Learning as Interactivity, Movement, Growth and Becoming, Volume 1: Ecologies of Learning in Higher Education

The two volumes in this series explore the multi-scalar ecological inter-connectedness of learners with teachers, artefacts, cultural patterns, resources, places, social activities, practices, social institutions, time, and temporality, and technologies. Contributors articulate distributed cognition, language, ecological psychology, enactivist and embodied-embedded cognitive science, interactivity, and multimodal event analysis, and extend earlier traditions such as American pragmatism, embodied curriculum theory, and Vygotsky's Spinozan turn. The authors use empirical analysis and innovative theory to reveal the emergence of learning in the interactivity of learners and teachers with the affordances of a distributed brain-body-environment learning system.

Format: Hardback
Length: 252 pages
Publication date: 28 July 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

The two interconnected volumes in this series are devoted to advancing the analysis and theorization of learning and teaching in higher education. These volumes specifically emphasize the multifaceted ecological interconnectedness of learners with teachers, artifacts, cultural patterns and resources, places, social activities and practices, social institutions, time and temporality, and technologies. Learning is intricately shaped by the interplay between interindividual dynamics influenced by biology and culture.

In contrast to prevailing perspectives that perceive learning in higher education as solely the transmission of information and the delivery of content, the contributors present pioneering developments in distributed cognition, distributed language, ecological psychology, enactivist and embodied-embedded cognitive science, interactivity, and multimodal event analysis. They also extend several earlier traditions, including American pragmatism, embodied curriculum theory, and Vygotsky's later-day anti-dualist Spinozan turn.

Through rigorous empirical analysis of in vivo episodes of learning employing multimodal event analysis, cognitive event analysis, and cutting-edge theory, the authors demonstrate how and why learning cannot be adequately explained as internal mental processes in isolation. Instead, sophisticated empirical analysis and innovative theory are brought to bear to unveil the emergence of learning within the interactive dynamics between learners and teachers, leveraging the affordances of a distributed brain-body-environment learning system.

Volume 1, an edited collection comprising seven chapters authored by internationally renowned researchers, is accompanied by an Introduction and an Afterword written by King and Thibault. Volume 1 (and its successor Volume 2) will be of immense value to educationalists and researchers in the field.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367707965