A prevalent and pervasive view of designing is that it can be modeled using variables and decisions made about what values should be taken by these variables. The activity of designing is carried out with the expectation that the designed artifact will operate in the natural world and the social world. These worlds impose constraints on the variables and their values; so, design could be described as a goal-oriented, constrained, decision- making activity. However, design distinguish- es itself from other similarly described activities not only by its domain but also by additional necessary features. Designing involves exploration, exploring what variables might be appropriate. The process of explo- ration involves both goal variables and deci- sion variables. In addition, designing involves learning: Part of the exploration activity is learning about emerging features as a design proceeds. Finally, design activity occurs within two contexts: the context within which the designer operates and the context produced by the developing design itself. The designer’s perception of what the context is affects the implication of the context on the design. The context shifts as the designer’s perceptions change. Design activity can be now characterized as a goal-oriented, con- strained, decision-making, exploration, and learning activity that operates within a con- text that depends on the designer’s percep- tion of the context.

Design Prototypes: A Knowledge Representation Schema for Design

Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action and Cognitive Extension.

This chapter introduces the major premises and framework for this book, which posits that working has the capacity to provide people with a sense of aliveness and engagement. Yet, for many, it is a source of pain and anguish. The history of work within human evolution is presented along with an overview of how work has been understood in psychology and the social sciences. The premise that work is central to life is explored via narratives from participants in the Boston College Working Project. The material is complemented by a review of the meaning of working from a psychological perspective.

Being Alive: Work as a Central Role in Life

Situated Cognition in Theoretical and Practical Context [Book Chapter]

Where is the machinery of mind to be found, and what marks its boundaries with the body and the external world? In his latest book, Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (hereafter, STM), the philosopher and cognitive scientist, Andy Clark, presents the most developed version yet of a highly distinctive – and controversial – thesis known as ‘the extended mind’ that he first began to promote in the late 1990s with David Chalmers. More than a decade further on, the debate has become significantly more sophisticated, with a hugely richer array of evidence to consider and numerous critics to respond to, from both the traditional and radical ends of the spectrum. All this goes to making a book that is at once a detailed working out of one particular conception of mind–body–world relations and also something of a whirlwind tour through the current landscape of what might be loosely termed ‘embodied cognition’. The original hypothesis was presented by Clark and Chalmers in 1998 in their paper ‘The Extended Mind’, which for those new to the subject is usefully reproduced as an appendix in this volume (220–32). The core ideas remain essentially the same and are restated in Part I of STM but with extensive discussion of additional empirical material that throws light on just how they are to be understood and related to recent developments in cognitive disciplines ranging from robotics to linguistics. Part II addresses the critics of the extended perspective, dedicating a generous amount of space to describing and then responding in some depth to the most serious challenges that have been posed. This section is much more than academic swordplay and is well worth a read for the light that it sheds on the underlying hypothesis and why it matters. Part III concerns the broader implications of the extended mind position and will probably appeal mainly to those already familiar with debates about embodiment and cognition, and the precise ways in which the two intertwine. Nevertheless this section makes an important overall contribution in showing the sometimes surprising limits of even such an apparently

Supersizing the Mind

Framing learning entanglement in innovative learning spaces: Connecting theory, design and practice

This paper provides a summary account of Activity-Centred Analysis and Design (ACAD). ACAD offers a practical approach to analysing complex learning situations, in a way that can generate knowledge that is reusable in subsequent (re)design work. ACAD has been developed over the last two decades. It has been tested and refined through collaborative analyses of a large number of complex learning situations and through research studies involving experienced and inexperienced design teams. The paper offers a definition and high level description of ACAD and goes on to explain the underlying motivation. The paper also provides an overview of two current areas of development in ACAD: the creation of explicit design rationales and the ACAD toolkit for collaborative design meetings. As well as providing some ideas that can help teachers, design teams and others discuss and agree on their working methods, ACAD has implications for some broader issues in educational technology research and development. It questions some deep assumptions about the framing of research and design thinking, in the hope that fresh ideas may be useful to people involved in leadership and advocacy roles in the field.

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Activity-Centred Analysis and Design (ACAD): Core purposes, distinctive qualities and current developments.

Significant funding is devoted across the world to transforming traditional classrooms into flexible learning environments. These efforts are often motivated by a desire to create learning spaces attuned to twenty-first century competencies, which involve learning how to communicate, collaborate, think creatively, and how to become critical users of technologies engaged in both the consumption and production of knowledge. In New Zealand, these flexible learning spaces are seen as part of innovative learning environments (ILEs), which are conceptualised as ecosystems involving learners, educators, communities, pedagogical practices, knowledge, and digital and material resources, including buildings and furniture. In line with ILEs, the notion of place-based spaces for networked learning foregrounds learning activity as enmeshed in an assemblage of elements—involving physical spaces, artefacts, digital technologies, people, ideas and tasks. In this paper, we adopt a networked learning perspective to frame the New Zealand learning landscape. Key findings from a national survey with 222 primary teachers, 126 secondary teachers and 163 school leaders, show that most teachers and leaders perceived their schools as being in-transition to ILEs. Findings highlight the importance of having a shared vision and leadership dedicated to supporting teachers’ experimentation with new practices in innovative spaces. The survey details the digital and material resources, the social configurations used in classrooms, the types of learning tasks students are engaging in and a range of emergent practices in innovative and traditional environments for learning across New Zealand.

Space matters: framing the New Zealand learning landscape

Situative theories of learning challenge the notion of learning as a singular cognitive pursuit. However, the relations between the designed environment and situated learning activity are not well theorised, and this increases the difficulty of designing future learning spaces to accommodate learning communities supported by a range of digital technologies. In this paper, we use the ACAD framework and insights from the ecology of resources model to explore the role of materials in the enactment of situative theories of learning in a refurbished seminar room, in the University of Sydney Business School. Conducted as ethnography, this case study draws on observations, interviews and document analysis, which reveal a qualitative shift in learning activity facilitated by improved eye‐contact and increased fluidity of movement that supports instructor‐student and student‐student interaction. This paper offers a theoretical contribution in its exploration of the materiality of learning, methodological innovation in the use of images to examine spatial pedagogies and practical innovation through a reconceptualisation of spatial provisions for learning—all of which has implications for the design and use of future learning spaces intended to accommodate learning communities supported by complex webs of material and digital infrastructure. Practitioner NotesWhat is already known about this topic The role of the designed environment in learning is poorly theorised.As a result, educational research tends to frame material and digital infrastructure for learning as deterministic (causing change) or instrumental (improving efficiency).This makes enacting valued learning theory challenging at any scale.What this paper adds A case study using a theoretical framework capable of addressing the relations between designed form and learning activity—contributing to the integration of theory and practice.Methodological innovation using visual methods to examine spatial pedagogies.Practice‐based design innovation in the reconceptualisation of spatial provisions for learning.Implications for practice and/or policy The consequences of failing to understand how the materiality of space for learning indirectly influences situated learning activity.Impetus for thinking about how a richer understanding of space supports decision making around the use of digital technologies for learning.The need to rethink spatial allocations for learning to accommodate increasingly active, collaborative and digitally mediated learning activity both in person and online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designing for situated learning: Understanding the relations between material properties, designed form and emergent learning activity

Contemporary educational practices have been calling for pedagogical models that foreground flexibility, agency, ubiquity, and connectedness in learning. These models have, in turn, been stimulating redevelopments of educational infrastructure –with physical contours reconfigured into novel complex learning spaces at universities, schools, museums, and libraries. Understanding the complexity of these innovative learning spaces requires an acknowledgement of the material and digital as interconnected. A ‘physical’ learning space is likely to involve a range of technologies and in addition to paying attention to these ‘technologies’ one must understand and account for their physical sites of use as well. This paper discusses the influence of materiality in learning, using an analytical approach that situates learning activity as an emergent process. Drawing on theories that foreground socio-materiality in learning and on the relational perspective offered by networked learning, we call for a deeper understanding of the interplay between the physical (material and digital), conceptual, and social aspects of learning, and their combined influence on emergent activity. The paper argues that in order to successfully design for innovative learning, educators need to develop their capacity to trace the intricate connections between people, ideas, digital and material tools, and tasks –to see the learning-whole in action.

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Pippa Yeoman

Papers

Framing learning entanglement in innovative learning spaces: Connecting theory, design and practice

Activity-Centred Analysis and Design (ACAD): Core purposes, distinctive qualities and current developments.

Space matters: framing the New Zealand learning landscape

Designing for situated learning: Understanding the relations between material properties, designed form and emergent learning activity

Performativity of Materials in Learning: The Learning-Whole in Action