Stephen Petrina
None (Private), Pending, Faculty Member
- Media Studies, Sociology, New Media, Philosophy, History, Education, and 17 moreCritical Pedagogy, Critical Theory, Design, STEM Education, Design History, Technology Studies, Curriculum Studies, Academic Freedom, Critique, Ecology, Environmental Education, Cultural Studies, Technology Education, Science and Technology Studies, Computer Networks, Databases, and Softwareedit
- Stephen Petrina is a Professor (MTSE) in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at the University of British Colum... moreStephen Petrina is a Professor (MTSE) in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia. He specializes in Media and Technology Studies (MTS), Science and Technology Studies (STS), Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education (STEM), and of course Curriculum Studies.edit
Although Foucault (e.g., 1969/1972, 1971a, etc.) fails to mention key sources of the method dubbed archaeology, some of these are obvious. And with regard to genealogy, Caldwell’s (1982) observation still holds: Foucault’s “debt to... more
Although Foucault (e.g., 1969/1972, 1971a, etc.) fails to mention key sources of the method dubbed archaeology, some of these are obvious. And with regard to genealogy, Caldwell’s (1982) observation still holds: Foucault’s “debt to Nietzsche [e.g., On the Genealogy of Morality (GM)] has been acknowledged, but much more needs to be said” (p. 498) (i.e., Foucault, 1971/1977). To his credit in response to an interviewer’s comment— “it’s been said that you've given us a new way of studying events”— Foucault (1971b) corrected: “In the first place, I am not at all sure that I have invented a new method, as you were so kind to assert; what I am doing is not so different from many other contemporary endeavors, American, English, French, German. I claim no originality” (p. 192). The reality is that Foucault offered nothing original in either archaeological or genealogical method as he was simply responding to trends of the times (Huppert, 1974). At the confluence of Foucault’s archaeology, two trends converged: 1) genetic method with derivatives such as genetic epistemology and genetic phenomenology; and 2) Freud and psychoanalysis, which tended to tow along genetic psychology (Freud, 1951; Hartmann & Kris, 1945).
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Although curriculum analysis (CA) is one of the most common practices of curriculum design, research, and theory, it is one of the least understood. More specifically, the methods of CA are arbitrary or unclear. This stems partially from... more
Although curriculum analysis (CA) is one of the most common practices of curriculum design, research, and theory, it is one of the least understood. More specifically, the methods of CA are arbitrary or unclear. This stems partially from disagreements over whether CA should emphasize autobiographical, cultural, or social content and processes.
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Simply stated, policies are value choices among goals for action. They are mechanisms for realizing change but some critics hold that they are by and large for maintaining status quo. As goal-directed courses for action, policies serve as... more
Simply stated, policies are value choices among goals for action. They are mechanisms for realizing change but some critics hold that they are by and large for maintaining status quo. As goal-directed courses for action, policies serve as guides toward the mitigation of cultural, legal, natural, or social problems. The connotation is “collective public efforts aimed at affecting and protecting the social wellbeing of people” (Adésínà, 2009, p. 38). With due regard for environmental policy, this might also entail the wellbeing of nonhuman creatures and natural things
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It’s often said as a truism that “psychology influences every aspect of life." Should researchers take this to mean every datum and every dataset? If each conscious and unconscious behavior, belief, feeling, and thought is predicated on... more
It’s often said as a truism that “psychology influences every aspect of life." Should researchers take this to mean every datum and every dataset? If each conscious and unconscious behavior, belief, feeling, and thought is predicated on psychic agents and agency, then isn’t psyentific analysis of data the default method? With the expansive increase of psychological complexes, conditions, disorders, stressors, and vulnerabilities— within all animal communities— over the past 150 years, one might reasonably conclude that every analysis of data and experience ought to be psyentific. This was certainly an ambition of psycho-analysis as it demonstrated its value in everyday interactions and research.
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In many ways, phenomenological analysis is the epitome of analysis, with its procedure of “eidetic reduction.” Hence, it is not clear why Merleau-Ponty (1956) thought otherwise, stressing that phenomenology “is a question of description,... more
In many ways, phenomenological analysis is the epitome of analysis, with its procedure of “eidetic reduction.” Hence, it is not clear why Merleau-Ponty (1956) thought otherwise, stressing that phenomenology “is a question of description, and not of explanation or analysis” (p. 60). Certainly for phenomenologists, “the world is there before any analysis,” but he insists that “the relation with the world as it utters itself indefatigably in us is nothing which can be rendered clearer by analysis” (pp. 61, 67). Perhaps Merleau-Ponty was over-reacting to the fabrication of an analytic-continental divide in philosophy during the 1950s and 1960s. After all, phenomenology was considered to be constituent to “continental philosophy.” The truth is that Husserl, who passed away in 1938, would never have juxtaposed phenomenology against “analytic philosophy.”
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Environmental critique aside, environmental analysis within the sciences is interchangeable with ecological analysis, ecosystems analysis, or natural analysis. Similarly, economists routinely refer to “business environments” and rely on... more
Environmental critique aside, environmental analysis within the sciences is interchangeable with ecological analysis, ecosystems analysis, or natural analysis. Similarly, economists routinely refer to “business environments” and rely on forms of environmental analysis for strategic management and policy. Eventually, business environments and school environments have to countenance natural environments but greening ‘business as usual’ is merely a way of tinkering with challenges of sustainability. Environmental analysis of an individual’s or organization’s “ecological footprint” is constructive for establishing accountability to natural environments (Wackernagel & Rees, 1996). Ecocriticism (e.g., green cultural criticism) often faces similar challenges to establish depth of environmental analysis.
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Spiritual analysis developed in response to challenges of romanticism in the nineteenth century to retain elements of the ineffable or supernatural in culture and nature. In short, the challenge of romanticism is analysis with heart or... more
Spiritual analysis developed in response to challenges of romanticism in the nineteenth century to retain elements of the ineffable or supernatural in culture and nature. In short, the challenge of romanticism is analysis with heart or soul. Spiritual analysis first refers to a method for divining depths of inner life or what transcends material and mechanical processes and things, and second to the resolution of religious or sacred practices, processes, and things.
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It would seem that historical method has always implied case study if interpreted as the history of single events, episodic history as different from universal history, courtes durées as different from longues durées. From the early... more
It would seem that historical method has always implied case study if interpreted as the history of single events, episodic history as different from universal history, courtes durées as different from longues durées. From the early twentieth century, historical case study was basically biography, particularities of individuals used to counter the “vast amount of generalization” marking most histories and textbooks (Nichols, 1927, p. 270). Yet historical case study, in the way historians think of it, is primarily a post-WWII methodology.
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Non-historians struggle with historical understanding and analysis. History teachers consistently report that students’ “essays are the sites of massive, undifferentiated data dumps. They have paraphrased primary sources instead of... more
Non-historians struggle with historical understanding and analysis. History teachers consistently report that students’ “essays are the sites of massive, undifferentiated data dumps. They have paraphrased primary sources instead of analyzing them, ignored argumentation, confused past and present, and failed completely to grasp the ‘otherness’ of a different era” (Díaz, Middendorf, Pace, & Shopkow, 2008, p. 1211). As well, historians criticize each other for the dreaded salto mortale or “sweeping and ahistorical generic categories” and for caricatures of the past, simplistic assumptions, and shallow, trivial, unsubstantiated claims (Drumm, 2014, pp. 459-460).
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Critical analysis gets taken for granted through a sentiment that “everyone is a critic.” From the playpen, children grow up criticizing each other and their elders for breaking rules. These and other “kin objections to cultural rule... more
Critical analysis gets taken for granted through a sentiment that “everyone is a critic.” From the playpen, children grow up criticizing each other and their elders for breaking rules. These and other “kin objections to cultural rule violations” are common and prolific across history and contemporary societies (Jenkins, 1991, p. 404). Similarly, giving and receiving a critique, or “crit,” are synonymous with education (Petrina, 2017). Given the volumes of information sorted by everyday users of the web and its social media platforms, critical thinking has resurged as form of logic looking for fallacies. If so naturalized, then is the method of critical analysis and “a whole set of new positive metaphors, gestures,” etc. all the more important?
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Cultural analysis and social analysis derive from the development of anthropology and sociology in the mid nineteenth century. At that point, cultural analysis was synonymous with anthropological and ethnological analysis and social... more
Cultural analysis and social analysis derive from the development of anthropology and sociology in the mid nineteenth century. At that point, cultural analysis was synonymous with anthropological and ethnological analysis and social analysis with sociological analysis. One implies the analysis of signification and the other an analysis of association, human and nonhuman. Does the analysis of culture imply analysis of society, and vice versa?
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Self-analysis refers to either the disintegration and reintegration of what makes one partial and whole (i.e., systematic reflection) or an application of psychoanalytic techniques to one’s own ego identity (e.g., systematic re-education).
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Narrative, often shorthand for narrative analysis or narrative inquiry, refers to both an ordered representation of fiction or non-fiction and a method for making sense of the representations. Alternatively, narrative refers to a process... more
Narrative, often shorthand for narrative analysis or narrative inquiry, refers to both an ordered representation of fiction or non-fiction and a method for making sense of the representations. Alternatively, narrative refers to a process of storying or making stories while narrative analysis refers to destorying and restorying or unmaking and remaking stories. Stories unravel inasmuch as someone or AI unravels them. Narrative Analysis is the latest in a book I’m working on titled Methods of Analysis. It’s basically a side hustle for a few other research projects.
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Artistic analysis refers to the analysis of art and an artful or arts-based analysis (ABA) of data, whether aesthetic data or otherwise. Typically, the first sense involves rendering artworks into analytical works while the second sense... more
Artistic analysis refers to the analysis of art and an artful or arts-based analysis (ABA) of data, whether aesthetic data or otherwise. Typically, the first sense involves rendering artworks into analytical works while the second sense involves rendering or directing an analytical process into an artistic work. The first sense of artistic analysis, or aesthetic analysis, is often used interchangeably with “criticism” (e.g., art criticism, literary criticism) and “theory.” Artistic Analysis is the latest in a book I’m working on titled Methods of Analysis. It’s basically a side hustle for a few other research projects.
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In other words, the analysts themselves, in so far as they wish for clarification of their own activity, must go on to Meta-Analysis. But what does that mean? (Heinemann, 1953, p. 125)
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In one sense, “discourse is synonymous with text” and discourse analysis (DA) is dependent on entextualization (Greimas & Courtés, 1979/1982, p. 81). In another sense, “discourse can be identified with utterance” (p. 82). Discourse is... more
In one sense, “discourse is synonymous with text” and discourse analysis (DA) is dependent on entextualization (Greimas & Courtés, 1979/1982, p. 81). In another sense, “discourse can be identified with utterance” (p. 82). Discourse is text— spoken, written, depicted, gestured, and performed— but text is not merely a trace of discourse. Unspoken, spoken, and written words say and do things differently. DA can otherwise simply be defined as the “separation of the discoursive whole into its components” and, minimally, describing the exchange of speech acts or interactions between discourse and potential meaning (p. 82). Discourse makes meaning as meaning makes discourse. But, analysts clarify, discourse “is not only a resource but also a constraint for agents. Agents do not just use discourse [or draw meanings] as they see fit” (Paroutis & Heracleous, 2013, p. 937).
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This unique contribution to philosophy of technology for children and youth (PT4CY) draws on a subset of data from interviews within the scope of a summer camp (n=29). The key interview question is "what is technology?" We note that... more
This unique contribution to philosophy of technology for children and youth (PT4CY) draws on a subset of data from interviews within the scope of a summer camp (n=29). The key interview question is "what is technology?" We note that participants commonly characterize technology as popular devices but they also offer a range of unusual and contemplative responses. This paper focuses on these more unusual responses. The first section provides brief histories of philosophy in the schools and philosophy for children (P4C). The second section gives an overview of PT4CY and presents and analyzes qualitative data through conversational analysis. The paper concludes with recommendations for STEM educators and researchers by stressing the urgency of diversifying questions for PT4CY.
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This chapter addresses philosophy in design and technology pedagogy. It problematizes philosophy as a guide and resource for pedagogy and instead explores how children and youth philosophize in a process of designing and making. The... more
This chapter addresses philosophy in design and technology pedagogy. It problematizes philosophy as a guide and resource for pedagogy and instead explores how children and youth philosophize in a process of designing and making. The chapter provides a brief history of the Philosophy for Children (P4C) movement and questions its neglect of design and technology. In response, the chapter explores the philosophy of technology for children and youth (PT4CY). Philosophy may be defined as a "love of wisdom" but in the real world of designing, engineering, and making, philosophy often reduces to a 'love of conventional wisdom.' Examples of this are provided along with a research vignette of PT4CY. The chapter concludes with the juxtaposition of disruptive technologies, wherein children and youth are configured as experts, and slow pedagogies, wherein parents and teachers may intervene with spaces and time for philosophizing.
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When I read that the Holistic Education Review was publishing a special issue on ''Technology and Childhood," I wasn't sure of what to expect. I was hoping that critical voices would be heard, and that critique would extend from classroom... more
When I read that the Holistic Education Review was publishing a special issue on ''Technology and Childhood," I wasn't sure of what to expect. I was hoping that critical voices would be heard, and that critique would extend from classroom to policy levels. I'm puzzled over the lack of an article which would have framed educational technology as a subject for critical inquiry by students. Is it not time to acknowledge that students would be empowered by learning to both develop those tools which will serve their creative, and even economic, interests and interrogate the technologies which are in turn many ways marketed toward their childhood and adolescent vulnerability?
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Diverse relationships to technology and media are expressed or emerge over time, including hopeful enthusiasm and critical resistance. For all the enthusiastic and critical analyses, there are few extensive histories of the critique of... more
Diverse relationships to technology and media are expressed or emerge over time, including hopeful enthusiasm and critical resistance. For all the enthusiastic and critical analyses, there are few extensive histories of the critique of technology. This chapter historicizes critical relationships to technology, which range from detachment and skepticism to implicit resistance and explicit opposition or rejection. Relationships to technology and media have immediate implications for culture, economics, and education, but the focus here is on long-term historical implications. This begins with the spiritual critique of technology and proceeds historically through cultural, social, psychic, ontic, and identity critiques. In the final analysis, questions are raised for educators and researchers: If critique barely changes a thing, including youth consciousness, what is its utility? If it has been enough for criticism and critique to offer a counter to progress narratives, then how effective has this been?
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This chapter addresses the problem of moving students from critical self-reflection to the critique of design and technology. How and why do students become skeptical or critical of the designed world or more specifically of practices and... more
This chapter addresses the problem of moving students from critical self-reflection to the critique of design and technology. How and why do students become skeptical or critical of the designed world or more specifically of practices and products created for unsustainable consumption or planned obsolescence? After reviewing the history of the crit in D&T classrooms and workshops, this chapter addresses how students transfer dispositions from the crit to social critique of design practices and products. Conceptually, Schön's work, especially The Reflective Practitioner, provides key insights into this problem. This is a problem of transferring activity to activism, from school facilities to everyday life external to schools.
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This chapter addresses the social critique of technology with a specific focus on how students become critical. How and why do students become skeptical or critical of specific technologies or more generally D&T? The chapter begins with a... more
This chapter addresses the social critique of technology with a specific focus on how students become critical. How and why do students become skeptical or critical of specific technologies or more generally D&T? The chapter begins with a premise that social critique was explicit and inherent in D&T education from its formal inclusion in educational systems in the nineteenth century. The first section explores initial purposes of D&T education and a brief history of the crit. Neither peripheral nor secondary to other purposes, such as making and remaking, critique requires practice. The chapter proceeds to address the problem of transfer from the crit, which is integral to learning within D&T, to social critique. On one level, this is a problem of transferring activity to activism, from D&T’s internal school facilities to life after or external to schools. The chapter raises critical questions for pragmatists. As Schön (1983) concludes, a detached or distanced social critique of D&T “cannot substitute for (though it may provoke) the qualified professional’s [or student’s] critical self-reflection” (p. 290). Schön attended to practices moving students “from technical rationality to reflection-in-action” (p. vii); this chapter attends to processes moving students from critical self-reflection to social critique.
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This is a history of the critique of technology and a response to Latour's "Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?" This is my second response to Latour and concurs to a degree. My first response was also a history but offered a defence of... more
This is a history of the critique of technology and a response to Latour's "Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?" This is my second response to Latour and concurs to a degree. My first response was also a history but offered a defence of critique, or rather an analysis of the critique of critique. I wanted to write something resourceful, something we didn't already have. Now we have a history of the critique of technology. It's something to found a larger project.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History of Science and Technology, Cultural History, Critical Pedagogy, History of Technology, and 6 moreLiterary Criticism, Martin Heidegger, Bruno Latour, science and technology studies (STS), Ethics and Philosophy of Science and Technology; Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Studies, and STS/ANT
This chapter begins with the spiritual critique of media and technology and proceeds historically through cultural criticism and social, psychic, ontic, and identic critiques. Differentiated from the spiritual critique that precedes,... more
This chapter begins with the spiritual critique of media and technology and proceeds historically through cultural criticism and social, psychic, ontic, and identic critiques. Differentiated from the spiritual critique that precedes, cultural criticism of media and technology emerges in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a mode of describing and depicting the mechanical arts. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, spiritual critique is displaced through a rejection of religion and theology as sources of modern authority. With spiritual ground undermined, social, psychic, ontic, and identic critics of media and technology compete for defensible ground for leverage. The history of critique is a search for ground. This chapter historicizes the critique of media and technology as well as critique as a practice that has run out of steam. “Critical distance” from or “free relation” to media and technology— a seductive orientation since the 1940s— has been instrumental in critique’s gradual decline. The critique of critique has quickened the decline. The conclusion questions the short-term future of machinic critique and long-term renewal of spiritual critique.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, History of Science and Technology, Cultural History, Higher Education, and 11 moreHistory of Technology, Literary Criticism, Martin Heidegger, Social History, Critique, Bruno Latour, Heidegger and Technology, Sts in Education, science and technology studies (STS), History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and Science and Technology Studies
What is culture? If it merely reduces to meaning-making, then it is indistinct from cognition, design, learning, and literacy, also defined as meaning-making. If it subsumes these and other signifying practices, then “culture is... more
What is culture? If it merely reduces to meaning-making, then it is indistinct from cognition, design, learning, and literacy, also defined as meaning-making. If it subsumes these and other signifying practices, then “culture is everything” (i.e., “the web of everything”). Early in his career, Geertz turned to The Protestant Ethic for direction in his ethnographic analyses. He drew on Weber’s and others’ insights into the meaning-making function of culture. Certainly, he seemed to soften up Weber’s “iron cage” or “shell as hard as steel” by interpreting it instead as a “web.”
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This chapter sets the stage for problems of hacking minds, which have a deep history intertwined with the ancient Greek νοῦς and Latin curriculum mentis and the more contemporary noosphere and Internet. It aims to partially redress... more
This chapter sets the stage for problems of hacking minds, which have a deep history intertwined with the ancient Greek νοῦς and Latin curriculum mentis and the more contemporary noosphere and Internet. It aims to partially redress oversights in accounting for these histories. The chapter also provides a history of hacking relative to the early development of computers. Sketched as a chapter in the history of grammar and rhetoric, curriculum herein becomes a chapter in cosmology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of mind. Curriculum manifested as the noosphere, defined as the infrastructure of the mind and mindhacks, draws metaphysics into history. Tests of metaphysics, curriculum mentis and the noosphere are also important tests of the prehistory of cyberculture, the Internet, matrix, and web (Elton & Carey, 2013). All are intermixed with the history and metaphysics of curriculum as well as mind. The fate of curriculum is intertwined with the fate of mind and thought. In this storied teleology, things are hacked with resolve: Never expect a machine to limit its dealings with minds.
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Higher education “elites often see themselves as moral leaders and will therefore generally dissociate themselves from anything that has to do with racism as they define it.” In this era of Black Lives Matter (BLM), this narrative is... more
Higher education “elites often see themselves as moral leaders and will therefore generally dissociate themselves from anything that has to do with racism as they define it.” In this era of Black Lives Matter (BLM), this narrative is especially comforting for the managers as they invest in optics to sustain rankings and revenue. This article specifically draws on the case of the University of British Columbia (UBC) to address the racial demographics of hiring and appointing African ethnic and diasporic faculty and administrators. We provide various examples of how the institution functions through racial bias and prejudice but argue that leaving the explanation to structural or systemic racism makes it too easy to deny elite individual and everyday racism, especially racist attitudes and decisions of the managers and their means of employment discrimination. Insider knowledge of employees is crucial as managers respond to racism within their workplaces. In this case, as UBC managers try to get out in front of BLM and control the optics, it’s important to provide a critical analysis of reality and recent history of administrative inaction. Finally, we articulate concerns that managers are preferring to isolate and shield themselves from critical conversation and critique of mismanagement.
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On one hand, historians of alternative medicine and drugless healing provide effective counter narratives, albeit rarely connecting their subjects to the medicalization of education. On the other hand, the historiography of medical... more
On one hand, historians of alternative medicine and drugless healing provide effective counter narratives, albeit rarely connecting their subjects to the medicalization of education. On the other hand, the historiography of medical liberty is a product of allopathic practitioner histories and the AMA’s boundary maintenance of cults, frauds, nostrums, quackery, and pseudo-medicine. As a student of allopathy proclaimed: “Perhaps in this Land of Liberty, we are freer to be duped, and with all our opportunities we have more chances to embrace delusions.” Better, however, to turn this on its head and conclude that education, medicine and psychotherapeutics offer exemplary sites through which liberty and its dreams are forged.
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This article explores the limits of autobiography and biography in accounting for the preoccupations of Luella W. Cole and Sidney L. Pressey in everyday life, family, and work. Married in 1918 and divorced in 1933, their personal and... more
This article explores the limits of autobiography and biography in accounting for the preoccupations of Luella W. Cole and Sidney L. Pressey in everyday life, family, and work. Married in 1918 and divorced in 1933, their personal and professional collaboration provides important perspectives on histories of dual career and academic couples. Despite the comparatively high number of psychologist couples and married educators, we have not adequately attended to their biographies. In this couple’s case, we see the stresses of academic lifestyles, as ambitious workloads took a toll on their health and marriage. These two psychologists’ practices were common and indicative of relations between education and psychology at the time; the interpersonal effects of these practices on Cole and Pressey were likely more common than we realize.
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Research Interests: Cultural History, Medical Sociology, Education, History of Education, History of Medicine, and 15 moreHistory of Science, Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Medical Humanities, Michel Foucault, Medicine, Liberty, Humans, Complementary Therapies, Freedom, Medicalization, Alternative Medicine, Critique of Medicalization, Critique of the Dominant Medical or Pathologising Paradigm of Drug Use, Choice Behavior, and interprofessional relations
Education, medicine and psychotherapeutics offer exemplary sites through which liberty and its dreams are realized. This article explores the social history of medical freedom and liberty in North America during the late nineteenth and... more
Education, medicine and psychotherapeutics offer exemplary sites through which liberty and its dreams are realized. This article explores the social history of medical freedom and liberty in North America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The National League for Medical Freedom (NLMF) and the American Medical Liberty League (AMLL) offered fierce resistance to allopathic power. Allopathic liberties and rights to medical practice in asylums, clinics, courts, hospitals, prisons and schools were never certain. The politics of these liberties and rights represents a fascinating story that neither intellectual nor social historians have fully appreciated.
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What are some primary concerns and priorities of preservice teachers as they craft, brand, and curate, or design, their digital self? How and why has the preservice teacher's digital self become a design problem? This paper reports on... more
What are some primary concerns and priorities of preservice teachers as they craft, brand, and curate, or design, their digital self? How and why has the preservice teacher's digital self become a design problem? This paper reports on research with seven preservice teachers' insights into this problem. In a nutshell, through online platforms, one's private and public lives, or personal and professional images, risk collapsing or converging. Stakes are raised as students are given various cautions and warnings about this. What might raise a concern for a potential employer? What might generate concerns for young students' parents? How to professionalize the digital self? The problem is framed as a tension between the higher standard to which teachers are held and rising expectations that teachers be omnipresent in social media and technology. Findings emphasize that, for the participants, the design of the digital self is an ill-defined problem. Participants adopt fairly conventional means to design and manage their professional image. The conclusion begs a question of the higher standard in this era of SM and the intelligent web.
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In this paper, I argue for an explicit role for design in STEM, perhaps as another, albeit less popular, iteration, STEAMD. We cannot take design for granted in STEM or STEAM and design is unique in its ways of knowing. The first section... more
In this paper, I argue for an explicit role for design in STEM, perhaps as another, albeit less popular, iteration, STEAMD. We cannot take design for granted in STEM or STEAM and design is unique in its ways of knowing. The first section provides a background for the argument and focuses on Cross’s work. We can assert from this that STEM and STEAM are inadequate without recognition of the uniqueness of design. The second section outlines risks of superficial design in STEM and STEAM. In the final analysis, we need novel methodologies as well as responsive ethics in STEAMD educational research. This paper grounds a symposium that follows with conceptual and empirical direction for exploring designerly ways, means, and ends in STEM and STEAM educational research.
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In this chapter, by exploring the relative complexity of the landscape for conducting large-scale assessments of technological literacy, we address the challenges in creating and sustaining these assessments. Some of the better-known... more
In this chapter, by exploring the relative complexity of the landscape for conducting large-scale assessments of technological literacy, we address the challenges in creating and sustaining these assessments. Some of the better-known large-scale measures, such as Pupil's Attitudes Toward Technology (PATT), are sustainable for explicit reasons, including an open source philosophy. Open source means that the instrument (or software, information, etc.) is freely circulated and is open to customization, translation, redistribution, or anything but commercial, profit-driven appropriation.
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Literacy and illiteracy are no longer what they used to be. This is basically the conclusion of Mihai Nadin in his Civilization of Illiteracy. Nadin traverses over a few thousand years of the history of literacy, but the bulk of his... more
Literacy and illiteracy are no longer what they used to be. This is basically the conclusion of Mihai Nadin in his Civilization of Illiteracy. Nadin traverses over a few thousand years of the history of literacy, but the bulk of his attention is turned toward the contemporary. Now, he writes, we are witnessing the proliferation of literacies and multiplication of media on a scale that makes notions of a single form of literacy seem like a quaint dream of the past.
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Evaluating the subjective playing experience and engagement in learning is important in the design of advanced learning technologies (ALTs) that respond to the learners’ cognitive and emotional states. This article addresses students’... more
Evaluating the subjective playing experience and engagement in learning is important in the design of advanced learning technologies (ALTs) that respond to the learners’ cognitive and emotional states. This article addresses students’ attitudes toward an educational game, Heroes of Math Island, and their responses to the emotional agent, an animated monkey. Fifteen students (seven boys and eight girls) from grades six and seven participated in this quasi-experimental study (pretest, intervention, post-test, followed by post-questionnaire and interview). We present a detailed analysis of students’ subjective reactions with respect to Heroes of Math Island and to the underlying mathematics content, their learning gains and emotions triggered during gameplay, and design issues resulting from the evaluation of the game and of its emotional agent. The findings from this study inform how ALTs and educational games can be designed in order to be effective and provide emotional engagement, enjoyment, and learning.
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As educational systems emphasize and experiment with forms of online and remote learning, it is increasingly important to investigate the cultural competence of instructional designers. This chapter addresses the experiences of... more
As educational systems emphasize and experiment with forms of online and remote learning, it is increasingly important to investigate the cultural competence of instructional designers. This chapter addresses the experiences of instructional designers in a 3D virtual learning environment designed for development of cultural competence. Design-based research (DBR) and user experience (UX) methodologies were employed to explore experience of six instructional designers in 3D virtual environment. A taxonomy of experience (ToE) established by Coxon (2007) guided qualitative data collection and analysis. Through examples and data, the chapter emphasizes the necessity for instructional designers to keep in mind the challenge of cultural diversity in the backgrounds of students and their own, and bring guidelines and principles into culturally sensitive and responsive instructional design processes. We recommend four future research directions, including cross-cultural instructional designer competencies along with research into cultural personas, avatars, and guest-host relations.
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Page 1. Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor 2005, Vol. 7 : 1 (November) Academic Freedom & IP Rights in an Era of the Automation & Commercialization of Higher Education A Special... more
Page 1. Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor 2005, Vol. 7 : 1 (November) Academic Freedom & IP Rights in an Era of the Automation & Commercialization of Higher Education A Special Issue edited by Mary Bryson, Stephen Petrina & Lorraine Weir ...
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Academic Freedom, Higher Education, Critical Pedagogy, Truth, and 15 moreAcademia Research, Education and Labor Markets, Online Education, Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Higher Education Studies, Student movements, Academic Job Market, Academic Labor, Occupy Wall Street, Academic speech, Critical University Studies, Civility, Idle No More, Social Justice Issues In Adult and Higher Education, and E Learning
The convergence of the casualization, fragmentation, intensification, segmentation, shifting and creep of academic work with the post-9/11 gentrificaton of criticism and dissent is a serious threat to academic freedom. Academic stress—... more
The convergence of the casualization, fragmentation, intensification, segmentation, shifting and creep of academic work with the post-9/11 gentrificaton of criticism and dissent is a serious threat to academic freedom. Academic stress— manifested as burnout through amalgamation and creep of work, and as distress through bullying, mobbing and victimization— underwrites increases in leaves of absence. Non-tenure track faculty are hit particularly hard, indicating “contingency or the precariousness of their position” as relentless stressors. This is not exactly a SWOT analysis, where Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats are given due treatment. Rather, the focus is on this threat convergence as it resolves through historic displacements of the academic workplace and work. To what degree are the new policies for academic speech inscribed in academic work, regardless of where it’s done? As the academic workplace is increasingly displaced and distributed, are academic policies displaced and distributed as well? Observed at work, monitored at home and tracked in between—these are not so much choices as the cold reality of 21st century academic work.
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iPopU is cataloguing its mold-breaking outside-the-box ‘you won’t find these on the shelf of brick and mortar’ innorenovations. So this is a chance for U to contribute to the iPopU Topdown 100.
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Let’s face it: Evaluation is silly. Reviews of programs and units in universities in this day and age are even sillier. Units put the Unit in Unitversity, so what’s to review? No one really believes the Commission on Institutions of... more
Let’s face it: Evaluation is silly. Reviews of programs and units in universities in this day and age are even sillier. Units put the Unit in Unitversity, so what’s to review? No one really believes the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education when they boast in the naval-gazing Self-Study Guide that “undertaking a self-study is a major enterprise” or “self-study cannot be done well under rushed conditions.” Says who? These academic proverbs sell booklets with a wink wink and a chuckle.
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EJ592580 - Bridging Ecology and Design.
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History of the Air Force + History of Intelligence: This article synthesizes histories of Operation LUSTY, the AAF's Scientific Advisory Group, and Project PAPERCLIP, and follows the SAG into Germany's R&D installations, the concentration... more
History of the Air Force + History of Intelligence: This article synthesizes histories of Operation LUSTY, the AAF's Scientific Advisory Group, and Project PAPERCLIP, and follows the SAG into Germany's R&D installations, the concentration camp Dora at Mittelwerk, allied interrogation facilities, Japan and the atom bomb, and finally into Congress, 1945. The history of the SAG's efforts from 1944 to 1947 reveals the intensity with which the AAF and its consultants in the aeronautical sciences pursued Nazi R&D. The fact that an exploitation of this R&D configured into the postwar policies of the AAF and USAF is accepted by historians. This article explains how this was done by describing the coordination of LUSTY, OVERCAST, PAPERCLIP, and the SAG in the AAF's exploitation of intelligence and reparations for postwar policies and politics.
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Review of Brian E. Crim’s Our Germans.
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If issues in the history and philosophy of science and those related to science, technology and society are generally accepted in policy, how ought these be handled in practice? Mandate in policy does not guarantee implementation in... more
If issues in the history and philosophy of science and those related to science, technology and society are generally accepted in policy, how ought these be handled in practice? Mandate in policy does not guarantee implementation in practice. Indeed, HPS and STS have for decades been marginalized in the curriculum. Subject areas designated to teach components of HPS and STS, such as design and technology, social studies and science, seem preoccupied with other aspects of the curriculum and rarely get around to HPS and STS. This study aimed at eliciting pre-service physics teachers’ perspectives on using HPS to address quantum mechanics and scientific literacy. Through questionnaires, observation of and participation in a physics methods class, 16 pre-service teachers were asked to identify topics they considered problematic to teach or learn. They were challenged to identify those topics that could effectively be taught or learned from HPS. The pre-service teachers agreed that HPS and STS were more appealing for teaching some topics, such as quantum mechanics, which is the focus of this article. This intervention in physics teacher education demonstrates the importance of using specific methods in physics instruction to demonstrate the value of HPS in scientific literacy.
Research Interests: History, Information Technology, Physics, Philosophy of Science, Teacher Education, and 17 moreScience Education, History of Science, Computer Networks, Quantum Mechanics, Scientific Literacy, Social Studies, Databases, Observation, Software, Pre-service teachers, Teaching Methods, Subject Areas, Questionnaires, Curriculum and Pedagogy, SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY, Scientific Principles, and Science and Technology Studies
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Canada is at various crossroads and one of these is STEM education. The Canadian government anticipates that STEM will be a catalyst for economic and cultural change. After a decade of federal policies and funds for STEM education, there... more
Canada is at various crossroads and one of these is STEM education. The Canadian government anticipates that STEM will be a catalyst for economic and cultural change. After a decade of federal policies and funds for STEM education, there is little to show in K-12 schools and teacher education programs. The vast majority of non-profit, private sector, and professional society policy recommendations reinforce the federal government's lead. This chapter provides a critical analysis of challenges, policies, practices, and trends in STEM education in Canada. The chapter primarily focuses on K-12 STEM education and teacher education and tangentially on postsecondary STEM education. The analysis is presented in three sections: 1) context of STEM education in Canada with a focus on economic and educational policies and funding trends; 2) trends in frameworks and systems of K-12 STEM education and STEM teacher education; and 3) oversights of engineering and technology in STEM education practice and policy across Canada. For instance, five provinces and two territories do not have technology course requirements for graduation from high school. None of the provinces and territories have an engineering requirement. Integrative STEM education, a potential catalyst recommended by a range of researchers and teachers across the world, has also not had much influence on K-12 schools and teacher education in Canada. Perhaps Indigenous ways of holistic learning and integrative STEM will influence necessary changes. Iterations on STEM, such as STEAM, STEEM, and STEM-H provide additional challenges across the educational system in Canada. There is a profound sense that STEM education has to change but there are also longstanding disagreements over the how, what, and why of necessary changes. Through critical analysis, this chapter provides insights into key issues and trends in STEM education in Canada to facilitate potential changes.
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In this paper, I argue for an explicit role for design in STEM, perhaps as another, albeit less popular, iteration, STEAMD. We cannot take design for granted in STEM or STEAM and design is unique in its ways of knowing. The first section... more
In this paper, I argue for an explicit role for design in STEM, perhaps as another, albeit less popular, iteration, STEAMD. We cannot take design for granted in STEM or STEAM and design is unique in its ways of knowing. The first section provides a background for the argument and focuses on Cross's work. We can assert from this that STEM and STEAM are inadequate without recognition of the uniqueness of design. The second section outlines risks of superficial design in STEM and STEAM. In the final analysis, we need novel methodologies as well as responsive ethics in STEAMD educational research.
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This section argues that we cannot guide or understand technological and engineering literacy without a substantive analysis and discussion of meaning-making, "the complex process by which people glean, understand, interpret, or otherwise... more
This section argues that we cannot guide or understand technological and engineering literacy without a substantive analysis and discussion of meaning-making, "the complex process by which people glean, understand, interpret, or otherwise make sense of who they are and what is going on in some social context" (Ferrante, 2018, p. 154).
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... Consistent with tenets of situated cognition, enactivism, and constructivism, as we have set forth above, the author came to the view that "objects, events, and teacher instructions are unavoidably subject to... more
... Consistent with tenets of situated cognition, enactivism, and constructivism, as we have set forth above, the author came to the view that "objects, events, and teacher instructions are unavoidably subject to interpretative flexibility which allowed the students to frame their ...
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EJ514374 - Industrial Arts Movement.
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EJ478853 - Curriculum Organization in Technology Education: A Critique of Six Trends.
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Pressey’s Automatic Teacher is a rich example of failure in the midst of modernist commitments to scientific and technological progress. Pressey worked himself sick to contrive and commercialize machines, remedial materials, and tests.... more
Pressey’s Automatic Teacher is a rich example of failure in the midst of modernist commitments to scientific and technological progress. Pressey worked himself sick to contrive and commercialize machines, remedial materials, and tests. His frenetic efforts to popularize psychological testing devices reveal the passion animating the evolving cultures of psychology and education prior to World War II. Like physicians who viewed technology as promising them more time to attend to patients, Pressey wanted the Automatic Teacher to give the human teacher more time for individual students. The Automatic Teacher would simultaneously normalize, socialize, and liberate. Within this contradiction lies a basic problem, which Pressey posed and which constitutes the heart of this story: how to individualize the masses?
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Exactly how did computers enter classrooms across the world in the 1960s through the 1990s? Were the practices and processes of this innovation similar from school to school or country to country? Are these processes more or less the same... more
Exactly how did computers enter classrooms across the world in the 1960s through the 1990s? Were the practices and processes of this innovation similar from school to school or country to country? Are these processes more or less the same as how other labor-saving or media devices entered offices and homes throughout the twentieth century? How Computers Entered the Classroom, 1960-2000, edited by Carmen Flury and Michael Geiss, is a very scholarly, welcome addition to the historiography of educational media and technology. Across the introduction and nine cases or chapters is a consistent, focused engagement with the historical problem of computational innovation in schools and classrooms.
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Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning is a welcome addition to histories of education, psychology, and technology. "Teaching Machines isn't just a story about machines," author Audrey Watters proposes. "It's a story... more
Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning is a welcome addition to histories of education, psychology, and technology. "Teaching Machines isn't just a story about machines," author Audrey Watters proposes. "It's a story about people, politics, systems, markets, and culture" (p. 9).
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This paper addresses an experimental and innovative pedagogy and philosophy: Slow Online and Ubiquitous Learning (SOUL). Since 2011, the co-authors have implemented SOUL as a pedagogy and philosophy into the online courses they teach at a... more
This paper addresses an experimental and innovative pedagogy and philosophy: Slow Online and Ubiquitous Learning (SOUL). Since 2011, the co-authors have implemented SOUL as a pedagogy and philosophy into the online courses they teach at a university level. Pedagogically, SOUL is a pragmatic temporal regulation that limits and paces course commitments for students and instructors. Philosophically, SOUL is an intervention into the conventional wisdom that portrays online learning as a limitless exchange of ideas 24/7. This paper provides a theoretical framework that underwrites SOUL, reviews relevant research on time, and analyzes instructors’ and students’ experiences and self-study data.
Research Interests: Teaching and Learning, Instructional Design, Educational Technology, E-learning, Mobile Learning, and 8 moreHigher Education, Learning and Teaching, Online Instruction, Instructional Technology, Digital Media & Learning, Online Learning, Learning And Teaching In Higher Education, and Instructional Technology in Education
3D virtual worlds are promising for immersive learning in English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Unlike English as a Second Language (ESL), EFL typically takes place in the learners’ home countries, and the potential of the language is... more
3D virtual worlds are promising for immersive learning in English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Unlike English as a Second Language (ESL), EFL typically takes place in the learners’ home countries, and the potential of the language is limited by geography. Although learning contexts where English is spoken is important, in most EFL courses at the college level, EFL is taught by acquiring vocabularies, grammar and pragmatic features without contextual immersion. In this study, an immersive English learning environment in a 3D virtual world, OpenSimulator, was developed with two key learning artifacts, chatbot and time machine. A single-factor, independent measures design was used to examines learners’ presence under four learning conditions: virtual learning environment without digital learning artifacts (VE), virtual learning environment with chatbot (VEC), virtual learning environment with time machine (VETM) and virtual learning environment with chatbot and time machine (VECTM). Three research questions emerging from the four learning conditions form the backbone of this study: (1) Does chatbot increase language learners’ presence in the immersive virtual English learning environment? (2) Does time machine increase language learners’ presence in the immersive virtual English learning environment? (3) Does the combined use of chatbot and time machine increase presence more than either learning artifact alone? The experimental results indicate that the chatbot and time machine increase the learners’ sense of immersion and presence. Best design practices should address how immersion and presence can be integrated into affordances of virtual worlds.
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In this paper, we offer an overview, if not a manifesto, of Open Source and Open Access philosophy, policy and practice. Open source offers an alternative model for software production and distribution while open access offers a model for... more
In this paper, we offer an overview, if not a manifesto, of Open Source and Open Access philosophy, policy and practice. Open source offers an alternative model for software production and distribution while open access offers a model for information, knowledge, ...
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Journal of Technology Education Vol. 15 No. 1, Fall 2003 -64-Editorial The Educational Technology is Technology Education Manifesto Stephen Petrina Technology education (Tech Ed) is equal to educational technology (Ed Tech). The deception... more
Journal of Technology Education Vol. 15 No. 1, Fall 2003 -64-Editorial The Educational Technology is Technology Education Manifesto Stephen Petrina Technology education (Tech Ed) is equal to educational technology (Ed Tech). The deception of difference can no longer be ...
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This paper explores the historiography of curriculum through the legend of Petrus Ramus (1515-1572). The entire edifice of curriculum history is built upon Ong's Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, completed as a doctoral thesis in... more
This paper explores the historiography of curriculum through the legend of Petrus Ramus (1515-1572). The entire edifice of curriculum history is built upon Ong's Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, completed as a doctoral thesis in 1955 and published in 1958. To this moment for curriculum historians, Ong's thesis stands as the key interpretation of Ramus, with secondary source precariously built upon secondary source. But what if Ong was wrong? Ong's interpretation is built on the initial work of his mentor, Marshall McLuhan. From the revisionism of McLuhan and Ong, we turned supposition into fact, which is to say that Ramus and the birth of curriculum from the womb of method is the stuff of legend, not history. The objective of this paper is to again revise the historiography of curriculum through the case of Petrus Ramus (1515-1572). We argue that Ong's Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, completed as a doctoral thesis in 1955 and published in 1958, is a tenuous source on which to continue to build curriculum history. Secondary source is precariously built upon secondary source. But what if Ong was wrong? From the revisionism or now conventional paradigm and wisdom of McLuhan and Ong, we turned supposition into fact, which is to say that Ramus and the birth of curriculum from the womb of method is the stuff of legend, not history. The primary methods used for this paper are history and historiography, drawing into conversation an array of sixteenth century and earlier primary sources with select secondary sources completed from the 1950s through the present. Our conclusions are substantiated on evidence within the primary sources. The significance of this research includes: 1) toppling the conventional paradigm of the historiography of curriculum; 2) extending the origins of curriculum 1,600 years into the past; and 3) realigning curriculum history with the histories of science, technology, and theology.
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Breaking, jacking, or hacking minds— it’s never clear what a mind holds or is— cerebral or emotional, singularity or collectivity, being or hive, metabolic or metaphysical, mentality or noosphere? This chapter sets the stage for problems... more
Breaking, jacking, or hacking minds— it’s never clear what a mind holds or is— cerebral or emotional, singularity or collectivity, being or hive, metabolic or metaphysical, mentality or noosphere? This chapter sets the stage for problems of hacking minds by historicizing the ancient curriculum mentis and noosphere, and by mixing the traditionality of the Greek νοῦς with the originality of the matrix and novel mindhacks from the likes of encephalology, neuroprosthetics, philotherapeutics, and psychotronics (e.g., EPOC, mindfulness, Thync, Watson, etc.). Curriculum manifested as the noosphere, or the infrastructure of the mind and mindhacks, draws metaphysics into history. Tests of metaphysics, curriculum mentis and the noosphere are also important tests of the prehistory of cyberculture, the internet, matrix, and web (Elton & Carey, 2013). All are intermixed with the history and metaphysics of curriculum as well as mind. The fate of curriculum is intertwined with the fate of mind and thought. In this storied teleology, things are hacked with resolve: Never expect a machine to limit its dealings with minds.
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Can also be titled: "The Cultural Circuit of Nike "Air Jordans" Excerpted from Petrina, S. (2001). The political ecology of design and technology education: An inquiry into methods. International Journal of Technology and Design... more
Can also be titled: "The Cultural Circuit of Nike "Air Jordans"
Excerpted from Petrina, S. (2001). The political ecology of design and technology education: An inquiry into methods. International Journal of Technology and Design Education 10, 207-237.
Excerpted from Petrina, S. (2001). The political ecology of design and technology education: An inquiry into methods. International Journal of Technology and Design Education 10, 207-237.
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Why do children, overdetermined with gifts, fail to develop into adults that have in their interest a world that the next generation actually needs? This chapter addresses the entangling alliance of pedagogy and philosophy in design,... more
Why do children, overdetermined with gifts, fail to develop into adults that have in their interest a world that the next generation actually needs? This chapter addresses the entangling alliance of pedagogy and philosophy in design, engineering, and technology education (DE&T) and focuses on the philosophy of technology (PT) for children and youth (PT4CY). The chapter provides a backdrop and case for PT4CY.