5 - Forms of Presence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 September 2009
Summary
Whereas we usually accept straightaway that knowledge has to do with learning – even though the discussion of how knowledge and learning are related is an issue of concern – the question of the relation between presence and learning more often needs to be explicated. Lave and Wenger (1991) note that cognitive approaches promote a non-personal understanding of learning as universal mechanisms of acquisition and assimilation. On the basis of their theory of situated learning, Lave and Wenger emphasize that learning always takes place as activity by specific people in specific circumstances. Like Lave and Wenger, Dreier points to the fact that most approaches to learning view learning on par with teaching and overlook thereby that these imply two entirely different perspectives on learning and that understanding the former requires that we take the learner's perspective into account. Dreier emphasizes the first-person perspective (1993, 2008) and defines learning as changes in personal participation in social contexts (Dreier 1999). The person in Dreier's theory is not an isolated individual, but is embedded in social practice. I have in the previous chapters been careful not to approach socio-material arrangements from a humanist perspective that a priori defines humans as actors and things and structures and other nonhuman entities as passive tools or constrains for action. This chapter does not diverge from this perspective, but we focus on the human in our analysis and ask how humans are enacted in the spatial arrangements.
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- The Materiality of LearningTechnology and Knowledge in Educational Practice, pp. 137 - 176Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009