About the Book
This book champions phenomenology’s place in networked learning theory, research, and practice. The book illuminates and showcases something of the powerful richness, depth, and novel insights offered by phenomenological perspectives on human experience to invoke a fundamental rethinking of experience in networked learning. It also signals the broader learning technology community to acknowledge and engage with these perspectives.
The editors and authors have collaborated to bring a renewed focus upon the human facet of networked learning. As our world becomes more digitally enmeshed, infiltrated, and contested, the need to investigate and convey, at maximum fidelity, the lived experience of learners, teachers, and other stakeholders in education becomes paramount. Through phenomenological inquiry, we disclose the complex dance between the human and the technical, spotlighting how individuals engage, navigate, and find meaning within virtual yet embodied landscapes. This approach suitably honours the complexity, profundity, and ethicality of human existence in our evolving digital ecologies.
The first section, “Phenomenological Perspectives in Researching Networked Learning” lucidly explains phenomenology and some of its potential affordances. The second section, “Practising Phenomenological Research in Networked Learning”, explicates the tangible practice of phenomenological research into specific phenomena: chapters sample of a select range of studies that also indicate the kind of insights such research can bring to networked learning. The concluding section presents two chapters that denote novel and arresting, “Critical Phenomenological Perspectives on Networked Learning”. Together, these final chapters demonstrate the type of radical challenge that phenomenology can bring to the field, refreshing even networked learning’s most basic conceptions and practices.
With this book, we open a space for anyone who wishes to join us in the wonderful, inspiring, and challenging application of phenomenology within the field of networked learning.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Introduction.- Part I: Phenomenological Perspectives in Researching Networked Learning.- Chapter 2: Networked Learning and the Promises of Phenomenology - Lucy Osler.- Chapter 3: Investigating the background – taking a Merleau-Pontian phenomenological approach to Networked Learning - Nina Bonderup Dohn.- Chapter 4: Evocative writing and lived experience descriptions for networked learning research - Kyungmee Lee.- Chapter 5: Phenomenological research into being a student with a mobile phone - Mike Johnson.- Part II: Doing Phenomenological Research in Networked Learning.- Chapter 6: Networked learning in the time of pandemic: Intersubjectivity and alienation - Jean du Toit and Gregory Swer.- Chapter 7: What is it like for a learner to participate in a Zoom Breakout Room session? - Felicity Healey-Benson, Mike Johnson, Catherine Adams, Joni Turville.- Chapter 8: Tomorrow’s Networked Posthumans: Phenomenological Reflections on Artificial Intelligence and the Digital Well-Being of Young Children - Catherine Adams, Sean Groten and Yin Yin.- Part III: Critical(?) Phenomenological Perspectives on Networked Learning.- Chapter 9: Networked Learning, Teaching and Normativity: A Phenomenological Deconstruction - Norm Friesen.- Chapter 10: Re-presencing the network in networked learning design - Greta Goetz.- Chapter 11: Network internalities in protest and political participation - Stig Børsen Hansen.- Chapter 12: Conclusion.
About the Author :
Mike Johnson is a Lecturer in Information Management and Teaching at Cardiff University’s School of Healthcare Sciences, UK. He was first introduced to phenomenology during his teacher training in Bath in 1997. 20 years on, his PhD thesis project required a return to the likes of Heidegger, which, in the light of his longstanding commitment to the networked learning conference community, caused him to notice a gap in the take up of phenomenological concepts and methodologies in networked learning research. His pioneering research has delved deep into the digital interactions of healthcare students, unveiling their unique experiences of using mobile phones for academic work. Mike's approach to teaching is innovative and grounded, blending an acute insight into knowledge work with information technology to emphasize the purposeful and critically reflective adoption of technological tools in the academic landscape.
Felicity Healey-Benson is Lead Researcher and Entrepreneurial Learning Champion at the International Institute for Creative Entrepreneurial Development, University of Wales Trinity St David, UK. Her expertise spans leadership and management development in undergraduate and postgraduate programs, including HRM, enterprise, and sustainability leadership. She is co-founder of 'Hanfod.NL’ and the ‘Harmonious Entrepreneurship Society'. Felicity recently completed a doctoral hermeneutic phenomenological study of the lived experience of lecturers in Higher Education facilitating Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) in learners. Her findings, presented in her 'persona vignette' format, provide evocative insights and support reflective practice. With her passion for phenomenology and education, Felicity aspires educators to enhance teaching practices through the lens of phenomenological understanding.
Cathy Adams is a Professor of educational computing in the Faculty of Education, University of Alberta, Canada. Her research investigates digital technology integration across K-12 and post-secondary educational environments; ethical and pedagogical issues involving digital technologies including Artificial Intelligence; and K-12 Computing Science curriculum and computational thinking (CT) pedagogy. Cathy employs a range of posthuman/postdigital methods in her inquiries including interviewing subject-objects, postphenomenology, phenomenology of practice, media ecology, and other new materialist and sociomaterialist approaches.
Nina Bonderup Dohn is Professor of Learning & ICT at the Department of Design, Media and Educational Science, Head of Centre for Learning Computational Thinking, and Chair of Danish Institute of Advanced Study, University of Southern Denmark. She holds a PhD in Learning Theory and a Higher Doctorate Degree in Applied Philosophy. She is a member of the Steering Committee of the International Networked Learning Conference and editor of the Springer Research in Networked Learning book series. She has a track record of publication in high-profiled international journals and books. She currently holds a research grant from Independent Research Fund Denmark for the project Designing for situated computational thinking with computational things. Her main research areas integrate epistemology, learning sciences, web communication, and technology-mediated learning, focusing on the role of tacit knowledge.
