Learning Ecologies

This paper summarizes a doctoral research currently in its early stage. The study explores the extent to which Web 2.0 technologies are affecting the ways PhD students learn to become researchers. The planned study will
firstly survey resources and tools available to and digitally-mediated practices undertaken by the doctoral researchers enrolled in three Italian and one UK universities. Secondly, it will identify, interview and observe
new doctoral ‘e-researchers’, defined as self-directed learners striving to build up disciplinary knowledge, academic literacies and their ‘being scholars’ both in traditional university contexts and in networked digital
environments. The doctoral work is designed with a mainly qualitative approach and aims to highlight descriptive features of individual PhD e-researchers’ learning ecologies. A specific focus will address
contrasting modes of using and interpreting spatial and temporal dimensions of the doctoral experience in formal research training contexts and in self-organised networked practices. It is argued that findings can reveal the extent to which such pioneer doctoral researchers are co-evolving together with the emerging modes of networked scholarship, that are changing research practices. The expected results are also likely to suggest implications for transforming current practices of doctoral pedagogy in university settings.

O tema “Novas ecologias de aprendizagem na cultura digital: impactos
na formação, na educação formal e informal” está inserido em uma agenda, da qual se destacam três pontos muito importantes: desenvolver e refletir sobre o desenvolvimento de ações educativas do coletivo; abrir canais de diálogo, de compartilhamento de saberes e práticas, por meio da educação continuada;
e pensar sobre a prática, em um processo de ação-reflexão-ação. Vivemos,
atualmente, dentro desta bolha chamada cultura digital e, considerando esta
realidade, podemos perguntar: como aprendemos hoje? Como a cultura digital
participa da configuração de novas formas de aprendizagem? O que mudou em
tempos de aprendizagem no século 21?

El propósito del presente texto es caracterizar la crisis del sistema
educativo argumentando que la escuela, como institución, responde a un modelo de sociedad industrial, lo cual provoca una tensión respecto de los intereses de aprendizaje de las nuevas generaciones en el marco de la nueva ecología del aprendizaje. En paralelo, destaco los retos y los problemas de la personalización, con la intensión de resaltar la
importancia de gestionar una nueva escuela en el marco de nuevas demandas sociales. Para finalizar, tomando en cuenta que los intereses de aprendizaje son un eje de las propuestas para responder a los cambios en la ecología, reflexiono sobre la importancia de definir qué son esos intereses. Frente a lo cual, me posiciono considerando la teoría de la actividad (Leontyev, 1977).

This is the Foreword and first chapter of a book that explores the idea of learning ecologies: an idea that has grown from the author's interest in and support for lifewide learning. In nature an ecosystem comprises the complex set of relationships and interactions among the resources, habitats, and residents of an area for the purpose of living - this applies to people as well as other organisms. The ability of people to learn underlies the success of our species and the success and achievements of individuals.  Learning is a core purpose of the ecologies we create to achieve the things we value.

The idea of learning ecologies developed through this book, provides a more comprehensive and holistic view of learning and personal development than is normally considered in higher education. It helps us appreciate that our learning is deeply embedded in, and emerges from, the circumstances of our life and everyday living. Our life provides the contexts and situations we inhabit, and our own purposes, goals and ambitions compel us to engage with the problems and opportunities that our life affords, and create the means to find, develop and use the resources and relationships we need in order to accomplish. Learning ecologies is a concept that is relevant to the Social Age we now inhabit and it's a concept that will help higher education  address the perpetual challenge of  how we enable learners to prepare themselves for their complex, unknown and uncertain futures.

"there are large implications of this book for formal educational institutions.  The idea of learning ecologies, as worked out here by Norman Jackson, turns out to be a radical concept.  If taken seriously, it would call for a fundamental reappraisal of the curriculum so that it promotes an ecology for learning"
Extract from Professor Ronald Barnett's Foreword

In  2016 'Creative Academic'  began to develop the idea of creative ecologies and  linking it this idea to  creative pedagogies - the imaginative ecologies that teachers create within which students learn and are able to use and develop their creativities. In this issue of the magazine we aim to publish at least one article each month that describes an approach to teaching and learning in which the objective is to enable learners to use and develop their creativity. We also try to bring together research and surveys that cast light on the idea of creativity and what it means to the people involved in facilitating creativity or who are trying to be creative. By considering lots of different perspectives and approaches, in different disciplinary, pedagogic and institutional contexts we hope to develop our understanding of what being creative means and what sorts of practices and behaviours encourage and enable students to be creative and to understand their creativity.

Education is a system of dysfunctional education landscapes for Students of Color. Framed in Disability Critical Race Theory, we conceptualized DisCrit Classroom Ecology. We explore the constructs of DisCrit Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Solidarity. Using praxis, each construct is animated through a DisCrit Resistance. Implications change the focus of the classroom and thus, pedagogical practice. a b s t r a c t Using a critical conceptual analysis, we theorize a DisCrit Classroom Ecology to counter current dysfunctional education ecologies. We begin by exploring the lineage of Critical Race Theory, through both its intellectual forerunner Gift Theory and a more recent sibling, DisCrit. Next, we explore the three interrelated constructs of DisCrit Classroom Ecology; Pedagogy, Curriculum, and Solidarity, and the strand that animates them, DisCrit Resistance. Finally, we discuss the deep implications and trans-formative possibilities of using praxis to (re)organize classrooms through a DisCrit Classroom Ecology.

In July 2016 members of the Creative Academic community came together in a conversation on the #creativeHE platform to consider the idea of creative ecologies and co-create new meanings as ideas were combined and new understandings were gained. The September issue of Creative Academic Magazine (CAM5) is inspired by this conversation and draws much of its content from the ideas and perspectives that were shared.

The connections and networks we make both inside and outside of the classroom are critical to our current and future professional success and to the development of lifelong learning skills. Learner agency plays a central role in establishing and building those connections and networks, and by using a variety of online, networked theories, instructors are able to guide and support students in creating and developing their own network of personal learning. These teaching and learning approaches are not limited to heutagogy (self-determined learning), but also include connectivism and rhizomatic learning-all theories that promote learner agency through connectedness and connectivity in the learning process. This chapter discusses these learner-centred theories for networked learning and their role in promoting learner agency in online learning spaces and within learning ecologies as a whole.

This issue of the Magazine examines the idea of learning ecologies,  offering a range of perspectives gleaned from the literature and personal experiences. An individual's learning ecology comprises their contexts, processes, relationships and interactions that provides opportunities and resources for learning, development and achievement. Knowing how to create and sustain a learning ecology is an essential part of 'knowing how to learn' in all the different contexts that comprise an individual's life. Learning ecologies are therefore of significant conceptual and practical value to the theory and practice of lifewide learning and education.

World Creativity and Innovation Week https://wciw.org/  (April 15-21) sets out to encourage people and organisations to use their creativity to make the world a better and more interesting place. WCIW draws attention to society's fundamental need for creativity and the fundamental right of human beings to be creative. So the question for higher education is, 'what are we doing to support this value that should underpin the education we provide?'

Creative Academic's contribution has been to devote an issue of our magazine to exploring the idea of 'Creativity in Development, Achievement & Innovation'. While innovation is the buzz word of political and business leaders, development is the unsung hero as it embodies all the effort and ingenuity that connects our ideas with our innovations and achievements.

The magazine is free to download at  http://www.creativeacademic.uk/magazine.html

Developing students’ capability and capacity to explore is not simply a matter of developing the requisite knowledge and skills to explore in a particular domain. It also requires the building of confidence and attitudes, orientations and character like the willingness to take risks, to work with uncertainty and environments that are often not well ordered, to persist in the face of disappointment, and to try again if efforts fail to realise a goal. It also requires learners to harness their pragmatic imaginations to not only visualise a fuzzy goal but to imagine and turn into action the steps to achieving such a goal. To follow such a pathway without being sure of reward requires self-belief and trust in one’s own processes and practices. Learning environments that foster these imaginings and behaviours have become increasingly rarer as our higher education system and society for that matter has become more risk averse and where teaching efficiency and predictable outcomes are the most valued indicators of a quality education. Developing the explorative capacity of students is a challenge to educators and educational institutions all over the world, but it is something we have to do if we are to enable each new generation to solve the problems created by previous generations. In this issue of Lifewide Magazine 18 contributors explore the idea of exploration sharing their experiences and perceptions of its meanings in diverse contexts and circumstances.

Many university co-curricular programs or services are under pressure to demonstrate performance excellence and justify their continued existence. Many of these programs or services also resort to collating easily accessible data such as input, transactional and overall satisfaction data; produce some descriptive statistics; and subsequently write business reports that show the programs' effectiveness or efficiency. However, this common practice is arguably the wrong place to start. A better starting point would be locating these programs within an ecological educational environment, and one that is aligned with the sector's regulatory compliance requirements and expectations. A metaphor for this would be Russian dolls. Presented here is an initiative where an ecological data framework was designed by a student learning and development unit, which was then deployed with a vision of collecting significant data that can ascertain their programs' impacts on student outcomes of progression and academic achievement.

Connectivity is one of the defining properties of the Social Age, the age we now inhabit brought about by our ability to connect any time and almost anywhere to people, information and other resources through the internet via mobile communication devices,  Web 2.0 technologies and social media.  Forming connections and relationships with people who can help us achieve something, and help us learn, is part and parcel of being the social beings we are. But the idea of networking for learning and networking to advance our goals and ambitions, has become more possible and more powerful as a result of the new affordances provided by the internet, smart phones and other mobile communication devices, and Web 2.0 and social media technologies.

This issue of Lifewide Magazine explores the idea and practice of networked learning - particularly the networks we create as individuals in order to learn and achieve.

This paper is a report on preliminary observations from a collaborative project in New York City conducted between academia and city government. The project selected graduate students as New York Mayoral Fellows to work with specific adult learning sites. The goal was to use social media to extend the learning opportunities of the adult learners and to encourage them to enhance their own life or a small part of the community around them. Observations indicate that a collaborative project of this nature can be highly beneficial for all stakeholders. Adult learners in specific sites of the city’s adult education program were engaged with innovative social media tools and techniques. Amidst different working styles of academia and city government, the project delivered resounding success. Questions of sustainability remain following the graduate Fellows’ tenure at each site, which will be addressed in the second iteration of the project.

This exploratory article is a thought experiment in thinking differently about education and rural learning ecologies. The wording of the concept rural learning ecologies suggests culture-nature interplay. Underlying this interplay is a logic of thought that posits the human opposite of that which it is not – nature. In this relationship the power to direct and dissect is always skewed towards (human) culture because of the humanist position from which learning ecologies are conceptualised, observed, made sense of and enacted. Drawing on the works of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari I experiment with an alternative understanding of the culture-nature relationship in order to explore the 'lines of escape' this offers to conceptualise education differently. I do this through engaging with nomadic posthumanism which treats subjectivity as a continuous process of becoming that is produced in 'assemblages' (agencement). Reclaiming the materiality of relations through such an understanding of the subject makes possible the creation of different forms of education and collective (educational) practices.

Jackie Gerstein uses the well known evolutionary metaphor Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 to illuminate how higher education has changed from 1.0, through 2.0 to 3.0.  This essay adapts her inspiring evolutionary metaphor to consider the parallel evolution of creativity and learning ecologies in higher education.

Online teacher professional development (oTPD) has been identified as one way that teachers can participate in high quality professional development activities. This paper presents the second iteration of a design based research project that describes the evolutionary redesign and delivery of an online TPD offering called a Courselet. The topic of the oTPD Courselet was Interactive Whiteboards in the Classroom, a practitioner delivered series of activities intended to support the implementation of educational technology into teacher classroom practice. This paper presents the experience of this delivery of a revised oTPD opportunity and lessons learned from the experience.

Snepvangers, K., & Rourke, A. (2018). Developing work-integrated learning with creative professionals in art, design and media: International students, online public profiles and sustainability.  Chapter 6 in Arianne Rourke, Vaughan Rees & Graham Forsyth (Eds.), Beyond Graduate Attributes: Embedding Work Integrated Learning into undergraduate degrees. Book 7 - Common Ground Publishing: University of Illinois, Champaign IL, USA. pp. 73-95.

This chapter discusses a Professional Experience Program (PEP) conducted in an Australian university and reflects upon the importance of providing Work Integrated Learning (WIL) experiences for art, design and media students in the creative industries. The focus is specifically on developing international student experience within a larger PEP experience. Given the institutionally and academically strong background of professional experience in design studies alongside art and design education at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney: Art & Design, in existence for over 25 years, the faculty is well placed to anticipate 21st century learning goals for a suite of creative professionals. The Draft National Strategy on International Education (Department of Education and Training, 2015) forecasted that Australia needed to “expand the potential, scale and breadth of relevant work integrated learning opportunities for international students and graduates” (p. 42). As
will be argued, the Art & Design WIL experience should include developing student’s creative professional language, their professional profile and abilities to adapt and learn within a variety of locations and professional settings.

This article employs an ecological perspective as a means of revisiting the notion of learning, with a particular focus on learning in higher education. Learning is reconceptualised as a process entailing mutually constitutive, epistemic, social and affective relations in which knowledge, identity and agency become collective achievements of whole ecosystems. This conceptualisation implies that learning involves a trans-contextual and multimodal process, in which both learners and their social and material environments change. This article examines the implications of an ecological perspective on framing notions central to learning and current educational research, namely (a) knowledge co-construction and epistemic agency, (b) the role of (material) knowledge resources in the learning process and (c) the trans-contextuality that characterises learning in today's knowledge society. The discussion concludes by identifying prospects that an ecological perspective offers to education and research on learning in higher education. The insights emerging from this reconceptualisation imply changes in the ways we can enhance and analytically account for the transformative potential of education. They also indicate the necessity for further advancing our understanding of learners' ways of assembling the epistemic spaces necessary to engage in meaningful learning, their agency in this process and their relationship with the (social and material) environment.

This paper describes emergent learning and situates it within learning networks and systems and the broader learning ecology of Web 2.0. It describes the nature of emergence and emergent learning and the conditions that enable emergent, self-organised learning to occur and to ...

This issue of Lifewide Magazine focuses on how we create and use our learning ecologies to enable us to learn, develop and achieve throughout our life and particularly in our professional life. We have encouraged our writers to make their own sense of the idea of an ecology for learning and development in this way we not only explore the validity of the idea but we open up the idea to new ways of thinking.

La investigación en Tecnología Educativa y las nuevas ecologías del aprendizaje: Design-Based Research (DBR) como enfoque metodológico. Research in Educational Technology and new ecologies of learning: Design-Based Research (DBR) as a methodological approach. RESUMEN La investigación en Tecnología Educativa ha experimentado un amplio crecimiento en las últimas décadas. Este desarrollo no ha tenido una influencia significativa en la práctica educativa. La integración de las tecnologías digitales en los sistemas educativos no ha modificado sustancialmente la metodología docente para adaptarse a las competencias del siglo XXI. La investigación educativa tiene un escaso impacto en la toma de decisiones de los profesionales de la educación. Por otra parte, las nuevas ecologías del aprendizaje nos sitúan ante contextos de enseñanza-aprendizaje más flexibles, abiertos, distribuidos y conectados. Se necesitan nuevas teorías del conocimiento y nuevos enfoques en las metodologías de investigación educativa. En este artículo el «aprendizaje trialógico» se identifica como un marco conceptual útil para la comprensión de los nuevos contextos educativos y el «Design-Based Research» (DBR) se describe como un modelo metodológico idóneo para la integración efectiva de la investigación en la teoría y práctica pedagógica.

ABSTRACT

The research in Educational Technology has experienced extensive growth in recent decades. This development has not had a significant influence on educational practice. The integration of digital technologies in educational systems has not substantially changed the teaching methodology to adapt the 21st Century Competences. Educational research has little impact on decision-making of education professionals. Moreover, new learning ecologies put us in contexts of teaching and learning more flexible, open, distributed and connected. New theories of knowledge and new approaches in educational research methodologies are needed. In this article the «trialogical learning» is identified as a useful conceptual framework for understanding the new educational contexts and "Design-Based Research" (DBR) is described as a suitable methodological model for the effective integration of research in the pedagogical theory and practice.

Doctorates has been argued to demand many things, including the development of skills, mastery of techniques, understanding of threshold concepts, development of networks, engagement with cultures and the development of autonomy, as well as the production of a thesis that meets the requirements of examiners (Bengtsen, 2014).

One element within this complexity is the development of new identities. As Hancock and Walsh (2014) observe, this is a complex and varied process; students pursue a range of academic and professional identities, sometimes simultaneously; Hancock and Walsh describe, for example, a professional scientific identity; the scientific researcher; and the knowledge worker – identities that pay increasing attention to development of the skills and experiences relevant to knowledge-intensive roles across society and the economy.

A developing feature across such identity work is the growing role of digital networks. Weller has proposed (2011) that new technologies have resulted in dramatic changes to contemporary scholarship. Whilst his arguments focus on publication not study, and can be seen as overly deterministic, he notes (p54) how increasing financial pressures combined with widespread use of social networking have changed the way that personal networks develop. Similar incidental effects can be seen around blogging, for example. Although scholars might think of this primarily as a form of writing support and way of enabling open knowledge work, the relational aspects of writing and the positioning of the author relative to their audiences have implications for the development of scholarly identities (Heap & Minocha, 2012). Borgman (2007) similarly notes the ways in which technologies are taken up to support the formation of teams and networks, particularly around the use of data. Outside of academic contexts, developing networked identities remains relevant to employers seeking media-savvy appointees, and to the development of engaged citizens (Greenhow & Gleason, 2014).

Work addressing these processes has primarily been undertaken through case studies, some of which have served to identify and develop theoretical concerns. Bennett & Folley (2014), for example, use personal experiences to discuss the management of parallel academic, personal and professional identities. They point out, for example, the challenges of keeping these separate on social media, so that “tweets written with one audience in mind, such as our work colleagues, were also being read by the other audiences, such as our students or our friends”. They also explore the ongoing development of digital doctoral identities in terms of liminality, particularly the sense of being stuck (and associated loss of self-esteem and self-confidence), mimicry (copying the behaviours of successful researchers) and engagement with threshold concepts as markers of progress.

Esposito’s analysis of these processes (2013) identifies various motivations to use social and participatory media, such as the growing convergence between building networks and ‘celebrity’ (associated with ‘personal branding’). Her study – involving 14 interviews in one institution – suggested that although researchers used technologies widely, very few saw themselves as ‘digital researchers’. They cultivated online personas, seeking recognition, but saw this as additional to, not a replacement for, conventional measures of reputation.

Further theorisation explored how spaces, times and technologies are interwoven to form the “identity-trajectory” of PhD students. This raises questions about how doctoral students co-evolve within the wider academic culture of the research training environments in which they are based (Esposito, Sangrà & Maina, 2013). They draw attention to the way spaces, tools and people are entangled in specific doctoral journeys. Pursuing the concept of learning ecologies, they explore how new technologies arise as invasive ‘species’ disrupting successful ecologies, the way that ecologies influence the agency of individual learners, and the development of ‘personal ecologies’ that bring together institutional infrastructures, personal resources and experiences, and networks (Esposito, Sangrà & Maina, 2015).

In this paper, relationships between people, spaces and technologies in the development of doctoral identities will be explored in relation to data generated by four doctoral students at a UK institution. The students undertook longitudinal multimodal journaling, and were interviewed 3-4 times each about their use of technologies, as part of a wider project on digital literacies (Gourlay & Oliver, 2013). These revealed, for example, how the students managed multiple email and social network accounts in order to develop and manage parallel digital identities, and the ways in which these developed over time.

... 5 (library networkable e-edition) 13-digit ISBN: 978-1-57922-602-2 (consumer e-edition ... The spread of social media, the ubiquity of smart phones and new devices like tablet ... They described how RSS feeds, Web 2.0, and podcasting as well as other innovations have transformed ...

Using a case study of a Christian college student, this article develops a framework for understanding when and why students may choose to perform neutrality. The author argues that students may choose this form of "invisible" resistance in an effort to mitigate perceived power imbalances within an educational ecology.

This work is concerned with a reflection on the construct of “chronotope” (Bakhtin, 1981) as a conceptual tool suitable for illustrating the affordances of emerging Web 2.0 learning ecologies of doctoral researchers. For the purposes of this work, the chronotope is considered as an analytical lens suitable for illustrating the movements of PhD researchers across shifting space/time configurations (affordances) arising from scholarly environments increasingly permeated by digital mediation. The conceptual framework under construction looks at the intersection of time and space being produced by self-directed PhD students, engaged in sifting the learning opportunities provided both by institution-bounded and self-organized learning ecologies in the open Web. The focus is on the role that personal technologies – especially social Web tools and environments – play in the function of supporting academic identity building in the course of a doctorate and in affecting the boundary crossing...

This paper describes emergent learning and situates it within learning networks and systems and the broader learning ecology of Web 2.0. It describes the nature of emergence and emergent learning and the conditions that enable emergent, self-organised learning to occur and to flourish. Specifically, it explores whether emergent learning can be validated and self-correcting and whether it is possible to link or integrate emergent and prescribed learning. It draws on complexity theory, communities of practice, and the notion of connectivism to develop some of the foundations for an analytic framework, for enabling and managing emergent learning and networks in which agents and systems co-evolve. It then examines specific cases of learning to test and further develop the analytic framework.

The paper argues that although social networking media increase the potential range and scope for emergent learning exponentially, considerable effort is required to ensure an effective balance between openness and constraint. It is possible to manage the relationship between prescriptive and emergent learning, both of which need to be part of an integrated learning ecology.

"This document provides a short and quick understanding for the connection between human complexity, the system of violence, Terrorism and why it is ineffective to fight terrorism alone.
Cross reference to the following study:
http://academia.edu/1623404/2010_Familia_i_Violencia_-_Un_estudi_sobre_la_violencia_intrafamiliar_dels_adolescents_vers_els_seus_progenitors_Executed_projects_First_Public_Governance_Project_achieved_by_and_for_the_World_Grid_of_Complexity_Observatories_WGCO
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