Draft; do not cite without the permission of the author: normf@athabascau.ca

Technology and Pedagogical Practice

Pedagogical Atmosphere

The elusive notions of tact, proximity and a-thematic awareness explored in the previous chapter were all described as arising in the context of the expressive space of the body, and through the experience of face-to-face dialogue. Levinas, however, indicates that events of proximity can also arise in other ways--namely, in connection simply with the "sensible" or "sensed" in general: "The immediacy of the sensible," he says, "is an event of proximity and not of knowledge" (1987, p. 116); or "the sensed is defined by this relationship of proximity" (1987, p. 118). The events of proximity, in other words, are not necessarily confined to occurrences involving the body, or to exchanges of words, gestures, tones, and expressions. These events can arise through other implicit, unspeaking, and tacit details that are "sensed" on some level, but that so readily escape the enumeration and articulation. Examples of such details can be found in the anecdotes provided throughout this dissertation: new books piled neatly on a desk, the tense silence of a computer lab, the confined space of an elevator, or the seat chosen by a student as he makes his way in to a crowded classroom.


All of these details point to a more general, shared experience of a particular place, time, appearance, or event. They contribute in some small way to a broader phenomenon that is perhaps best captured through terms such as "mood," "tone," "impression," or "ambience." In everyday language, the characteristics of these phenomena are commonly described in a wide range of ways: as cheery, grey, light, heavy, somber, studious, oppressive, etc. Van Manen and others have chosen the term "atmosphere" to designate the phenomenon underlying such terms. In common usage, "atmosphere" tends to be used to refer to a "pervading tone or mood," or to "a characteristic mental or moral environment" (Oxford University Press, 1989). Using the terms "atmosphere" and "mood" interchangeably, van Manen emphasizes in all forms of experience:


atmosphere is a profound part of our existence. By it we know the character of the world around us. Mood is a way of knowing and being in the world. . . .for each specific object or quality, atmosphere or mood is the way human beings experience the world. (1986, p. 31)


Of course, this phenomenon of mood or atmosphere is also manifest in specifically educational spaces and events. Bollnow identifies a particularly "pedagogical" manifestation of atmosphere, and defines it as follows:


I take the term pedagogical atmosphere to mean all those fundamental emotional conditions and sentient human qualities that exist between the educator and the [student] and which form the basis for every pedagogical relationship. (1989, p. 5)


Like Levinas' notion of proximity, atmosphere--pedagogical or otherwise--can be characterized as something that is sensed or felt, rather than something that is known. Many of the myriad of elements that contribute to it remain below the level of awareness, sensed only in a modality that has already been characterized as "non-the-matic." Atmosphere, then, is not simply the sum of a series of definable and quantifiable properties, conditions or elements. In this sense it is clearly distinguishable from the term "environment" as it tends to be used in the educational technology and instructional design literature--designating, for example, a software system, or an enumerable collection of behaviours, tasks and expectations (e.g. Koper, 2000, p. 8).


Atmosphere can also be described as a unitary phenomenon, one that cannot be divided spatially and temporally. Like the atmosphere that surrounds us physically, a figurative and pedagogical atmosphere is an emphatically local phenomenon, dependent on and defined by a particular time and place. It cannot be simultaneously apportioned to separate locations in space and time. For example, as van Manen says, the true character of a particular atmosphere may sometimes become most palpable at moments of silence in a class or among a gathering of people (1986, pp. 36-37). And such a silence, as mentioned earlier, cannot be experienced in the same, sententious way in online context where experience is divided temporally and spatially.


A further characteristic of atmosphere is that it cannot be made the subject of planning, control and calculation. Because the parts that together make up the greater "whole" that is atmosphere escape our notice, they naturally also escape our control. Atmosphere is thus not something that is objectively determined in the world around one: A person will not be necessarily happy simply because the sun is shining, or because others are cheerful. At the same time, atmosphere is also not simply subjectively determined, and a question of somehow owning, controlling or balancing one's internal feelings or moods. It is a combination of the internal and external; and it is a combination in which incidental details such as new books piled neatly on a desk or a tense silence in a lab or classroom play a significant role. Like a personal relationship, atmosphere is something that comes into being, without being the outcome of an action or contribution taken individually or in isolation. Indeed, as Bollnow has already said, pedagogical atmosphere is an essential characteristic that forms "the basis for every pedagogical relationship" (emphasis mine).

Pedagogical Relation

As was shown in the introduction to this dissertation, the centrality of the pedagogical relationship is implicitly but consistently affirmed and reaffirmed in the literature of educational technology and distance education. Whether the computer and network are conceived as tutor, tutee, or as intellectual or dialogical partner, this technology is unvaryingly envisioned as entering into an intimate and personal relationship with the student. While the importance of this relationship is repeatedly--but perhaps unintentionally--underscored in this literature, its characteristics are only vaguely intimated.


However, the characteristics of what has been called the "pedagogical relation" have been described explicitly in pedagogical theory associated with the German Geisteswissenschaften. As van Manen explains, Herman Nohl, an important representative of this pedagogical tradition, describes this relation "as an 'intensely experienced relation,' characterized by three aspects." First, this relation is "a very personal [one,] animated by a special quality that spontaneously emerges. . . that can neither be managed or trained, nor reduced to any other human interaction." Second, "the pedagogical relation is an intentional relation where in the intention of the teacher is always determined in a double direction:" towards who the student is, and who she will become. Third, Nohl stresses that "for the student the pedagogical relation with the educator is more than a means to an end. . . the relation is a life experience that has significance in and of itself" (van Manen, 1994, p. 143).


Nohl himself characterizes the pedagogical relation as being marked by a "two-sided" or "polarized" character: the teacher, Nohl says, is always aware of what the student is to become, but also always addresses her in terms of her current needs and situation (Nohl, 1949, p. 128). The pedagogical relation is also always a means to an identifiable end--the realization of particular goals and achievements--but it also has its "purpose. . . contained within itself" (Nohl, 1949, p. 127).


Nohl's characterizations--as well as those associated with the etymology of ped- agogy --take the relationship between an adult and a child as paradigmatic of this educational relation. However, when the aspects of this relation are considered for adult learners or for students generally, many of these ambivalences and tensions remain: This is illustrated in the remarkable consistency with which concerns about a close and reciprocal relation between student and computer surface in the literature of educational technology. As illustrated in the introduction, a conception of such a relation appears and reappears in understandings of this technology as tutor, tutee and as "mindtool," entering into a close relationship with the students, but affirming the student's ultimate control over this relationship. As a further example, the "guidance" invoked in Holmberg's oft-cited concept of "guided didactic conversation" is no less important or needed simply as a result of the age of the learner. Holmberg, at least, makes no such distinction.


However, questions of guidance, authority and autonomy in such a relationship are more complex than discussions of educational technology tend to make them out to be. For example, both hypertext and interactive "digital materials" are understood as giving the student the freedom to engage materials in a manner that is "more personally meaningful" or that makes the student "special" (Jonassen, 2000, p. 208; Papert, as cited in Tapscott, 1998, p. 146). But as this dissertation has shown, this is not accomplished through an arbitrary exercise of freedom in clicking hypertext links, or through the ready availability of feedback, calculated for the student on demand. The questions of authority and autonomy are instead much more properly addressed in a human relation characterized through the role and etymology associated with the word "pedagogy" itself: As described earlier, the pedagogue, like the slave taking the child to the agora, leads the student onwards to a destination. However, in doing so, the slave is also bound by his own role of service to the child--to the child's current situation and needs. This ambivalence is further underscored by the rich and varied meanings of the root agein--to lead. These meanings suggest that the freedom offered in the pedagogical relationship is not one of unrestricted choice and limitless convenience. Instead, as was indicated in the discussion of print and hypertext media, this relation is one in which meaningful freedoms are achieved in the context of constraints and commitments.


Computer technologies, as indicated earlier, are separated from such concerns by an "ontological gap." Computers are incapable of entering into the world of commitment, freedom, constraint and meaning that is central to the pedagogical relationship--or in any other human relationship. Consequently, by their very nature, they cannot fulfill the educational promise that is so frequently ascribed to them. Simply by virtue of being computers, these devices cannot lead students down "their own personal paths to learning;" and they cannot participate in any didactic or other "dialog" that would resemble human conversation.

Pedagogy as a Focal Practice

As a local, unitary, and relational phenomenon, mediated through an "a-thematic" awareness, pedagogy bears close resemblance to what philosopher Albert Borgmann refers to as a "focal practice." As Borgmann explains, in using the term "focal," he draws both on its meaning in common English, in scientific language, and its origin in the Latin term for "hearth," "the symbolical center of the house:"


Figuratively [these meanings] suggest that a focus gathers the relations of its context and radiates it into its surroundings and informs them. To focus on something or to bring it into focus is to make it central, clear and articulate. It is in the context of these historical and living senses of "focus" that I want to speak of focal things and practices. (1984, p. 197)


A focal practice, as Borgmann further explains, "provides a center of orientation" (1984, p. 197). "It is a final and dominant end," he says, "which alone truly matters and fulfills and which therefore assigns all other things and activities their rank and place" (1984, p. 211). He provides the examples of "music, gardening [and] the culture of the table" as instances of focal practices (1984, p. 197). As forms of pleasure and enjoyment, activities like eating a fine meal, enjoying a concert, or caring for a flower bed are not things that are undertaken as means to achieving a specific end. They are not done in a calculating manner or to satisfy ulterior motives, or with the hope of achieving a different goal or purpose. Instead, they constitute ends in themselves, and as such, these ends are able to lend meaning, purpose and order to other practices and activities. These other practices can then be organized and utilized to serve those practices that are "focal" in nature.


Elaborating on Borgmann's notion, Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus point to friendship and its cultivation as an illustration of a focal practice:


People have a lot of practices for supporting their friends and abandoning their friends, but philosophy hasn't worked on it or tried to make principles about it and it hasn't become part of the efficient technological ordering of things. People have not gone around saying we should make friendship more efficient, more productive and so forth, so it exists as a kind of non-rationalized practice. (as quoted in Flyvbjerg, 1991, p. 97)


The Dreyfuses draw attention to the tendency of focal practices to resist rationalization or attempts to make them more efficient or productive. As ends in themselves, these practices are not activities that we try to eliminate, reduce or accelerate, as if to make time or opportunity for other ends or pleasures. Instead, we only seek to make other activities that are more efficient or less time consuming so that we may devote desired time and attention to those practices more "focal" in nature. In addition, the examples of friendship, the enjoyment of gardening and meal-time indicate that, as Borgmann points out, focal practices have a tendency to be "compact:" they are focused spatially in a particular physical location. He also warns that such practices should not be


thought of as experiences in the subjective sense, events that have their real meaning in transporting a person into a certain mental or emotional state. Focal events, so conceived, fall under the rule of technology. For when a subjective state becomes decisive, the search for a machinery that is functionally equivalent to the traditional enactment of that state begins. (1984, p. 202)


These terms are remarkably similar to many of those used above to describe the phenomenon of atmosphere--or more specifically, of pedagogical atmosphere. Both "pedagogical atmosphere" and "focal practices" represent something that is neither simply a question of subjective mood, nor a matter of objective conditions that can be enumerated, controlled, or mechanically simulated. Moreover, both tend to be local or "compact" phenomena: Like a musical concert or a family meal, both focal practices and pedagogical atmosphere tend to have an identifiable locale or literal center of focus: this focus is constituted by the concert hall, the supper table, or by the classroom or other physical place where a pedagogical relation is realized. Finally, like focal practices, education, too, is not reducible simply to questions of efficiency and rational organization. For example, like a friendship, the pedagogical relation described by Nohl has its "purpose contained within itself." Both ultimately find their fulfillment in themselves--despite the many rewards, goals and accomplishments that may be associated with them.


Support for an understanding of pedagogy as a non-rationalizable, focal practice, however, is not confined simply to pedagogical theory associated with the German Geisteswissenschaften. Hints, indications and remarkable correspondences can be found in the literature of educational technologies itself, and also in examinations of the history of these technologies. One general example is the "no significant difference phenomenon" discussed in the introduction to this dissertation. This phenomenon shows how decades of research in the use of educational technologies has failed to produce a discernable increase in measures of learning efficiency--specifically when compared to more traditional means and practices. This seems to suggest that the practices of pedagogy have resisted all manner of attempts to be addressed in terms of technological efficiency, and to realize significant increases in efficiency. A similar resistance to change on the part of pedagogical practices is also manifest in accounts of the history of educational technologies. Looking at one hundred years of history of technological change in American schools, Larry Cuban concludes that "shifts over the last century in classroom topography"--including its "organization," "relationships," and "methods"--"barely can be detected." "What can hardly escape notice" Cuban observes further, is the survival and resilience of what he characterizes as a common, "persistent core of practices" (1986, p. 104).


Surprising admissions can also sometimes be found in the writings even of those who otherwise strongly advocate the use of educational technologies. In a remarkable article on "Certainty, determinism and predictability in theories of instructional design," Jonassen himself admits that


We are ill-equipped to adequately describe human thinking, let alone regulate it. Knowledge is an elusive phenomenon. . . . While research in instructional systems has identified very few fairly reliable cause-effect relationships between instructional and activity and learning performance, whether they will be operable in any learning system is probabilistic at best. (1997, p. 28)


Jonassen's response to such limitations is to suggest even more rigorous and complicated structural and systems approaches--to represent the "elusive phenomenon" of knowledge, as he says, in even more "complex, interacting forms in the world as well as in the learner's head" (1997, pp. 28, 33).


As indicated earlier, the typical response to the remarkable resistance and resilience of "core" or "focal" educational practices is a redoubled appeal to the evolutionary or revolutionary force of technological progress--to end their stubborn persistence as "low-tech institutions in a high-tech society" (Gerstner, as cited in Cuban, 2001, p. 13).


However, a different response to these remarkable results and this exceptional legacy is also possible. Van Manen suggests such an alternative response by saying that


Maybe we should be amazed that pedagogical relations are maintained in spite of increasing technological rationalization of educational life in schools and other educational systems. . . [that] in spite of research into teaching, ever-changing philosophies of education. . . it seems that the actual reality of teaching and learning continues to defy effective rationalization. (2003, emphasis mine)


So perhaps the question researchers should be asking is not: "How can we search for yet more ways to try to make education more efficient?" but instead, "How are the practices of pedagogy so remarkably resistant to attempts to rationalize and make them more efficient?" In an attempt to provide an answer to such a question, van Manen suggests that the practices of education may be comparable to Michel Foucault's notions of "subjugated" or "marginal knowledges" or practices. Foucault, as van Manen explains,


may provide a framework by suggesting that such [activity] constitutes marginalized practices that do not fall outside of rationalized domains but operate at the margins, within, and even against those technologically rational structures. In Foucault's terms, they form a kind of "local knowledge" that gets enacted in ever-unique, always-changing, particular situations of educational life in and out of classrooms. (2003)


Van Manen explains the possible correspondence of pedagogy to these local knowledges as follows:


in everyday teaching-learning situations, the local knowledges that sustain pedagogical relations are not so much located at the margin but operate at the very centre of classroom life. In the accounts of many teachers, the informal life of teaching usually overflows the technical rationalizations in terms of which education is commonly framed. (2003)


So, the task incumbent on educators and educational researchers may not be to blindly pursue rationalization and efficiency, but to guard against the reduction of educational focal practices to simple rational procedures and technical knowledge. Instead of trying to reduce the ends of education to the methods and means of technical efficiency, it is important to see technical means only as supporting and sustaining more significant pedagogical ends.

Bringing Educational Technologies into Focus

Borgmann says of a focal practice that "when we bring the surrounding technology into it, our relations to technology become clarified and well-defined" (1984, p. 196). Something like this should be possible in thinking of pedagogy as a focal practice. Seeing pedagogy as a focal practice may allow us to clarify the role of technology and put it in its place, without rejecting the contribution it can make to the ends of pedagogy. So as the term is used in this section, bringing technology into "focus" actually means moving it out of the focal center, and seeing how it relates to and supports focal practices that are central. By doing so, it will hopefully be possible to bring the value or potential of this technology into greater clarity.


When considered as a means of supporting focal practices, one of the characteristics of this technology that stands out is its enframing power. As explained in the introduction, these technologies "enframe" in the sense that they open up or set up certain experiential and intellectual opportunities or worlds, while imposing limitations on others. Computer and Internet technologies--like all modern technologies--make certain experiences, practices and meanings possible, while reducing the significance, purpose and practicality of others. One of the characteristics of this enframing that has come up indirectly at various points is that computers stake out, privilege and concretize the abstract, the formal, the theoretical and the mental. They make the "symbolic" "concrete," as David Bolter says (1984, pp. 71, 74).


Significantly, there are many contexts in which precisely this abstracting and formalizing power can make valuable contributions to pedagogical focal practices. An example is provided by the video segment or clip downloaded from the Internet, as described in chapter four. This video file explains the characteristics and processes associated with DNA, using spoken explanation and computer-generated, abstract animations. In this case, it is the ability of computers to generate, transmit and display abstract images of DNA that constitutes their contribution to greater pedagogical ends. Significantly, these images and forms concretize complex structures that have no readily accessible or visible counterpart in the physical world. And it is the abstract, formal and structured phenomenon of DNA that constitutes the subject matter with which the student is to be directly engaged. The computer and network, in this context, are able to represent this formal structure in a manner that is explicit, public and accessible. Unlike the privacy of reading with which it is compared, the clip's description is available in a manifestly explicit and public form in all of its detail and specificity. It helps the student to "see" the process, to "believe" with others who have also viewed it.


However, this same abstracting and enframing power is less suitable or valuable in the context of other pedagogical practices or situations. An example is provided by the frog dissection--also described in the fourth chapter. The technologies of computer and network are used to present an accessible, visual representation of physical forms of a dissected frog. But unlike the animated images of DNA, these forms actually do have obvious counterparts in the physical world that are both visible and palpable. Networked digital technologies in this case do not present a world to the student that is one of formalisms or abstractions that would otherwise simply need to be imagined or visualized privately. Instead, these technologies supplant a palpable, physical form with one that is abstract and disembodied. In doing so, they foreground what has earlier been identified as a significant ontological "difference" or "gap." The status of the virtual object these technologies present, understood simply as an entity in the world, is qualitatively different from the status of what it is supposed to represent. And this difference is of obvious pedagogical significance. It is precisely the discovery of the order and dynamics--as well as the variability--of natural, physical bodies that is an important part of dissection activity. Although a simulated dissection may allow the student to effectively rehearse the steps of a dissection in simplified and schematized form, it does not substitute for the physical experience in all of its pedagogically significant dimensions.


These two relatively simple illustrations of how computers and the Internet relate to the focal practices of pedagogy show that the enframing and formalizing power of this technology contributes to pedagogy in a way that is quite different from the way it tends to be understood by constructivists such as Jonassen. This power can be useful for learning not because all learning is itself simply a matter of constructing formalisms and "links between existing knowledge and new knowledge," as Jonassen claims (1993, p. 155). Instead, the examples above show how the formalizing power of this technology corresponds quite directly to the specific subject matter at hand. Given the dominance and value of such formalized and abstract models in our technological society, this particular pedagogical strength of the computer is likely to be of considerable and widespread importance.


In a similar manner, the potential of the computer's enframing power is revealed in its ability to assist in the composition, transmission and ready accessibility of written words. Writing itself can be understood as a set of structures or formalisms that follow ordered rules of syntax and semantics (e.g. Sturrock, 1986). Combinations of the twenty-six characters of the Latin alphabet present a formal code that computers are clearly adept at transmitting displaying, manipulating, ordering and reordering. All of this can be put to use to assist in the realization of the repose, reflectiveness, precision and clarity associated with writing--as opposed to the expressive spontaneity that marks spoken exchanges. This potential is illustrated in the notes sent between a grade nine student and her teacher cited in the fifth chapter. In this instance, both individuals give nuanced descriptions to their mixed feelings toward one another, providing precise expression and qualification to thoughts and feelings. Such controlled, reflective, and deeply felt self-disclosure might indeed be very difficult to realize without the exchange of a-synchronous, written messages.


At the same time, however, the contribution made by technologies supporting the composition, transmission and organization of writing to pedagogical practices is marked by significant limitations. These can be understood most clearly in terms of the characteristics of pedagogical atmosphere and focal practices described earlier. For example, the fact that students in online forums are not required to share a common "present" or "place" runs counter to the "compact" nature of focal practices generally. In addition, the local and intrinsic particularity of pedagogical atmosphere seems to be something that is difficult to foster in such forms that have been freed from spatial and temporal constraints. The very fact that these online forums accommodate careful reflection and controlled verbal construction also reflects restrictions that these technologies place on the pre-intentional, a-thematic aspects of relations. And it is precisely these relational subtleties that are indispensable for what van Manen identifies as "tact" and "pedagogical tact." Indeed, as the example provided in the fourth chapter of this dissertation shows, the potential of written, a-synchronous communication is very effectively realized when used in the context of a local, compact, and physical setting--augmenting or offsetting these aspects of pedagogical focal practice, but not operating in isolation from them.


It is important that in all of the examples discussed above, the contribution of networked technologies to focal pedagogical practices is understood very specifically in terms of the particularities and details of these practices. In discussing the contributions represented by the dissection and DNA video animation, for example, it is the details of the ontological status of the subject matter that are decisive in understanding and evaluating the contribution of this technology. Similarly, the reflection, restraint and precision for which writing allows, and which networked technology further enhances, become valuable in the specific and intimate pedagogical relations between students and teachers. All of this points to the fact that the role and contribution of these technologies to pedagogical focal practices is best understood not in terms of "education," "learning," "interaction" or any other overarching, abstract category. Correspondingly, there is no one generic, all encompassing role or position that these technologies will be able to fulfill in making their contribution to pedagogical practices. Instead, the type of contribution, and the way it becomes manifest varies from particular moments, forms and events in the focal practices of pedagogy. This is again something that runs contrary to the enframing, abstracting and homogenizing power of computer technologies themselves--and to the abstract and general categories already prevalent in educational technology and curricular theories. It is only by resisting these aspects of the enframing power of computers that the real contributions of these technologies to pedagogical practices can come into focus. And it is only in this way that we can ensure that technology serves our ends and purposes, rather than our serving it.


Conclusion

The question that I have set out to answer in this dissertation was originally formulated in its introduction: "What is the pedagogical significance of the relation between students and networked technology?"


In endeavoring to answer this question, I have found that computers and the Internet can indeed stake out places suitable for pedagogy, but that their capability to do so is limited by a number of factors. First, the ability of these technologies to contribute to the practices and the guiding relation at the focus of pedagogy is inherently limited by the very nature of these technologies. The entities, objects and even pre-programmed words that these technologies present to students are disembodied and abstracted; and these disembodied entities are separated from their counterparts in the physical and human worlds by a qualitative, ontological gap. As a result, the pedagogical benefits that can be gained from their simulation and imitation are by their very nature restricted. Also, the capacity of these technologies to contribute to focal practices through their power to display, transmit and allow the manipulation of language is also limited. This limitation can be described in terms of the attenuation of pre-intentional a-thematic awareness, and the limitations imposed on qualities of pedagogical atmosphere and tact with which this awareness is closely associated.


Finally, in considering the pedagogical significance of the relation of students to this technology, it is important to emphasize that its pedagogical potential is also significantly limited simply by the way that this technology is understood or misunderstood in the educational literature in which it is discussed. It tends not to be analyzed in qualitative, historical and critical terms, nor in terms of the variability, particularity and specificity of pedagogical contexts. Consequently, in concluding this study, I propose the following thesis statements and assertions for research and practice in the area of educational technologies: