Key Questions
- What does it mean to learn?
- How do we learn?
Examples in Reviewed Articles
Technologies of Learning provide us with an understanding of what it means to learn something and when this learning happens. The two key questions, What does it mean to learn? and How do we learn? are intertwined, reflecting that our understanding of what learning is directly impacts (and is informed by) what we think we need to do in order to learn. For educational technology, these technologies are crucial since they allow us to create interventions that respond to how (we believe) they are going to be received and internalized by the student.
Learning tools thus very often inform practice oriented technologies such as those that deal with Methodology, Lesson, and Teaching questions. They also have an impact on Theory ideas, since it is impossible to consider what education is without also thinking about the intended result in the subjects of any educational intervention.
Though Kincheloe’s summary points do not directly address any commonly held ideas that critical pedagogies have about learning, it is easy to discern from most writings some basic principles. Since critical programs are grounded in a cohesive vision of subject and environment, and since they focus on the rescuing of localized forms of knowledge, we must assume that critical pedagogues believe that learning happens organically within every individual’s community. Moreover, since critical pedagogies tend to be dialectical, we must understand that Learning is assumed to happen through this process of interrogation, exploration and discussion. All of the examples in this review fit this pattern, so I will instead focus on what makes the authors’ perspectives unique.
Analysis of reviewed articles
Freire (2020) focuses most of his article in addressing questions of Learning by contrasting two ideas. In the traditional one, learning is the rote acquisition of facts and skills, and it happens mechanistically. In his preferred vision, Learning is equated with reading. To learn is to read the word and the world, to be able to interpret the phenomena around us, human or otherwise, and come to our own conclusions. In turn, we learn this skill by practicing it. This understanding, replicated throughout his writing, is cited from other texts in most texts in this review, and indeed throughout critical pedagogy. His inclusion in this review is thus warranted by this influence. Though other authors do not respond directly to this text, they are interacting meaningfully with Freire’s reading.
For Blikstein (2008) and Fasching-Varner et al. (2020), Learning is radically experiential: people learn by doing things. Though the former bases his understanding on the work of Seymour Papert and the latter on Radical Love, their pedagogies both reflect this conclusion similarly by facilitating relatively unstructured experiential Lessons for their students. Since their subjects are different, however, they are able to provide varying levels of support. Blikstein intervenes with artifact-based Lessons, focusing the experiences of the students around the creation and use of hardware. Fasching-Varner and colleagues instead take a hands-off approach, keeping tabs on the experiences of their students through their journals but otherwise letting them experience the lostness of being a foreigner in a strange land.
For McLean (2020) and Sagaram (2020) learning also comes from experience, but it is less radically unstructured. While the latter states her learning tools clearly, she instead reflects on how these allow her to construct effective Methodology tools and Lessons. Meanwhile, the former envisions a mix of action and contemplation, of activism and discussion, and claims that it is both, in concert, that facilitate Learning. Thus, her Lessons are characterized by this investment in dialogue that leads to action and action that informs dialogue.
Elsasser and Irvine (1987) are deeply influenced by their Context tools when constructing an idea of how their students learn. They focus on how gaining an appreciation of the difference between the hegemonical knowledge presented in school and their students’ own, homegrown knowledge facilitates them interpreting both and experiencing them more fully. This understanding closely follows Freire’s own reading technology, but Elsasser and Irvine localize it to their own students to construct a picture not of how learning works in the world, but of how it operates within their own classroom.