Posted on by Casper Hernández Cordes

An economy of emotions and actions? Part 2 of 4

Part 2. Forging a concept: “Proposition”

(Continued from: An economy of emotions and actions? Part 1 of 4)

What I am basically trying to do here, is to find a way of talking about the processes through which ‘something new’ comes into being in a collective. I am thinking about all the small interactions, where someone is coming up with something that others will eventually take part in, somehow – or not. And I am in particular thinking about the situations where the people involved come to consider this something, someone has come up with, as valuable, in some sense.

Now, of course in order to pull this project off, there are some questions to raise. First of all, I would have to find out how to know that “something new has come into being”. I would have to find ways of pointing to specific actions that would convey that a process of becoming of some sort is actually taking place. And I would have to find a way of knowing if and how people consider this new practice or pattern of behavior valuable.

Going back to the question of coming up with something, let me develop a little on a concept I would like to talk about as ‘a proposition‘. As I see this process, what happens is that someone comes up with something, whether it be an idea for a collective activity, or a certain way of performing an action that has an implication on the group. Someone is proposing something, and then others can chose to react in whichever way, related to the proposition.

There are three points I would like to go a little into detail with in this regard.

First of all, I would like to make it crystal clear that the concept of proposition that I am developing here, does not necessarily have to do with an individual’s conscious intention. The interesting thing about these processes resides rather in the fact that the act of proposing can take place as a kind of spinoff of collective interaction. I guess I am not alone in having experienced tons of situations, where one is taking part in a collaborative process, and where new ideas seems to be spawning out of the blue, so to speak. Afterwards, it becomes very difficult to point out exactly who came up with what. The concept of proposition, in the sense I am trying to develop here, does not exclude individual intentionality. However, it is my impression that the instances of proposition that eventually will gain more weight and durability in a collective are those who have been developed in a collective process.

Another important point I would like to make has to do with intentionality itself. What I find interesting about these processes of coming up with something new in a collective is that they are not necessarily coming from what we would usually think of as goal oriented behavior. In many cases, new ideas are simply popping up by chance, or because someone made what at that point seemed to be a ‘mistake’. These kinds of generative moments are commonplace in artistic processes, especially in those who involve improvisation. The point I am trying to make is that a proposition does not have to come from some sort of problem solving setup. This doesn’t mean, however that a given let’s call it ‘spontaneously spawned’ proposition can not at a late stage help the collective solve some kind of problem.

The third point I would like to make has to do with the way in which something new pops up. I guess the standard image that one would have in mind while reading what I have said so far would be that a proposition would come in the form of verbal language. Indeed, a proposition could take the form of a spoken phrase. A kid in the reception class might thus choose to put forth a proposition to his schoolmates by uttering the words: “Let’s play superheroes. I am spiderman”. He might also simply start climbing up and down whatever is climbable in the surroundings while shooting imagined cobwebs at everyone else. These two forms of proposition are obviously sharing a lot of traits, and in the unlikely case that both would be present in a given context, it would be interesting to find out whether and how the other people’s reactions to each would differ. The verbal ‘version’ of the invitation calls for some kind of response, imposing a risk for the ‘proposer‘ of being rejected. The nonverbal version of the invitation, on the other hand, might inspire others to join, in a risk-free way, and it might also not be understood as an invitation at all. In any case, it makes sense, I would argue, not to draw a sharp line between verbal and nonverbal when it comes to these kinds of proposition.

The argument can be taken even further. The example above – an invitation to a role play – is of course rather well suited for an interpretation that would point to some kind of human agency. After experiencing the situations described, there is a chance that people observing them would independently come to a conclusion that could be expressed in the sentence: “He invites them to play”. Or: “He acts in a way that they might see as an invitation”. This is because there is a focus on what is going on in the interaction between the people involved. What I would like to do here, is to take the argument further and also include the role that things might be playing in the processes where ‘something new’ is coming up in a collective. Taking into account the role of things, – and this means also including questions of space(s), technologies, clothes, etc. – the concept of proposition I am forging out here would also serve to say something about situations, where something new occurs as a consequence of some kind of interaction between some person(s) and the things around them.

To sum it up, the concept of proposition I am working on here has to do with processes where something new is being introduced in a collective. These are processes stemming from collective interaction – although they are not excluding individual agency. They are occurring spontaneously and by chance, in a way akin to the improvisational forms of art, although they might also be linked with some form of intentionality. They can be expressed through a wide range of modalities: verbal, as well as nonverbal, and they can unfold in interactions between people as well as between people and things.

These will be my conclusions for now on this topic, and I would like to invite you to come with comments, ideas, critique and suggestions below.

The concept of proposition is of course just a first step in these processes that I am trying to understand. The question about what happens after a proposition has been made is the theme for my next blog post, where I will draw in Gebauer & Wulf and their notion of mimesis.
The theoretical framework they are proposing is very useful, I believe, to describe what could be termed the production and reproduction of sociality.

With Gebauer and Wulf, I feel I can come a long way to understand what is going on in the process where a given proposition comes to take root in a collective. In order to try to understand what is going on, when some propositions are being accepted, while others are rejected, it makes a lot of sense to draw on David Graeber’s book “Towards an anthropological theory of value”. This is what I am planning on doing in a fourth blog post.

For now: Please share your thoughts, comments, etc., below, I would sincerely appreciate that!

Posted on by Casper Hernández Cordes · 2 Comments

An economy of emotions and actions? Part 1 of 4

Part 1: Power or humor?

In a few days, I will be starting off my field study. As you might have read in an earlier blog post (in Danish), as a part of my studies in Educational Anthropology, I am going to conduct a field work study in a ‘reception class’, or in Danish: “Modtageklasse”.

The fundamental question I am asking, here again, is: How do we build collectives? My hope is that the context of the reception class can help me expand and refine this question, and potentially come up with something relevant to say.

A reception class is a special class where the children of newcomers are being placed until the have a level of Danish that enables them to take part in a standard class, with Danish children.

In these classes focus is, according to official policy, on language acquisition, but in the practical everyday life, according to one of my informants, the teachers spend a lot of time and energy on what she labels as ‘opdragelse’, which could be translated to ‘upbringing’, ‘disciplining’ or ‘(moral) education’.

At the place of my fieldwork, I am going to be part of two reception classes, a ‘class zero’ for kids at age 6-7, and a first grade, for kids at age 8 – 9.

The reason why this particular place, or what I would like to call ‘social ecosystem’, is interesting, is because it exists somewhat at the edge of some profoundly rooted practices. From the first day at school, a child brought up in Denmark will already have a pretty clear picture about what it means to ‘do school’. On the other hand, children in the reception class – newly arrived from all over the world – will have all sorts of ideas about ‘doing school’. But they are probably rather clueless when it comes to the specific Danish way of doing things. In the social ecosystem of the reception class, in order for the teachers to ‘do school’ the Danish way, these otherwise firmly rooted practices will have to surface. What is expected from a pupil in a Danish classroom has to be made explicit, somehow.

At the same time, the reception class is – in general – a place where teachers and pupils cannot be assumed to share the same language. So how do the teachers come about making the Danish way of doing school explicit, if they can’t use words? This is the second aspect that makes this particular social ecosystem so interesting to me. In an ordinary class, it can’t be said that processes of making the school’s expectations explicit are completely absent. On the contrary. In my own experience (through my numerous visits as a workshop facilitator), classroom interaction is full of examples of teachers – and pupils themselves – making clear what’s expected. In these cases, however, the preferred channel of communication is verbal language. This doesn’t mean that nonverbal means of expression are absent. The messages conveyed through a look, a facial gesture, a certain tone of voice, etc. are omnipresent. Still, the use verbal language seems to have the final ‘say’ in these contexts. My impression is that in the reception class, things are different.

If you are still with me so far, dear reader, you might sound a lot to you as if I am interested in questions of disciplining, coercion, power, etc. These are obvious questions to raise in an institutional context like the School. Afterall, the kids are not there out of their own choice. They are forced to. They are not the ones deciding what to do, how and when. On the other hand, the teachers themselves are submitted to all kinds of directives, policies, etc., ‘from above’. And so on. And behind, underneath everything, if you – teacher, pupil or policymaker alike – do not comply with what’s expected, the ultimate violence of the State is lurking.

This is all probably very true, and it’s definitely an important aspect of the context I am going to be a part of. However, these questions have been dealt with in a vast quantity of scholarly works already.

What I am trying to say is that, even though these structures of power are present, and even though people are to a large degree submitted to them, there are nevertheless a lot of things going on in the day to day routines that can be said to represent some kind of value to the people involved. Things that the people involved would talk about using words like ‘creativity’, ‘curiosity’, ‘humor’, ‘surprise’, ‘play’, etc.

In sum, what I am thinking about here is a capacity that people – even though they are submitted to structures that they cannot really fundamentally change – have to contribute to the shaping of the contexts they are part of, by coming up with all kinds of what I would call propositions.

 

Posted on by Casper Hernández Cordes · 2 Comments

Is Academia really that UNIKE?

Rapidly written impressions from a first day at the conference UNIKE, Copenhagen 15-17 June 2016.

My first positive surprise: I had expected long, compact, academic talks with very little audacity and thinking out of the box. And I had expected to see a homogenous crowd of scholars all focused on furthering their own career. What I actually saw whas a very diverse group of people from all over the world, many of which seeming to genuinely being ready to go all-in to rethink the current paradigm in Higher Education.
Here are some of my take-aways from the day.

Winter is coming…

Ove K. Pedersen’s opening talk was enlightning, although at times a little repetitive. The basic message he got through to me was about the way that the current transformations in Higher Education throughout the Western world follow parallel tracks although – at the same time – these transformations are happening in nationally unique ways, according to historical aspects in each country. The same transnational trend where universities are being urged to find alternative ressources in public-private partnerships, for instance, is being played out in different ways: partnerships are being created, but there are different national ideas about whom is eligible for being a partner. In what Pedersen terms as a US-Germany model, partnerships are being made between universities and the military industrial complex, and not with think tanks. In the Nordic model it’s the other way around. The difference has to do with the way universities have historically been conceived of in the different countries. In US-Germany, the raison d’être of universities is linked with questions of national security and industrial power, whereas in the Nordic states the link is with policies of national welfare and wellbeing. According to Ove K Pedersen. I guess, the good news is that although winter certainly is coming, it’ll strike us differently according to which kingdom we’re serfs to.

To make a connection with the theme of the UNiKE conference, I think that the perspectives that Pedersen has brought to the table can be summed up to a question of how the universities are to a heavy extend submitted to national agendas. Even in a postmodern, postindustrial – and whatever post- you want to add – globalized world. In order to rethink higher education, if we take Pedersen’s points for granted, there is a need for rethinking the relation to the State and the way in which universities are submitted to these national ideologies, influencing the knowledge production i certain directions.

In other words: can a new kind of university – or any other institutioanlisation of a human activity – be concieved in a way where it would be independent of the State and/or the Industry?

This question is – to my understanding – an underlying subject for the group of scholars engaged in one of the 6 themes of the conference, under the headline “Market driven or open-ended higher education?” After listening to the five presentations – nicely orchestrated according to a classical academic hierarchy, first 3 short ‘vignettes’ by the phd-students, and then two heavily loaded presentations by two ‘real’ scholars – I felt a little betrayed by the title. None of the five presenters spend much energy even on coming up with what they understand by ‘market’ or ‘market-driven’. However, I found the presentations genuinely inspirational.

First, Jan Masschelein’s presentation: ‘Excellence or regard? Reclaiming the university as a site for collective public study’. What can I say? The title alone simply inspires! From my own experience with the art world, I can only say that the tyranny of ‘excellence’ is not only weighing on Accademia. Much of what Masschelein talked about in terms of Higher Education, from the concept of ‘the individualized personal learner’, ‘the individual researcher’, to his establishment of a clear connection between excellence, productivity and competition, the exact same thoughts can be applied to the art world and its educational institutions. Indeed, the same perverting tendencies are at play in art ‘production’, where the concept of ‘excellence’ is hooked up with the notion of the aesthetics of the genius, the lone artist sitting in his ivory tower atelier conceiving godlike, highly original works of art, aimed at an anonymous, but awestrong, mass public, craving for enlightenment.

As an alternative to the individualistic employability and product oriented, excellency ridden higher education, Masschelein envisions an alternative inspired by the Universitas Studii of the middle ages in Europe. I wont go into details with his proposition, and I recommend that you check out this text of Masschelein that he provided for the conference (see reference below). Here are some of the keywords from my notes: open ended, flat hierarchy, imaginative investigation, studium – not bildung, existential questions regarding our common world.

What we – here I am referring to the Summer University initiative – can learn from Masschelein is a suggestion for a model to imitate. What it doesn’t answer is how to organize this, and I am left with a doubt whether this seemingly golden age of academia was actually simply a passtime exclusively accesible for a small class of privileged people.

In her talk entitled “Pedagogies of pluriversality” Sarah Amsler attacked the tendency of the current university for, as she termed it, providing prepacked intellectual commodities. Her presentation was rather fast paced, causing a certain numbing in this listener, and I am therefore not sure that I can refer her ideas as faithfully as I would want. However, here are some of the scraps, I did collect. What I heard Amsler say, is that education as an institutionalized practice has developed in a direction, where it’s simply not sustainable anymore, and we should simply “let the educational ship sink”. In her plead for “other kinds of learning” she talked about ‘unlearning’, ‘counter-hegemonic learning’, ‘epistemic disobedience’, and ‘cognitive and educational justice’. As I didn’t feel completely confident with my own capacity for storing the 500 words per second pace of the presentation, I would rather if I could get access to the presentation on paper before concluding anything substantial. For now, I can just say that the scraps i did collect from the talk really resonate with many of the thoughts I am having myself, in connection with my engagement with ‘the Summer University’. From a perspective of a hands-on approach to this initiative, I think that what we can draw from Amsler is an arsenal of intellectual ammunition (and not prepacked commodities) to think with in our development of a conceptual framework.

As the title of my text insinuates, I would like to challenge the connotation that ‘UNIKE’ calls for. Although there were participants at the conference voicing heretical questions whether we actually need universities at all – answering them immediately in the positive, though – what I felt was a general anxiety. The idea of an open ended university, based on the idea of a hierarchical flattening, and  a blurring of the borders between who’s inside – who are undeniably gatekeepers, and undeniably privileged (although increasingly precarious) – and who’s outside. When this discussion is taken exclusively by those who are inside, as is the case at the UNIKE conference, I can’t see the discussion if not in a slight pseudo light. These heretical ideas about university, when proposed by insiders, cannot be understood otherwise than as an existential threat to them. And I can’t help feeling that these discussions will always have a certain hollowness to them. It might not be the organizer’s point, but the uniqueness alluded to in the title of the conference, does it basically have to do with an underlying idea about scholars being unique, and having a special, officially endorsed, access to real knowledge?

To break up this basic contradiction, I believe that a key question has to do with the relation between knowledge and economy. These are the two last letters of the conference’s acronym, and I came to think that there needs to be an ‘S’ added to it. That would kind of destroy the sexiness of it, but ‘UNISKE’ would definitely rule out the elitist suspicion I touched on above. My point is that without rethinking Economy, it doesn’t make much sense to try to rethink Knowledge Economy. What I heard as a refrain throughout the day was a call for more funding, and since the market was unanimously staged as a bad thing, we were left with the State, as a (sole) source for funding. However, – echoing Amsler’s sinking educational ship (quoting to Gustavo Estava)- I simply do not see a possibility for any change towards an economic framework for a new meaningful way to conceive the university based on funding from the State in the near – or far – future. It’s not gonna happen. This is where the ‘S’ comes into the picture. In order to rethink thinking and knowledge, we have to rethink the relationship between the economical and the social. Many of the propositions at the conference pointed towards what I would call a ‘Social Knowledge Economy’. How can we synthesize these propositions into viable alternatives/ parallel structures to the existing way?

 

Maaschelein (2015) Lessons of/for Europe Reclaiming the School and the University. In Gielen: No culture, no Europe : on the foundation of politics. Amsterdam: Valiz.

Posted on by Casper Hernández Cordes

Policy, penge og fri forskning

Hvad sker der med de gode intentioner om at skabe en bedre folkeskole når de rammer policy og penge? Jeg har netop læst et nyudgivet speciale fra RUC, og jeg har fundet stor inspiration til teoretiske og metodologiske overvejelser. Desværre bliver den teoretiske ramme og den metodologiske tilgang brugt på en skuffende måde, når det kommer til selve arbejdet med empirien.

Specialet hedder Skoleelevers interaktion på tværs af kontekster og er skrevet af Kirsti Astrid Borch Sørensen, som afslutning på en MA i kommunikation på Roskilde Universitetscenter.

Sørensen har i et feltstudie i en 4. klasse undersøgt elevernes læring i forbindelse med et besøg på Experimentarium. Sørensen vil i dette speciale beskrive to processer. Den første har at gøre med elevernes arbejde med at tilegne sig naturfaglig viden gennem arbejdet i klassen og i Experimentarium. Den anden proces har at gøre med Sørensens udvikling af et forslag til et læringsdesign, som skal give Experimentarium input til at forbedre deres tilbud. Det er indforstået, at Sørensen i samme forbindelse hermed vil køre sig selv i stilling til en mulig karriere hos Experimentarium.

Det er ikke svært at få øje på nogle interessekonflikter i denne konstruktion og det er Sørensen da også selv opmærksom på. I de videregående uddannelser er der en generel udvikling i retning af, hvad en tidligere undervisningsminister kaldte ‘fra forskning til faktura’ i en bevægelse mod, hvad kritiske røster taler om som en kommercialisering af forskningen. Sørensen har valgt at tone sit arbejde i retning af en kommerciel anvendelse, og selvom hun slår fast at hun er bevidst om farerne, vil jeg alligevel argumentere, nedenfor, for at hun plumber i.

Teorier og praksis

Jeg har læst Sørensens speciale, fordi hun behandler en problemstilling, som ligger meget tæt op af, hvad jeg selv vil arbejde med i mit feltstudie som jeg starter på i efteråret 2016. Det er særligt hendes fokus på multimodalitet og hendes brug videoobservation som metode som har vækket min nysgerrighed. Jeg har fundet stor inspiration i hendes tekst, og jeg skal med det samme understrege, at selvom jeg vil lægge en kritisk vinkel på nogle af hendes resultater, så har jeg stor respekt for det arbejde hun har lagt i det, og jeg anerkender den kompleksitet, som arbejdet med at skrive et speciale indebærer.

Det er særligt den teoretiske og metodiske ramme, som jeg henter inspiration i, i positiv forstand, mens jeg i selve den måde, som Sørensen kobler teori og empiri via det analytiske arbejde finder en anden slags inspiration,  – denne gang med negativt fortegn.

Fra Lave & Wenger henter hun teorier om læring i kontekst, og gennemgår begreber som ‘legitim perifær deltagelse’, ‘meningsforhandling’, ‘tingsliggørelse’ mv. Lave og Wengers læringsteorier er meget brugt i Danmark, i de pædagogiske fag. Jeg synes, der er rigtig mange gode elementer i deres tænkning, og har selv refereret til den i mine hidtidige tekster. Det særligt vigtige i deres bidrag til læringstænkningen er for mig at se, at de bryder med den kognitivistiske forståelse af læring – som noget der foregår inde i et individ – og plæderer for en forståelse af læring som noget der finder sted i en social kontekst – som noget der foregår i en gruppe. Der er skrevet en hel del kritik af Lave & Wengers teorier. Det som de særligt kritiseres for er, at der ikke indenfor denne teoretiske ramme er mulighed for at behandle spørgsmålet om magt. (Se nederst i denne tekst for links til tekster som diskuterer kritikken af teorien om den legitime perifære deltagelse.) Særligt teorien om tingsliggørelse har relevans for Sørensens arbejde, og uden at jeg skal gå meget i detaljer med denne teori kan citere hendes parafrase af Wenger (2004):

Begrebet [tingsliggørelse] dækker over, at noget gøres til et konkret, materielt objekt uden egentlig at være det. Når vi tingsliggør, projicerer vi vores meninger ud i verden, og som følge heraf opfatter vi dem som noget, der eksisterer i verden, og noget der har en ’virkelighed’ i sig selv

For så vidt den metodologiske ramme angår, beskriver Sørensen hvordan man kan bruge videokameraet til at få fat i de multimodale aspekter af elevernes interaktioner, og hun trækker på en længere række tekster, som er rent guf for mig set i forhold til mit fremtidige arbejde. I en reference til Jewitt (2008), beskriver Sørensen, hvordan “forskere ofte negligerer de multimodale og kropslige dimensioner ved klasserumsinteraktioner”. Og det ligger helt på linie med mine egne overvejelser bag det feltarbejde jeg skal i gang med i efteråret 2016. Sørensen benytter sig af en metodik, hun med Cowan kalder multimodal analyse, hvor man i transskriptionen af videoen noterer en længere række parametre. Udover talen noterer man også blikretninger, gestik, mimik, mm. Det som særligt tiltrækker mig ved denne metode er, at den med Cowans ord kan hjælpe os til at “looking beyond the traditionally educationally prioritised linguistic modes of speech and writing” (Ibid.: 19).”

Den empiriske kæde hopper af

Så vidt den teoretiske ramme og den metodologiske fremgansmåde. For mig har det været rigtig inspirerende læsning, og jeg har fået nogle gode tekster i mit digitale bibliotek, som jeg skal hygge mig med gennem sommeren. Med så meget desto større interesse gik jeg i gang med at læse specialets analytiske afsnit. Men desværre lykkes det ikke for Sørensen at sætte de empiriske fund i spil med teoretiske ramme. Og metodogisk lader det til at hun kunne være nået frem til de samme konklusioner gennem simpel observation og en god gammeldags notebog. Jeg skal forsøge at forklare, hvordan jeg er nået frem til disse konklusioner.

Sørensen har lavet feltstudier i en 4. klasse, både i klasserummet og mens eleverne er på besøg på Experimentarium. I klasserummet har eleverne nogle opgaver de skal løse, hvor de bla. skal finde ud af, hvilke muskler man bruger når man hopper. I Experimentarium har Sørensen observeret to forskellige aktiviteter, som har det til fælles, at deltagerne bevæger sig rundt i og skal handle på en bestemt måde i forhold til nogle lamper der lyser forskellige steder.

Sørensen dykker ned i fire situationer som hun har videofilmet, og lavet multimodale transskriptioner af. I hendes analyse lægger hun meget vægt på elevernes interaktion med objekter, og på den måde de bruger deres kroppe til at ‘forhandle mening’ (i Wengersk forstand). De eksempler hun kommer med er imidlertid ret banale. Hun fremhæver bla. hvordan en elev, i  det han nævner en række andre elever, peger på dem med fingeren samtidig. Og et andet tilfælde hvor en elev taler om sin læg, og løfter op i buksebenet og peger på den. Sørensen er også meget inde på, hvordan eleverne ‘tingsliggør’ i de interaktioner de er i gang med. Jeg har en fornemmelse af, at Sørensen strækker dette begreb et stykke længere end det egentlig kan holde til. På en observation hvor en elev står og holder på en væg for ikke at miste balancen, imens hun kigger rundt, bliver væggen i Sørensens analyse ‘tingsliggjort’ i en ‘meningsforhandling’, som pigen er i gang med. Men er eleven ikke bare i gang med at prøve at undgå at falde ned?

Nu er det ikke så meget for bare at kritisere, hvad der lader til at være en uholdbar brug af et analytisk begreb. Det som er kernen i min kritik er, at Sørensen ikke får skabt en syntese mellem empiri og teori, gennem analysen. Hele overbygningen til Wengers teori har at gøre med, hvordan læring finder sted i en social kontekst. Kernebegrebet i hans teori er mening. For at danne mening indgår mennesker i, hvad han taler om som meningsforhandlinger. Og disse bygger på tingsliggørelse og deltagelse.  Problemet med Sørensens analyse er, at hun i de fire situationer hun analyserer ikke rigtig får knyttet en forbindelse mellem deltagernes handlinger, og hvordan disse kan siges at være vævet ind i et praksisfællesskab. Sørensen fremhæver tingsliggørelsen som en central modalitet i interaktionerne, men hun får ikke beskrevet hvordan disse tingsliggørelser har eller ikke har en forbindelse til et eventuelt delt repertoire af erfaringer hos deltagerne. Måske er problemet, at der i grunden ikke er tale om praksisfællesskaber, og at eleverne egentlig ikke for alvor deltager. Og at den måde de deltager snarere er i form af parallelle individuelle forløb frem for et fælles samarbejdende meningsforhandlende forløb.

Sørensen får ikke den teoretiske ramme hun har sat op for sit arbejde rigtigt i spil, og som læser savner jeg at se, hvordan de forskellige eksempler, hun analyser kan forståes ud fra spørgsmål om praksisfællesskab, legitim perifær deltagelse osv. Dog finder der givetvis en meningsforhandling sted, og eleverne får løst den opgave der er stillet, og finder for eksempel ud af, at vi hopper ved at bruge lægmusklerne. Men som Sørensen selv er inde på, idet hun citerer Wenger er der ikke nødvendigvis en sammenhæng mellem undervisning og læring. Og vi får ikke noget svar på, hvad eleverne gør ved den information, at deres lægge tjener til at give dem mulighed for at kunne hoppe.

Der er en række aspekter af elevernes interaktioner, som dukker op i Sørensens analyse, men som hun ikke tager fat på analytisk. Der er ret mange eksempler på, hvordan sådan noget som konkurrence  og  hierarki mellem eleverne har indflydelse på, hvordan de løser opgaverne. Sørensen har ikke etableret et teoretisk beredskab til at behandle disse problemstillinger analytisk. Og de får lov til at svæve i luften.

Det får mig til at tænke på den kritik, Hodgson og Standish (2009)  har rejst af uddannelsesforskningen, hvor de peger på det problem at “theory makes an appearance prior to the empirical research ‘proper’ in order to provide, as it were, a stage-set for the study”. Der er med andre ord noget der tyder på at Sørensen har valgt at bruge Lave & Wenger på forhånd, men at empirien har budt på nogle helt andre problemstillinger end dem som denne teoretiske ramme har kunnet belyse.

Spørgsmålet er, hvor det præcis er at kæden hopper af? Er det fordi Sørensen ikke formår at få øje på de aspekter af det empiriske materiale, hvor der rent faktisk er tale om legitim perifær deltagelse, praksisfællesskab, fælles repertoire, osv? Jeg mener, at der er i det empiriske materiale er ansatser til dette, især i forhold til et delt repertoire. Om aktiviteterne på Experimentarium kan det siges at de er meget spilbaserede, og det er jo oplagt at tage den fælles forståelse af fænomenet spil, som de deltagende må formodes at dele, op. Eller er problemet, at Wenger og Laves teorier ikke egner sig til at beskrive centrale processer i den slags situationer, som Sørensen beskæftiger sig med? Som også kritikken af teorien og legitim perifær deltagelse fremhæver (se listen nederst), har denne en udfordring ift. at tage spørgsmål om magt i betragtning. I Sørensens empiri er der tilsyneladende, som jeg har været inde på ovenfor, nogle uomgængelige aspekter af elevernes interaktion som har at gøre med magtbalancen mellem dem.

Uanset hvad der er forklaringen efterlades jeg med en fornemmelse af, at der med det materiale, som specialet har arbejdet med kunne være gået meget mere ind til benet, både på et metodologisk og analytisk plan og med hensyn til anvendelsen.

For det første mener jeg at man med det foreliggende materiale kunne gå meget mere ind i det interaktionelle spil mellem børnene. Jeg tror, at man med videoobservationen kan finde nogle interessante pointer frem, i forhold til hvordan deltagerne forhandler mening sammen. Og det går videre end til blot at pege på de ret oplagte eksempler, hvor en elev peger på en person eller et objekt, imens han nævner det. Jeg tror at for at få ordentligt fod på disse situationer skal vi bruge for en bredere teoretisk ramme, som også kan håndtere spørgsmålet om hierarki og magtforhold.

For det andet kan der med dette materiale peges på hvordan de didaktiske rammer for elevernes interaktioner fremmer visse former for samspil, imens de hæmmer andre. Selvom det kropslige kommer i spil, både i klasserummet og i Experimentarium, kan der i høj grad stilles spørgsmålstegn ved hvilken form for læring der kan finde sted. Netop ved at trække på Wengers teorier om mening, kan man pege på, hvordan eleverne i de beskrevne aktiviteter ikke får mulighed for at forhandle mening i et fællesskab. Det er tydeligt, at de elever som på forhånd mestrer de givne opgaver bedst får lov til at dominere. Eller også får de i forvejen fysisk eller psykisk dominerende elever lov til at styre. Jeg mener, at det er meget tydeligt at der ikke lægges op til decideret gruppearbejde på en hensigtsmæssig måde. Det som skal motivere eleverne til at arbejde sammen er noget udefrakommende. I klassearbejdet forsøger læreren eksempelvis at motivere én af grupperne til at blive hurtigt færdige ved at sige at de andre grupper allerede har afsluttet opgaven. Og i Experimentarium er den for at sige det rent ud helt gal, i denne henseende. Eleverne har tydeligvis ingen fornemmelse af, hvad det læringsmæssige formål med aktivieterne er. De halser rundt, hver især, for at slukke lamper, imens fejl og successer bliver udbasuneret i højttalere. Det er i høj grad ydrestyret motivation der trækkes på, og i forhold til hvilket læringssyn der ligger bag er vi for mig at se slået tilbage til en rent behavioristisk tankegang.

Der er jo ikke sikkert, at Sørensen er enig med mig i disse kritikker, men det er tydeligt for mig, at hun gør meget for ikke at fremstille hverken Ekseperimentarium eller klassearbejdet i et kritisk lys. Hun konkluderer for eksempel på de aktiviteter hun har undersøgt i Experimentarium, at

Et interessant fund i analysen er, at en stor del af eleverne deltager engageret i praksis, når de er på PULS-udstillingen. Det kan tyde på, at eleverne motiveres af den varierende undervisningsform, hvor der i høj grad lægges op til, at eleverne bevæger sig. Hvis det er tilfældet, vil jeg argumentere for, at Experimentariums PULS-udstilling kan være med til at styrke elevernes praksisfællesskaber og deres oplevelse af tilhørsforhold i et fællesskab.

Denne konklusion står for mig at se i grel kontrast til Sørensens beskrivelse af aktiviteterne i analyseafsnittet, hvor det for mig at se fremstår som at at udstillingen fremmer et konkurrence- og præstationsfokus, og netop ikke lægger op til at der arbejdes undersøgende og meningsforhandlende i et fællesskab.

Fra forskning til faktura

Jeg mener, at der er en tendens i Sørensens arbejde til at glide udenom en egentlig kritik af de praksisser som hun beskriver. Det ærgrer mig, fordi der i den teoretiske ramme og det empiriske materiale ligger en latent mulighed for at samle brikkerne på en anden måde, som ville kunne bidrage med en konstruktiv kritik af praksis, både i klasserummet og i det offentlige museumsrum. Undervisningen i folkeskolen er, som Sørensen også beskriver, underlagt en ramme, som er bestemt af gældende policy, og netop et fokus på det kropslige, det multimodale har for mig at se et stærkt kritisk potentiale. I Sørensens fokus på meningsforhandling og læring i kontekst er der på den anden side et potentiale for en kritik af den didaktik, som udfolder sig  i regi af Experimentarium. For hvad folkeskolen fra et policy-perspektiv mangler i forhold til en bredere forståelse af interaktion, som involverer andet end det lingvistisk-kognitive, kompenserer Ekseperimentarium tilsynelandende for ved at inddrage det kropslige. Det er imidlertid en særlig form for kropslighed, der – som Sørensen berører i specialet uden dog at drage denne konklusion – trækker på sportens verden. Og det er en kropslighed som er lagt ind i en konkurrence- og præstationslogik, som virker meget begrænsende for den form for læring, som Wenger og Laves teorier beskæftiger sig med.

Er dette speciale et eksempel på anvendelsesorienteret forskning som underlægger sig begrænsninger for at tækkes modtageren? Eller kommer det til kort af andre grunde?  Hvad mener du? Del dine kommentarer nedenfor!

Referencer:

Cowan, Kate (2014): Multimodal transcription of video: examining interaction in Early Years classrooms, Classroom Discourse. Institute of Education, University of London, UK.

Hodgson, Naomi and Standish, Paul (2009) ‘Uses and misuses of poststructuralism in educational research’, International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 32: 3, 309 – 326.

Jewitt, Carey (2008): Multimodality and Literacy in School Classrooms. Kapitel 7. I: Review of Research in Education 2008. SAGE Publications.

Sørensen, K (2016). Skoleelevers interaktion på tværs af kontekster (Speciale. Roskilde Universitetscenter. Roskilde). Find specialet her.

Wenger, Etienne (2004): Praksisfællesskaber – læring, mening og identitet. 1 (3). København: Hans Reitzels Forlag.

Kritik ift. Power; as a ‘management ideology of empowerment’; a constructive critique addressing 5 issues, among which social and economic inequalities; overview of the critique including power, trust, predispositions, adding size, etc.

 

Posted on by Casper Hernández Cordes · 1 Comment

The Copenhagen Summer University

13256338_10208400545964438_5380083847795998769_nNow that I am about to finish my first year in Educational Anthropology, I begin to see, if not the light, so at least an end to a very busy time, and the beginning of a nice and quiet summer.

My original idea was to write on this blog about what I learned while I went to class and worked on my assignments. However, as I begin to see what occupies my thoughts, what I want to share with you is not about the content of my studies, but the very framework that is built around them, ‘here’ in Academia.

Three things have particularly struck me:

First, when I hear my fellow students say that they tend not to take any chances when choosing content and form of their examination papers; they consider who the internal and external examiners are, and commit a significant part of their attention to guess what these two people would prefer. It is important for my fellow students because, if they get a bad grade, they expect this to endanger their opportunities for a career in academia.

Second, when I hear my fellow students (and myself) exit a tutoring session saying “I had a really good idea, but she advised against it, so now I have to find something else to do.”

Thirdly, when I go through a thesis written by former fellow students and I see virtually identical bibliographies and academic questions that are asked and answered in much the same way.

Of course, things are not going on this way every time, I am talking about a tendency.

However, when these situations do occur, I am flabbergasted. Whatever the reason (I suspect a lack of resources and thus lack of time to be a key explanation), it is an expression of the tendency of students not following their academic curiosity. This is because they are either confused, scared, ambitious or because it is unclear what is expected of them or because there are no fixed standards and therefore there are as many ways to write an essay as there are teachers. At the same time, students are told to be independent and to think critically.

Therefore, it was a joy to see that a group of fellow students has initiated what we provisionally called the ‘Summer University’.

The organizers write:

“At the university, students are subject to exams, scoring systems and curricula, which are sometimes simply setting up limits and making people dumber, instead of inviting to contemplation, independent thinking and critical discussion. We would like to create the university we want – and we want to spend our summer on it. Hence the name ‘summer university’. “

My own role in the Summer University is the coordinator of a group that we have so far called the Emergency Management Group. The purpose of this group is to present its ideas to the larger group about the issues that I listed up above, about the frustrations that the students experience in connection with guidance and what I perceive as the limitations on academic freedom.

So far, we don’t have a website, only a closed facebook group.

Please pitch in with your comments below. Do you know of any similar initiatives, that we can learn from? Please share!

Posted on by Casper Hernández Cordes · 1 Comment

From one ivory tower to the next …. OMG WTF !!

In the beginning of April this spring, I did some career counseling on myself, and as a result of a goal clarification process, I found out that I needed to dig deeper into the field I am working with. I wanted to dedicate more time and energy to investigate what is going on between people, when they are building a group relationship, and specifically what happens on the level of non-verbal interaction in this process.

I decided that the right framework for this kind of process would be …. academia.

Since I graduated with a BA in French and Musicology in 1995, I haven’t been part of the academic environment. Though I have repeatedly considered the option of doing an ‘artistic PhD’, I have basically been reluctant to engage myself with academia.

You know, most of what I am trying to do in my work as a composer is to distance myself as much as possible from the ivory towerness of the artistic world, and get out there and involve all kinds of people in the creative processes, – as a process that stems from, and is directed towards the collective, as opposed to the standard top-down kind of process that would make enlightened fine art products trickle down from the ivory tower to the anonymous crowd of cultural peasants.

So how does it make sense to want to fight my way to the other ivory tower, in the distant, boring, desert like world of academia?

Nevertheless, this is what I am going to do. I have applied for an MA in Educational Anthropology at Aarhus University, Emdrup Campus (Copenhagen, Denmark). And I was accepted!

September 2015 I will be starting on my first semester, and I will use this blog as a kind of diary, where I will  1) make sure that I keep my focus, and will not be absorbed in dusty ivory. I want to make sure my mix of curiosity, inclusiveness, no-nonsense, experiments will guide my way through the paper desert. 2) Reflect on the links between the field of study – anthropology with a focus on educational settings – and the focus in this blog, ie building collectives and non-verbal interaction.

Welcome to my student diary!!! Please comment, share, send me your thoughts, and let’s connect here and on other platforms.

My profile on Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Casper_Hernandez_Cordes

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fonokolek

My student email: cordes@post.au.dk