Foreword

Gerry Stahl

Drexel University,
Philadelphia, USA

The theme of engaged learning with emerging technology
is a timely and important one. This book proclaims the global relevance of the
topic and sharpens its focus. I would like to open the book by sketching some
of the historical context and dimensions of application, before the chapter authors
provide the substance.

Engagement with the world
- To be human is to be engaged with other people in the world. Yet, there has
been a dominant strain of thought, at least in the West, that directs attention
primarily to the isolated individual as naked mind. From classical Greece
to modern times, engagement in the daily activities of human existence has been
denigrated. Plato (340 BC/1941) banished worldly engagement
to a realm of shadows, removed from the bright light of ideas, and Descartes (1633/1999) even divorced our minds from
our own bodies. It can be suggested that this is a particularly Western
tendency, supportive of the emphasis on the individual agent in Christianity
and capitalism. But the view of people as originally unengaged has spread
around the globe to the point where it is now necessary everywhere to take
steps to reinstate engagement through explicit efforts.

Perhaps the most systematic
effort to rethink the nature of human being in terms of engagement in the world
was Heidegger’s (1927/1996). He argued that human existence takes place through
our concern with other people and things that are meaningful to us. This
analysis reversed many philosophic assumptions, including the priority of
explicit knowledge. Our understanding of stated facts requires interpretation
based on our previous and primary tacit understanding of our world and our
concerns. Our active engagement in the world is a prerequisite for any
learning.

Vygotsky’s (1930/1978) socio-cultural psychology can be seen as an expansion
of Heidegger’s critique of Western assumptions. Not only is explicit
theoretical knowledge reliant upon tacit practical knowledge, but individual
learning is reliant upon collaborative learning. Vygotsky showed how most
learning begins with interpersonal interactions and is only secondarily
internalized as individual knowledge. So it is our engagement with other
people—whether in our family, tribe, classroom or workplace—that
provides the primary context, motivation and source of new knowledge.

In the past several years, a
number of theories have elaborated the perspectives of Heidegger and Vygotsky
in ways that are particularly relevant to issues of engaged learning. Situated
learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991) has stressed that learning is a matter of
participating in communities of practice. Distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1996) has shown how engagement with artifacts can be
central to learning. Activity theory (Engeström, Miettinen, & Punamäki, 1999) emphasizes engagement in a whole activity structure
including tasks, people, artifacts and social structures. Group cognition (Stahl, in press) argues that knowledge is primarily built in the
interactions of small groups.

Dewey (1949/1991) is a major source of the current discussion of
engaged learning. Adapting the philosophic critique of individualism in Hegel (1807/1967) and Marx (1867/1976) to his pragmatist viewpoint, Dewey drew out the
consequences for education. He opposed behaviorist and didactic training that
emphasized drill and practice in favor of engaging students in inquiry into
open-ended problem contexts. Fifty years after Dewey, we are still trying to introduce
engaged learning into the classroom.

Engagement with learning
- There are many dimensions to engagement with learning. As a number of the
chapters will stress and illustrate, the nature of the problems that students
are given is critical. If we want students to engage with a problem, it must be
one that they “care about” in Heidegger’s terms; it must involve
issues that make sense to them within their interpretive perspectives on the
world. In terms of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, it should be
a problem that challenges their current understanding but is within reach of
their understanding, given some support by the people who are working on the
problem with them. This may mean that they work collaboratively on a problem
that they could not master on their own, or that adequate computer support is
provided to guide them the way a mentor might.

Of course, not every problem
can be in an interest area of every student. One student might have a passion
for science, another for reading, drawing, sports or music. By having students
work together on stimulating problems that have been designed and supported to
optimize chances of successful knowledge building, educational activities can
lead to increased interest and engagement with a new learning domain.
Engagement with problems, people and domains can have a synergistic effect.

People are engaged in many
communities simultaneously: family, neighborhood, religious, school,
friendship, online, etc. These are primary contexts and motivators of
engagement. People tend to learn the culture of their communities quickly and
effortlessly. Communities of various sizes and formats can be formed for
purposes of engaged learning. In some cases students can be introduced to professional
communities (e.g., NASA), in other cases mini-communities can be constructed
that are based on the professional community but are more accessible to the
students (e.g., model rocket clubs). Communities can be built online so that people
with a particular interest can interact with others around the world. Groups
can also be formed to create new engagements, such as classrooms in different
countries corresponding with each other as a way of learning foreign languages.
Engagement generally grows through involvement in such communities. Often,
small groups form within larger communities so that participants can get to
know each other better and establish a shared history. It is in the intense
interactions within such small groups that knowledge is likely to be
constructed and shared.

One should not think of
engagement as an individual attribute. Communities are engaged with specific
issues; that may well be why they originally formed and continue to persist.
Small groups also engage in activities. The community or group engagement may
not so much be motivated by the desires of their individual members as vice
versa. Individual engagement is often a consequence of being involved in an
engaged group. One is motivated by the group effort. If a researcher looks
closely at the behavior of a group, what appears is not a clear causation in
either direction between individual and group; they tend to constitute each
other’s engagement through subtle interactional moves.

Similarly, engagement is neither
a purely intellectual, affective nor social phenomenon. Engagement may involve
cognitive tasks and the manipulation of conceptual materials. But it is also a
feeling that people have that they are participating in something that is
important and interesting. Further, it is a social undertaking, done with, for
or because of other people and groups. The impetus to do something, the options
available and the methods for accomplishing it are likely to be defined by the
culture of some community. What is learned, the motivation to learn it and its
socially accepted value are intimately intertwined in ways specific to each
case.

So engaged learning can
involve engagement with problems, with a domain of knowledge, with communities
and with small groups. It can be observed at the individual, small group and
community unit of analysis. It appears as a blending of intellectual, affective
and social relations.

Engagement with technology
- These days, engagement with learning is likely to mean engagement with
technology. This is because networked computers seem to offer open-ended
possibilities for promoting and supporting engaged learning. They can connect
geographically isolated and dispersed individuals into collaborative groups.
They can provide scaffolding for learning without requiring the presence of a
skilled mentor. They can offer access to worldwide resources. They can
incorporate computationally powerful tools.

Unfortunately, this
tantalizing potential is not yet at hand. Commercially available media do not
support engagement. They are largely designed based on the individual
transmission model: they allow individuals to access facts and to transmit
opinions. To go beyond this, we need to design technologies that can serve as
mediators of person-to-person interaction that goes beyond superficial
socializing and exchange of opinions to engagement in deep knowledge building (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1996). But to do this, we need to understand
computer-mediated collaborative learning interaction much better than we do
now. It is a complicated process, sensitive to many factors and not predictable
from any. It is easy to know what will prevent successful engaged learning, but
hard to know how to foster it, particularly given today’s technology.
While computers are indeed computationally powerful, the technology for
programming learning environments is frustratingly rigid. Educational innovators
face a wicked problem in trying to realize the potential of emergent
technologies.

The far-reaching goal set forth
in this book, to design and promote technologies for engaged learning, requires
a worldwide effort. Fortunately, the book simultaneously represents a global
engagement with this task. The following chapters pursue the educational and
technical potential from diverse international perspectives.

References

Descartes,
R. (1633/1999). Discourse on Method and
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Dewey, J., & Bentley, A.
(1949/1991). Knowing and the known. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953
(Vol. 16). Carbondale, IL: SIU Press.

Engeström, Y.,
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Press.

Hegel, G. W. F. (1807/1967). Phenomenology of Spirit (J. B. Baillie,
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Heidegger, M. (1927/1996). Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit
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Hutchins, E. (1996). Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge, MA:
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Lave, J., & Wenger, E.
(1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate
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Stahl, G. (in press). Group
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