategies because the currently exert influence on a "variety of social, economic, governmental and legislative activities around the world" (Lincoln, 2001, para 1).

Postmodernism: influences the way complex problems, such as whether or how to embed an e-Learning initiative into the core activity of the academy, are articulated, analyzed and resolved. This enables a deeper sense of the issues to be obtained. A deeper sense of the issues involved in e-Learning initiatives in traditional universities involves an analysis of potential impacts on existing academic culture, as well as their alignment with and attunement to emergent social, cultural, economic, educational and organisational trends.

The Interpretive Turn: is an acknowledgement that "facts are only 'facts' within some theoretical framework, and that much of what passes for science is, in fact, some assertion within a theoretical discourse system" (Lincoln, 2001, para 1). Within theoretical discourse systems, social constructivism posits that two kinds of realities exist side by side, and operate within the same domain:

1. the first reality resides in tangible objects, sites, and events, and is peopled by individuals and groups with specific social interests
2. the second reality is constituted in the minds of...stakeholders, and is driven by the sense-making and meaning-imputation activities of the human minds (The interpretive turn, para 1)

Traditionally the ability to define independent knowledge has been the sole privilege of scientists working in research universities. But "in the wake of postmodernism...the earlier division of scientific knowledge into distinct disciplines is no longer generally accepted" (Tjeldvoll, 1998, para 3). In this reality, the discipline-based organizational structures of the academy may not be well-aligned to meet the knowledge needs of a global learning society. Interdisciplinary-collaborative research, teaching, and learning initiatives, which are enabled by e-learning solutions, may be better aligned to global knowledge construction because these initiatives include multiple perspectives, broader access to current theory, and therefore, wider-ranging critiques.

Identity Politics: issues of identity and ethnicity are deeply connected to issues involving information technologies because both are “social construct[s] that might evolve in one context and change in another” (Zurawski, para. 2). Therefore, it is important to “understand the relationship between cultural identity and information technologies and how the dynamic of the information age affects the collective identities of groups and their modes of self-organization” (Zurawski, para. 3).


Globalisation and the Post-Colonial Critique: While e-learning policy makers need to be cognizant of the potential effects of exporting “Western forms of thinking,” which may “impinge” (Lincoln, Globalization, para. 2) upon learners’ lives in international contexts, it is possible to include opportunities for critique of Western ways of thinking and respect for international contexts, and as a
result, promote East-West, North-South dialogue. However, Variant levels of faculty expertise in cross-cultural issues and awareness of post-colonial critiques regarding “negative impacts on indigenous universities” (Hanna, 2000, p. 343) may be restraining forces in the success of e-learning.

Potentially restraining forces within the Academy

 

• The need to reconsider existing residency requirements (DiPaolo, 2003; Olcott & Schidt, 2004)
• Imbalanced research and teaching reward systems (Archer, Garrison & Anderson, 1999; Boyer, 1990)
• Problematic intellectual property policies (DiPaolo, 2003; Hilton & Neal, 2001; Tallman, 2000)
• Insufficient application of research-based distributed learning strategies (bates, 2000)

A Proposed e-Learning Policy Field

Conclusion

 
The relative strengths of driving and restraining forces remain context-specific and time-sensitive.
Furthermore, existing and emergent forces, which are not identified in this field analysis, may be
particularly formidable in some contexts. Analysis of the context of an individual institution may benefit from the application or adaptation of the posited policy field, but the outcomes of such an analysis at any given time are not predictable.

Why is there such disparity in approaches to teaching and learning?

I wrote this post on the week 3 forum in response to the following suggestion: 'The future is here, it's just not very evenly distributed' (William Gibson):

Perhaps one reason for this is that in education 'nobody dies' - i.e. the worst that can happen is that students learn nothing. In pharmaceutical research, if a drug is found to be harmful it is instantly withdrawn. With car safety testing, a new improvement is quickly made mandatory - or at the very least is implemented by most manufacturers to enable them to argue that their car is as safe as that of their competitors. But in HE it doesn't seem to matter if one teacher is amazing, innovative and produces satisfied students while another stands at the the front and talks at them for an hour.

Perhaps the growth of market forces in the global HE market and arrival of many more private providers will finally tip the balance away from subject specialist knowledge and towards good teaching practice. If students/customers are increasingly able to vote with their feet, universities will need to articulate their value propositions more clearly to respond to their students'/customers' needs and wants.

In the light of the Fullan article about Steve Jobs' approach to product design, another thing springs to mind. Jobs is credited for initiating the revolution in 'consumer tech' - in other words, products driven primarily by what consumers want rather than what companies want to sell them. Jobs' touch of genius was his ability to predict and create something that consumers wanted before they knew what it was. If we were to translate this concept into Higher Education, what would the revolution in 'consumer education' look like?

A large percentage of the current provision could be viewed as constituting the range of average, tried-and-tested products that universities want to sell, rather than the cutting-edge, innovative 'iPad-type' products that consumers really desire. What would these educational products look like? Highly interactive, personalised courses that you could modify and adapt according to your personal tastes? Where the curriculum was negotiated between student and teacher? Where the delivery of the course was tailored to your needs, incorporating whatever blend of technology and face-to-face that you wanted?

Or will it take another Steve Jobs to invent something that we can't currently conceive of wanting, but which will revolutionise Higher Education when it arrives?

Week 3: Fullen (2013) Design Principles and Change Knowledge

The article begins by summarising Steve Jobs' and Apple's approach to design, and the importance of simplicity - or 'simplexity' (making complex things simple). However, despite the apparent ease of use of products such as the iPad by children (and even orangutans), Fullen points out the "the education revolution is not a given" and that "even the most sophisticated technology still needs to e guided by strong pedagogy". Fullen highlights a Canadian study which showed that while children could be technologically adept at using a tool, but "pedagogically clueless with respect to getting the best out of it".

Fullen also draws attention to the seductive power of a technology - such as Apple's iBooks - because of its appealing looks. He points out that the technology (presumably in the context of its application in learning) "never is great unless guided by a wise pedagogue", and that consequently "we need to figure out the new role of teachers in this new learning equation". Fullen also makes the observation that "the scariest part about the new technologies is that they give people the false sense that they are learning something just by using an elegant machine".

Fullen believes that if we can effectively marry great technology with great pedagogy then "we may produce creative learners in vast numbers". He believes that we are in teh early stages of Christensen and Raynor's "disruptive innovation" paradigm - i.e. at the beginning of a new improvement cycle.

Interestingly, he points out that Steve Jobs was dismissive of the idea that technology could transform education. He was more concerned with the practicalities of the iPad solving the need for kids to carry around heavy bags full of textbooks.

Fullen highlights the six common factors of rapidly successful innovations (as stated by Adrian Slywotsky) as:
 

1. magnetic

2. hassle free

3. have strength of backstory

and focus on:

4. trigger

5. trajectory

6. variation

He identifies the biggest obstacles to change as inertia, skepticism and indifference, and that "great demand creators eliminate or reduce the hassles that make most products and services inconvenient, costly, unpleasant and frustrating".

• always try to figure out what people want (before they do)
• make it easy for them to experience it hassle free and as something irresistibly engaging

This article seems to be a little too 'familiar' and conclusive - e.g. 'These days the big need in education is to make it more engaging' - says who? Supported by what evidence?

 

Fullen cites Hattie's argument that technology is much less important than teachers, and that it is teachers who are the main change agents. The main difference in a world of all-pervasive technology it to place increased emphassis on learning as opposed to teaching. In this 'flipped' pedagogy, "students are knowledge workers, learning to learn and think better" and "teachers see assessment as feedback about their impact and engage in dialogue with students about their aspirations and progress" (Fullen, 2013, p.67-68)

Week 2: Cook 7 Brown (1999) Bridging Epistemologies: The Generative Dance between Organisational Knowledge and Organisational Knowing

Organisation Science, Vol. 10, No. 4. pp.381-400.

Epistemology = questions what knowledge is and how it is acquired.

Treating knowledge as something people possess = the "epistemology of possession". But this way of understanding knowledge does not take into account the knowing that resides in the practice  of groups and individuals. Hence the authors argue that "knowing as action calls for an "epistemology of practice"".

The authors argue that there are four different types of knowledge, explicit, tacit, individual and group, each distinctly different from the other and with each fulfilling a function that the others cannot. 'Knowledge' and 'knowing' are also understood as distinctly different, with knowledge positioned as a tool of knowing, and with each enabling the other. If knowing is interpreted as one aspect of the way in which we interact with each other and physical world, then the interaction between knowing and knowledge "can generate new knowledge and new ways of knowing". The authors label this interaction a generative dance, and believe it to be a powerful driver of innovation in organizations.

Of particular significance is the authors' statement that "harnessing this innovation calls for organizational and technological infrastructures that support the interplay of knowledge and knowing". The use of social media tools in organizations can be seen as constituting precisely this sort of infrastructure, as these tools enable employees and managers to access, manage and make use of the "intellectual capital" of the organization. Cook and Brown's work also positions the need to understand knowledge and knowing as core competencies, and it can be argued that effective use of social tools for knowledge management and curation is increasingly a key element in supporting effective work and innovation in organizations.

'Explicit' knowledge can be understood as "knowledge that can be spelled out or formalised"
'Tacit' knowledge is "associated with skills or know-how"
The authors highlight Nonaka's belief that although individuals' tacit knowledge may constitute the centre of the process of knowledge creation, practical benefits are only reaped when individuals externalise this knowledge.

Cook and Brown observe the tendency in the literature around organizational knowledge to privilege 'individual' over 'group' knowledge, and 'explicit' over 'tacit' knowledge, and to treat all knowledge as being the same. Ultimately, they believe that failing to acknowledge the distinctions between different types of knowledge severely limits the ability to assess how individuals and groups acquire, maintain and apply competencies.

The authors give an example in the form of the sentence "Robert is fixing cars". This sentence indicates both a knowledge that Robert possesses and an action informed by that knowledge. In terms of knowledge, an accurate account of what Robert is doing requires acknowledgement of both his knowledge and the actions which stem from this. That which is possessed is referred to by the authors as 'knowledge', and that which constitutes action is labelled 'knowing'. While individuals and groups make use of both explicit and tacit knowledge in what they do, Cook and Brown argue that "not everything they know how to do...is explicable solely in terms of the knowledge they possess".

Cook and brown believe that unpacking the relationship between these two epistemologies enables a clearer understanding of:

• "how individuals and groups can draw on tacit and explicit knowledge simultaneously
• how what individuals know tacitly can be made useful to groups
• how explicit instructions can be made more useful aids for the development of tacit skills"(1999: 383).

They authors also explain the generative aspect of this relationship between possession and practice - what they refer to as the 'generative dance' - by stating that "the source of new knowledge and knowing lies in the use of knowledge as a tool of knowing within situated interaction with the social and physical world" (1999: 383). In other words, the application of knowledge in a given situation and context leads to the creation of new knowledge. The ability to identify and make use of this 'dance' is deemed essential in understanding key aspects of learning, innovation and effectiveness.

Explicit vs Tacit knowledge

Cartesian logic - "I think therefore I am" - has informed the conventional understanding of knowledge and the idea that knowledge "is something that is held in the head of an individual and is acquired, modeled, and expressed most accurately in the most objective and explicit terms possible" (1999: 384). But Cook & Brown argue that the dominance of the traditional Cartesian epistemology has hampered a clearer understanding of the distinction between 'tacit' and 'explicit' knowledge. They give the example of riding a bike, stating that explicit knowledge alone would not enable a person to ride - the person would also need the tacit knowledge acquired from having applied that knowledge in the given situation of trying to ride.

Individual vs knowledge

The importance of real-world problems in teaching professional practice

The article by Donald Schon highlights the problem in professional education whereby 'what aspiring practitioners need most to learn, professional schools seem least able to teach'. This made me think of the Lave article and his argument for the importance of situated learning - i.e the need for learning to take place in the context of real-world problems.

When I write the Professional Practice unit for the MA in Digital Scholarship I think it will essential for the curriculum to be situated within the relevant areas of professional practice of the students. Wherever possible, students must be presented with opportunities to apply theoretical knowledge to real-world problems so that they appreciate the 'higher ground' of solving complex problems using relevant theories and the 'lower ground' of murky, everyday problems that are more difficult to solve.

The Schon article makes me understand and appreciate the significant differences between 'theory' and 'practice'.  There is a need for both in teaching professional practice, and it is important that one is not prioritised over the other.

I also found interesting Schon's observation that in the early years of the 20th century 'professionalisation' meant replacing artistry by systematic, preferably scientific, knowledge. And yet as confidence in professional knowledge has grown, 'educators have begun once again to see artistry as an essential component of professional competence'. There is a clear link to the Lave article here with regard to the notion of apprenticeship. My personal feeling after reading both Schon and Lave is that the benefits of the apprenticeship model identified by Lave - i.e that apprentices learned not only the specific knowledge but also a range of other 'life' skills - seems to provide a more rounded educational experience than the professional, research-driven university model.