This paper reviews the literature linking information and communications technology (ICT) to teaching thinking skills and advocates a dialogic framework which has implications for practice. The computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) movement is critiqued for not always taking into account the radical implications of the concept of 'dialogic' which is the idea that meaning-making requires the inter-animation of more than one perspective. It is argued that dialogue and dialogic is the key to 'learning to learn' and other higher order thinking skills and that the unique features of ICT particularly suit it to inducting learners into learning dialogues and to the deepening and broadening of dialogues as an end in itself.

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Towards a dialogic understanding of the relationship between CSCL and teaching thinking skills

This paper introduces and describes some concepts basic to a phenomenological understanding of human perception that is derived from the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty. His account of the lived experience of the embodied subject, as the basis of both our experience in our world and our agency in our actions within it, is consistent with the focus on designing CSCW technology for flexible use that underlies so much of the recent work on awareness. My aim is to approach a complex and difficult body of work from the perspective of technology design in order to extract from it some relevant insights and theoretical principles that may, in turn, extend our understanding of what the public availability of actions and artefacts means in virtual space and how it might be supported. For Merleau-Ponty perception is active, embodied and always generative of meaning. This paper prioritises the relations between awareness, perception and the public availability of actions and artefacts because the challenge for designers of awareness resources for shared virtual spaces is that if people are to be aware of anything, then it has to be explicitly made available to their perceptions within those virtual spaces.

The Public Availability of Actions andArtefacts

There is a contemporary scepticism towards vision-based metaphors in management and organization studies that reflects a more general pattern across the social sciences. In short, there has been a shift away from ocularcentrism. This shift provides a useful basis for metatheoretical analysis of the philosophical discourse that informs organizational analysis. The article begins by briefly discussing the vision-generated, vision-centred interpretation of knowledge, truth, and reality that has characterized the western philosophical tradition. Taking late 18th-century rationalism as the high-point of ocularcentrism, the article then presents a metatheoretical framework based on three trajectories that critiques of ocularcentrism have subsequently taken. The first exposes the limits of the metaphor by, paradoxically, taking it to its limits. The second trajectory seeks to displace the primordial position of the ocular metaphor and replace it with an alternative lexicon based on other human senses. Last, the ...

/pdf/ocularcentrism-and-its-others-a-framework-for-5fg0n141sw.pdf

Ocularcentrism and its Others: A Framework for Metatheoretical Analysis

Objectives This paper explores the place of simulation in contemporary healthcare education and training, highlighting the challenges of recreating complex clinical settings which can support the development of competent, rounded and caring practitioners, and address issues around human factors as well as technical skill. It frames the relationship between clinical and simulation-based practice as a mutually dependent, two-way process. Discusssion According to this view, simulation is less like a photograph of clinical care than a painting of it—a process that requires selection and interpretation. The paper presents simulation as a canvas on which to paint this picture. To be effective, simulation must mirror the essentials of a clinical setting without reproducing every detail. After highlighting key issues with current approaches to simulation, the paper considers how authenticity and perceived realism can be heightened through innovative uses of technology and design, putting forward a conceptual framework based on the notion of ‘circles of focus.’ The paper then outlines the concept of Distributed Simulation, using low-cost, portable yet immersive environments to address limitations of access to dedicated facilities. Conclusion The paper concludes by considering theoretical and practical implications of these innovations, focussing especially on surgery and other craft specialties.

http://dr-jaime-justo-janeiro.com/docs/qual_saf_health_care_2010_19_i47-i52.pdf

Simulation, safety and surgery

In the mid 1980s Cosgrove described a geography based on the ‘Argument of the Eye’. Since then geography, like the humanities more broadly, has seen the decline of vision’s hegemony with embodied a...

Dennis J. Gallagher

Papers

Eye and Mind