Merja Bauters (Aalto University)

Applying Peirce

The Second International Conference on Peirce's Thought and Its Applications

Helsinki, Finland & Tallinn, Estonia21-23 April 2014

Worth of Experience in Informal Learning

Merja BautersPost doctoral researcher

Learning Environments research group (LeGroup)

Media Lab HelsinkiAalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture

Informal learning and work places

Background• Learning Layers Scaling up Technologies for

Informal Learning in SME Clusters• technologies that support informal learning in the

workplace, focus (SMEs) and Scaling informal• Physical/practical work, where informal learning

should be supported (scaffolded)• Hypothesis emerging form the field: (informal)

learning requires sharing of experiences / physical practices and materials in situ

• Investigating conceptual and abstract issues will not suffice

• The need to learn should emerge while working, from the work

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http://learning-layers.eu/

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Informal learning and work places

It is said to be:

multi episodic,

Problem oriented

takes place on a just in time basis,

involves sharing of experiences and knowledge

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(Kooken et al., 2007, Kerosuo and Toiviainen, 2011,Mørch and Skaanes 2010)

, )

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Laitoksen nimi

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Harsh conditions

Lack of time and space

Difficult to predict the moments where the need to learn of new tools, practices,

and materials arrises

What to do to support this?

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Laitoksen nimi

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Provide tools to support sharing/collaboration

Make learning possible as part of the work.

What is it that feeling that creates the need to learn while working?

Wish to ask help

Feeling uncertain

Being in doubt – halt in the work

Feeling that all went perfectly

Wanting to remember

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Habits, experiences – changing habits = (informal) learning

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Habits, experiences – changing habits = (informal) learning• Pragmatism gave habit a new meaning = Habit is not

only mindless routines, rather, it is a process that is open for reflection and control

• “ […] that multiple reiterated behavior of the same kind, under similar combinations of percepts and fancies, produces a tendency, - the habit, - actually to behave in a similar way under similar circumstances in the future” (EP 2:413, “Pragmatism” 1907)

• “Intelligent habit upon which we shall act when occasion presents itself” (EP 2:19 [1895]).

• = might NOT be in the focus of our awareness but can be easily brought up into reflection to distinguish them from tacit knowledge

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Kilpinen 2008:3 and 2009: 102, Bergman 2009: 10).

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Habits, experiences – changing habits = (informal) learning• Focus on the halt – doubt• The feeling of doubt (uncertainty), this creates a feeling

of the uniqueness of the situation, it is worth minding, it is worth of meaning creation

• “Yet, when we consider that logic depends on a mere struggle to escape doubt, which, as it terminates in action, must begin in emotion, and that, furthermore, the only cause of our planting ourselves on reason is that other methods of escaping doubt fail on account of the social impulse, why should we wonder to find social sentiment presupposed in reasoning?”

• This moment of doubt is the core for learning at work to emerge – this should be supported and captured

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(CP 2.655 [1878]; cf. CP 5.357 [1868]), in Bergman 2009.

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Bergman 2009: 10 - 11

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Habits• Doubt/irritation,

need to question – potential for habit change

• Only self-controlled habits can be ultimate logical Interpretants.

• Requires agency and effort

Habits, experiences – changing habits = (informal) learning• Experience (Dewey):

• Is an active & passive process (its trying but also undergoing)

• as meaning making • is embodied and embedded in the context • is holistic – all sense are involved – conscious

thinking• “Experiencing is the active interaction that the

being has with environment, its the constant interaction that changes the being and the being changes the environment”.

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Dewey John, (LW 12 [LTI]: 73-74 LW 1 [EN]: 13-14

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Habits, experiences – changing habits = (informal) learning• Dewey’s concept of qualitative immediacy:

• The qualitative immediacy belongs to experiencing within time and place - it is the something that belongs to the particular experience – doubt prone

• Something that we about to be aware off • “In discovery of the detailed connections of our

activities and what happens in consequence, the thought implied in cut and try experience is made explicit. […] Hence the quality of the experience changes. The change is so significant that we may call this type of experience reflective – that is, reflective par excellence”.

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Dewey John, MW 9 [DE]: 153 LW 1 [EN]: 13-14 in Alhanen K 2013]

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Habits, experiences – changing habits = (informal) learning

• Set of experiences we have guide us, in good and bad, to direct our attention, being aware of this may allow to have broad attention that picks also "unusual" aspects providing new insights and more flexibility - easier changes in habits.

• When in doubt, seeing the environment with more “clarity”

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Dewey John MW 14 [HNC]: 16-33. LW 2 [PP]: 334-338. LW 7 [E]:169-174, 185 and Alhanen K (2013).

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Habit Change is NOT

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Habits, experiences – changing habits = (informal) learning

• "It is that reconstruction or reorganisation of experience which adds to the meaning of experience, and which increases ability to direct the course of subsequent experience.

• Is social – in practice it means – sharing

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MW 9 [DE]: 83

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Experiences, habits– changing habits = (informal) learning

• For Dewey the intellectuality – the so called logical/rational/reflective thinking – is fully experience dependent

• Done by sharing experiences – needs communication

• It needs: common ground and pointing to shared items that direct attention to the some shared experiences

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Sharing experiences

• Common ground: “The universe must be well known and mutually known to be known and agreed to exist, in some sense, between speaker and hearer, between the mind as appealing to its own further consideration and the mind as so appealed to, or there can be no communication, or 'common ground,' at all.”

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(Peirce 1931-1958, 3.621; see also ibid., 6.338; 8.179) In Bergman 2002: 10)

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Common ground (Collateral experience)• Common ground is needed to make

communication, or sign-processes (semiosis) understandable

• Collateral experience "serves a kind of double function, on the one hand showing us some limits of the semiotic domain, while on the other reminding us of the relevance of situational and contextual factors. In fact, the crucial recognition of reality is achieved through indexical and experiential means. According to Peirce, we cannot distinguish fact from fiction by any description”

• Sharing experiences requires indices, signs which indicate ,call, pinpoint, direct the attention to their objects through which experiences could be shared

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(see Clark & Brennan 1991; Peirce 1931-1958, 3.621, See also Bergman 2002

(CP 2.337 [c. 1895]). Bergman 2002: 9).

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Sharing experience – habit change

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Ach so! in the field

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Ach so! in the field

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Thank you!

Merja BautersAalto University School of Arts, Design

and Architecture Helsinki – Finland

firstname.surname@aalto.fi

The Learning Layers project is supported by the European Commission within the 7th Framework Programme under Grant Agreement #318209, under the DG Information society and Media (E3), unit of Cultural heritage and technology-enhanced learning. http://learning-layers.eu