PhD Blog (dot) Net

If you’re not familiar with the ongoing Animate series of videos from the RSA, they are well worth a look. Whilst these short animations, based on excerpts from RSA lectures, may be fairly rudimentary, the visual annotation provides an innovative way of disseminating key concepts and ideas. I particularly recommend watching Sir Ken Robinson’s on changing paradigms if you have even the slightest interest in education.

In the latest Animate, Steven Pinker references Hollywood movies and everyday scenarios to explain the role of innuendo as a language-based negotiation of culturally defined social relations. He describes the dual purpose of language, that is; (i) to convey content, and (ii) to negotiate one of three specific ‘relationship types’, which anthropologist Alan Fiske defines as dominance, communality and reciprocity. He explains how the perceived appropriateness of a social interaction can be acceptable or anomalous to each relationship type, and is characterised by whether or not there is a mutual understanding. He goes on to argue that the visibility of this shared knowledge has profound consequences for political uprisings (which has particular resonance with current events in North Africa and the Middle East, and the role of social media.)

Hew and Hara (2007) present reciprocity as one of six motivators to sharing knowledge in online environments. Reciprocity can be direct – between a provider and a receiver – or generalised, indirectly by a third party (Ekeh, 1974). Whilst personal gain refers to increasing one’s own welfare (such as recognition, reputation and self-esteem), altruism increases the welfare of another person. Hoffman (1981) views group commitment or ‘collectivism’ as a variant of reciprocal altruism, in which the individual member increases the welfare of the community by identifying with and valuing a collective vision or purpose.

Pinker’s ideas introduce a fresh perspective to these types of discourses into the understanding of online knowledge exchange and community development, and raise a number of interesting questions. How are our participation, mutuality and reciprocity characterised by the (increasingly multimodal) forms of language apparent in our social interactions on the web? And are these defined by inherent technological cultures (‘nettiquette’ etc.) or by dominant social factors, power relations and hierarchies external to the web environment?

References

Ekeh, P. P. (1974). Social exchange theory: The two traditions. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hew, K. F., & Hara, N. (2007). Knowledge Sharing In Online Environments: A Qualitative Case Study. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(14), 2310-2324.

Hoffman, M. L. (1981). Is altruism part of human nature? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40(1), 121-137.

This weekend I’ve enjoyed reading about Young Vienna, a group of Fin-de-Siecle writers who frequented Café Griensteidl and other coffeehouses in the Austro-Hungarian capital at the turn of the 20th century. The group included Stefan Zweig and Arthur Schnitzler, whose stream-of-consciousness writing prefigured Proust, Joyce and Woolf. According to Watson (2000), its coming together represented a pivotal moment in intellectual thought, at a time when the rigid sense of order defined by Newtonian physics was being challenged by the discovery of particles and quanta, and which coincided with increasingly Modernist influences in art and music, epitomised by Schoenberg’s experimentation with dissonance and atonality.

Another in the group, Hugo von Hofmannsthal suggested these epoch-defining events were defined by a shift towards multiplicity and indeterminacy. In describing his concept of ‘das Gleitende’ (the moving, the slipping, or the sliding), he declared:

“Everything fell into parts, the parts again into more parts, and nothing allowed itself to be embraced by concepts any more.”
(Quoted in Schorske, 1981: 19)

References

Schorske, C. (1981). Fin-de-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture. New York: Vintage Books

Watson, P. (2000). A Terrible Beauty: The People and Ideas that Shaped the Modern Mind. London: Orion

Image: Reinhold Voelkel | Café Griensteidl (1896)

On his excellent blog, Mohamed Amine Chatti asks ‘Are Communities of Practice Dead?’ I would suggest, to paraphrase Mark Twain, that death in this case may have been greatly exaggerated.

I think a key issue here is that the concept of Communities of Practice (CoPs) has become so widely adapted and translated – particularly within the Knowledge Management (KM) field – that in a sense, the term has become almost meaningless. It is equally important to re-emphasise Etienne Wenger’s early ideas (especially those developed from his original work with anthropologist Jean Lave) which appear to have been either lost or re-imagined in some discourses.

For an excellent account of the ambiguity in CoPs literature read Kimble (2006). Of course, as Kimble acknowledges, theoretical models naturally evolve, and systematic approaches help formulate empirical study and practice; a process in which Wenger himself has been most active as a consultant, of sorts. But for Kimble, this has been “not a linear progression but a dislocation” (p.230). Some interpretations have seemingly disregarded the original complexities and tensions between practice, participation and membership, to present overtly positive and consensual views of organisational CoPs. Citing Mutch (2003), Kimble argues that whilst “we can use familiar concepts in new ways, or take concepts from one context to another and play with them” we must also “pay careful attention to our sources, making sure that we give due care to the consequences that the use of a concept brings with it” (p.231).

Perhaps Mohamed’s reading of CoPs literature has been largely limited to the KM field, as his claim that “CoPs are organised from the top down” would seem to conflict with many of its original principles. Wenger (1998) stresses that CoPs develop naturally through emergent, bottom up processes, coordinated by the community members themselves. What he has increasingly developed over time is the idea that CoPs can be guided or nurtured in some way by one or several significant individuals, which has become manifest in the notion of stewardship.

Mohamed eloquently describes how social media and open resources have brought about a fundamental shift in how many of us increasingly configure and articulate the way we study and work. This shift from community-based structures to a more open and distributed networked individualism has been well documented in the wider socio-technical field by people like Manuel Castells and Barry Wellman. To me, as a PhD student who is currently engaged in negotiating a workable model for analysis, how we conceptualise this shift is a fundamental methodological challenge, and one that I believe lies at the heart of how we should be studying current Web-based learning.

Despite the attraction of personalised and self-directed approaches to learning, we cannot deny our natural inclination to actively form, participate in, and seek recognition in communities. To take a predominantly network-based approach (such as Siemen’s connectivism) runs the risk of recognising such formations purely as clusters or hubs, and such approaches frequently seem to confuse groups – which may be highly structured and institutionalised – with communities. Perhaps Dave Cormier’s upcoming book chapter suggests a way forward in the network vs. community debate.

My gut feeling is that concepts like CoPs and Activity Theory (CHAT) are effective in ‘humanising’ social structures, emphasising the inherent link between practice and identity formation, whilst recognising forms of technological reification and power relations. A key problem seems to be that models such as these are limited by the fact they were initially formalised around the study of essentially ‘bounded’ domains (Mohamed himself highlights this in a discussion on CHAT in an earlier post). Wenger has always asserted the concept of multi-membership – indeed in his latest book, Digital Habitats (co-authored with Nancy White and John D Smith), the notion of ‘extreme multi-membership’ is introduced. Engestrom has been developing his concept of ‘knotworking’ to extend his well-used Activity Systems model, whist Actor Network Theory (ANT) offers further possibilities.

My quest goes on…

References

Kimble, C. (2006). Communities of Practice: Never Knowingly Undersold. E. Tomadaki & P. Scott (Eds.), Innovative Approaches for Learning and Knowledge Sharing, EC-TEL 2006 Workshops Proceedings. 218-234.

Mutch, A. (2003). Communities of Practice and Habitus: A Critique. Organization Studies, 24(3), 383-401.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Porridge is a prison sitcom originally broadcast by the BBC between 1974 and 1977. Written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, it’s widely considered to be one of the best British television comedies of all time. Watching re-runs of the show recently, it struck me that whilst the central character Norman Stanley Fletcher (Ronnie Barker) – an habitual criminal and an old hand at prison – provides most of the laughs, the main narrative arc concerns the learning trajectory of new offender Lennie Godber (Richard Beckinsale).

The value of these two characters as a comedic double act is largely derived from the development and maturation of their master-apprentice relationship; most acutely observed in an early, classic episode A Night In, in which the two first share a cell together.

Lave and Wenger (1991) situate learning within specific social and physical environments. Learning is seen as a process of socialisation into a community of practice that is at first peripheral but increases gradually in engagement and complexity. Identity development and negotiation of meaning are essentially informal; unaligned with – though not entirely independent of – institutional structures.

Over the course of three series we see Godber – young, vulnerable and initially naive of prison ways – learn the ropes; an education not so much shaped by formal prison rules and routines, but by learning how to bend them, and put one over the ‘screws’ (prison officers) – largely under the mentorship of Fletcher. We see him increasingly adopt the prison slang (carefully moderated for the original seventies primetime TV audience), conform to inmate hierarchies, and learn the importance of prison ‘currency’ such as toothpaste, liquorice allsorts and in particular, snout (tobacco).

Reference

Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

There is something instinctive about Etienne Wenger’s concept of learning as a landscape and life as a trajectory, particularly from a student’s perspective. Similar notions are explored in Cussins’ (1992) cognitive trails, where movements of information create traces or trails which are both cognitive (in the mind) and material (in the world), thereby creating both a mental landscape and a material infrastructure. Indeed, geographical metaphor is common in educational discourse. Becher and Trowler (2001; 58) suggest:

“It seems natural enough to think of knowledge and its properties and relationships in terms of landscapes, and to saturate epistemological discussion with spatial metaphors: fields and frontiers; pioneering, exploration, false trails, charts and landmarks.”

Yrjö Engeström (in press) describes the learning landscape “as a terrain of activity to be dwelled in and explored.” The type of exploration is defined by the learning movement, which Engeström (2007) describes as “dominant patterns and directions of physical, discursive and cognitive motion in historically different organizational frameworks.” Engeström refers to movement from periphery to centre – similar to Lave and Wenger’s (1991) notion of Legitimate Peripheral Participation – as ‘craft,’ whilst ‘mass production’ is defined by linear movement (typified by project management structures). He describes new forms of movement associated with Web-based social and peer production as pulsation and swarming:

“The dwellers create trails and the intersecting trails gradually lead to an increased capability to move in the zone effectively, independently of the particular location or destination of the subjects. However, the zone is never an empty space to begin with. It has preexisting dominant trails and boundaries made by others, often with heavy histories and power invested in them. More than that, the existing trails, landmarks and boundaries are inherently contradictory, possessing both exchange value and use value, being both controlled by proprietary interests and opening up possibilities of common good. When new dwellers enter the zone, they both adapt to the dominant trails and struggle to break away from them.”

(Engeström, in press).

Breaking away from pre-existing trails to create new ones requires expansive agency, which partly extends Engeström’s (1987) conceptual framework of expansive learning.

References

Becher, T., & Trowler, P. R. (2001). Academic Tribes and Territories (2nd Ed.) Buckingham: Open University Press.

Cussins, A. (1992). Content, embodiment and objectivity: The theory of cognitive trails. Mind, 101, 651-688.

Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit.

Engeström, Y. (2007). From communities of practice to mycorrhizae. In J. Hughes, N. Jewson & L. Unwin (Eds.), Communities of practice: Critical perspectives. London: Routledge.

Engeström, Y. (in press). The Future of Activity Theory: A Rough Draft. In Sannino, A., Daniels, H. et al. Learning and Expanding with Activity Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

I’ve just started reading Yochai Benkler’s acclaimed The Wealth of Networks – a book I’ve been meaning to catch up with for some time. The full text is available through the Books Unbound site; a free digital initiative from Yale University Press. You can also download a PDF version from the wiki site.