Virtual learning environments as sociomaterial agents in the network of teaching practice (original) (raw)
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The Development of the Virtual Learning Network in New Zealand: An Actor Network Theory Analysis
2013
The Virtual Learning Network (VLN) is a videoconference based course sharing system between schools in New Zealand. The goal of the VLN is to share and personalise learning resources, based on the learning choices, needs, abilities and skills of the students and staff, otherwise not available within their own schools or group of neighbouring schools (cluster). The problem is that some rural clusters use the VLN successfully but others struggle to sustain a cluster. The objective of this study is to examine how the VLN is currently being used in rural clusters in New Zealand and to identify factors that facilitate or inhibit the development of a successful VLN rural cluster. Literature has addressed videoconferencing as an e-learning solution, particularly for compulsory education in schools. In addition to that, two other dimensions of the VLN application, resource sharing and bottom-up development approach have been reviewed. The use of the Actor Network Theory (ANT) provides a the...
Introduction: Reclaiming and Renewing Actor Network Theory for Educational Research
Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2010
Actor-network theory (ANT) continues to enjoy a lively trajectory in the social sciences since its emergence in the early 1980s at the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation (CSI) of the École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris. Largely associated with its progenitors in science and technology studies including Bruno Latour, John Law and Michael Callon, ANT has contributed an important series of analytic approaches and considerations that rupture certain central assumptions about knowledge, subjectivity, the real and the social. The focus is on the socio-material-and how minute relations among objects bring about the world. Analyses drawing upon ANT trace how different human and nonhuman entities come to be assembled, to associate and exercise force, and to persist or decline over time. Nothing is given or anterior, including 'the human', 'the social', 'subjectivity', 'mind', 'the local', 'structures' and other categories common in educational analyses. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, ANT figured prominently in studies published in sociology, technology, feminism, cultural geography, organization and management, environmental planning, and health care. With a few limited exceptions, however, educational research in the main has not demonstrated a similar enthusiasm in the uptake of ANT. We are among those who believe that ANT offers truly important insights about the processes and objects of education. This is in spite of, or actually partly because of, its mutations in the past two decades into a highly diffuse, diverse and contested set of framings and practices. Its own key commentators refuse to call it a 'theory' as though ANT were some coherent explanatory device. It may be more accurate to think of ANT as a virtual 'cloud', continually moving, shrinking and stretching, dissolving in any attempt to grasp it firmly. ANT is not 'applied' like a theoretical technology, but is more like a sensibility, a way to sense and draw (nearer to) a phenomenon. For educational researchers, as we argue in Fenwick & Edwards (2010) and Fenwick, et al. (2011), ANT's language can open new questions and its approaches can sense phenomena in rich ways that discern the difficult ambivalences, messes, multiplicities and contradictions that are embedded in so many educational issues. This book is an experiment, intended to engage readers in the question: What work can ANT do in educational research? To bring some focus to the book, we called for chapters addressing issues of educational change or reform. The authors employ a range of ANT constructs to explore and perform educational change in highly diverse manifestations: integration of new technology, a large-scale school improvement initiative, everyday curriculum enactments, development of international standardized tests, introduction of teacher evaluation systems, and implementation of a literacy program. Each author argues for the unique analysis that ANT approaches enable, yielding overall an important expansion of how we engage with educational change. While one object of each chapter is to show an ANT sensibility at work with a particular researcher in a particular environment of concerns, each also focuses, as ANT studies are expected to do, on tracing the rich material details of the actual actors and their story being followed by the researcher. The remainder of this introduction outlines ANT for those who may be newcomers to its ideas and approaches, and offers a glimpse of the chapters.
British Journal of Educational Technology, 2013
Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) appear to be one of the most widely used computer-based technologies for teaching and learning, and may emerge as a potential tool for e-assessment. However, little is known about how VLE tools are used in various forms of assessment and what kinds of teaching practice the use of such technologies brings about. Based on interviews and personal diaries, actor-network theory is applied to describe and understand emerging teaching practices with VLE tools, such as multiple-choice tests, portfolios and collaborative writing tools. A tight relationship is found between the documentation of student attainment, the teacher-student-parent conference and the use of VLE tools, all constituting a network of aligned interests in assessment.
Multiple enactments? An Actor Network Theory approach to studying educational research practices
Actor Network Theory (ANT) is one of the more controversial approaches in social sciences. It arose in the early 1980s out of criticism towards the more traditional Sociology, which tended to disregard the role of the material and the natural in the constitution of ‘social reality’. In ANT terms, the social is not seen as the ‘glue’ holding society together, but as something made up of essentially non-social components (human, non-human, animate, inanimate entities) constituting networks of relations and being constituted by them. (Latour 2005, 4-5; Law 2007.) The main aim of ANT is to overcome the subject-object divide, the distinction between the social and the natural worlds and to see the reality as enacted. Over the years the ANT approaches have developed into various directions in the hands of different thinkers and disciplines. The aim of the paper is to disentangle some of the conceptual messiness of ANT while considering the potential of applying a strand of the approach in my PhD study, which is linked to an interdisciplinary (Education and Computer Sciences) research and development project Ensemble.
Actor network theory and the study of online learning
Quality education at a distance, 2003
How innovations in tertiary education are theorised and understood is important for both policy and practice. This paper describes an approach to studying innovation and change that is taken from the field of Science and Technology Studies. Actor-network theory draws attention to the performative nature of the implementation of new technologies like quality systems and online teaching. The theory posits that the world is not populated with entities that possess certain essences in and of themselves, but rather that the world is a texture of relations—a network—which occasionally produces the effect of stabilised entities. We examine the consequences of producing durable forms of online teaching and quality assurance and argue that contrary to popular claims about the benefits of these technologies that to achieve durable performances requires a conformity to existing performances of a university thus reproducing current patterns of inequity.
i-manager's Journal of Educational Technology, 2013
The background of this research project is the application of ICT in Icelandic schools in the context of teachers work. The role of 'teacher' in using ICT in a class can be complex depending on the forms of pedagogy adopted. Typically, he will, at some time, carry out different roles affecting his mindset. He will have to organise and create the course content', setting the pace, monitoring learners' reactions and adjusting the delivery accordingly. The Oxford English Dictionary Online (2013) defines the term mindset as: 'an established set of attitudes, especially By regarded as typical of a particular group's social or cultural values; the philosophy or values of a person; frame of mind, attitude and disposition'. The term mindset indicates 'set' or 'fixed'; however, it is readily apparent that an individual's mindset can develop, but this may be a slow process and thus may cause stress. In this research, the teacher's background, including his education, his social status, attributed social value, his life experience in general and his role as an educator, were the basis of his mindset and his reflection on the development of his roles, in terms of the VLE, and enabled him to interpret
[PDF]The case of virtual learning environments
Research has been carried out into the educational and training innovations resulting from the current implementation of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) in institutions of higher education in order to understand how these innovations interrelate with teaching and learning; the implications at the institutional level; and the cross-cultural diversity within virtual learning environments, with an emphasis on those that combine face-to-face and virtual learning. In an attempt at innovating public educational institutions through the restructuring and promotion of educational cooperation at the European level, a study was made of nine institutions that provide tertiary education and postgraduate training in six European countries.
i-manager’s Journal on Educational Psychology, 2013
Running Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) classes using Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) has become a high priority project for many educational institutions, as it offers opportunities for online education and support for conventional education. However, acquiring and deploying a VLE is a difficult task that concerns teachers' responsibilities and their mindset. The primary author has run a series of studies to recognize pedagogical issues of applying a Virtual Learning Environment to support educational activities in school education. The main aim of the studies was to identify regarding the teacher's work that illustrates his mindset and responsibilities during ICT classes in an Icelandic elementary school. The research was based up on the following research questions: a. Which issues influence the teachers' role in using ICT to support school education? b. How do these issues affect his mindset and responsibilities during ICT classes? c. How can a teacher effectively manage these issues? These questions were viewed using a range of explicit techniques in an action research mode. Data was collected from three, triangulated, studies. The data was analysed and used to formulate a new set of research questions and a more advanced exploration using a following series of case studies. The research indicates that teachers are not always able to make full use of ICT because they lack self-confidence, time for preparation and skill to manage the technology inside the classroom.