Enactivism and Digital Learning Platforms

EasyChair Preprint 3412

Abstract

Within the field of education, the concept of active learning building on constructivism has emerged as a dominant framework of the past three decades. Despite the important shift of assumptions that this viewpoint has brought to education, constructivism still presents some shortcomings in terms of a change of the instructional paradigm. This paper takes a step forward and explores enactivism, as an alternative philosophical and educational worldview. It presents a theoretical discussion of the enactivist perspective and its differences from objectivism and constructivism. Enactivism proposes a more radical alternative to dualistic and objective approach, as it focuses on the intertwined and multiple interactions between mind, body and the environment. The two main perspectives of enactivism, which we grouped into the categories of “embodied cognition” and “situated cognition”, are present in the field of education. The paper relates them to the two core concepts of reflection and intentionality. Drawing on these theoretical considerations, the paper applies this framework to a fieldwork research in a Danish school realized through a participatory approach a Future workshop (Jung & Müller, 1984) and a design-workshop. This intervention is an example of how to understand enactive modelling, considering the relations between the participants and the environment as a dynamic and emerging relation of autonomy-dependency, a symbiosis. The analysis shows that the implementation takes place into an ecological living system made up of humans, non-humans, things, and societal entities. For the teachers to possibly accept, appropriate, act and re-enact such a learning infrastructure, it is of great importance to establish spaces for reflections and to support and facilitate (alternative) enactments of some of the more hidden affordances of the digital learning platform.

Keyphrases: Digital Learning Platforms, Enactivism, Future Workshop, teachers

@booklet{EasyChair:3412,
  author    = {Magda Pischetola and Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld},
  title     = {Enactivism and Digital Learning Platforms},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 3412},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2020}}