Connectivism: Socialising Open Learning
Fig.1 George Siemens 2009 presentation "Connectivism: Socializing Open Learning", VI International Seminar on Open Social Learning of the UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The history of the UK Design Council
"The Design Council started life in 1944 as the Council of Industrial Design. It was founded by Hugh Dalton, President of the Board of Trade in the wartime Government, and its objective was 'to promote by all practicable means the improvement of design in the products of British industry'. And that was to stay unaltered through half a century of social, technological and economic change."
(UK Design Council)
Fig.1 "1951 Festival of Britain", Graphic created by: Design Council/Council of Industrial Design | From University of Brighton Design Archives. [JRGS Alumni Society: http://www.mel-lambert.com/Ruskin/News/News_Archive/JRGS02A_News_Archive32.htm]
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Multiple media has led to a non-media-specificity in practice
"Graphic design as a discrete discipline has changed greatly during its lifetime and continues to change. It changes with the society it practices within, with technology and with its own internal growth as a practice. These changes to practice have included the move into new media as they have arisen or developed with technology; print, motion, interactive, and environmental. This move into multiple media and areas of discourse has challenged the discipline, asking designers to adapt to numerous new areas and yet continue to maintain standards of education and professional practice. Along with these challenges, which appeared largely due to the advent of affordable digital capabilities in the late twentieth century, new opportunities for growth and development in the practice have become possible.
The movement into multiple media has led to a non-media-specificity in practice. Graphic designers no longer work just in print, or even just visually. Dimensions of time, interactivity, space and sound have entered the discipline. Beyond the release from media specificity this has led to a separation from media. No longer the focus of the practice, the design artefacts, and the media that support them, have become the vehicle through which the work of the discipline is materialised. This has allowed the practice to become aware of itself in a completely different way, bringing into mindfulness its broader role and the broader concerns of that role. In an era of ubiquitous access to the means of production, the discipline has been forced to ask itself what it offers beyond the production of the designed artefact. This, along with a maturation of the self image, has led to the sense that the term ‘graphic’ might no longer have a broad enough scope to describe the practice."
(Neal Haslem, p.22)
2). Haslem, N. (2009). "Communication design: towards a ‘socially-situated’ practice." Visual:Design:Scholarship Research Journal of the Australian Graphic Design Association 4(1): 20-28.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Mastery of recognition, realisation and evaluation rules is hallmark of academic life
"Recontextualising rules regulate the work the discipline's teachers - those who constitute its Pedagogic Recontextualising Field (PRF). The pedagogic recontextualising field produces textbooks, curricula, examination criteria and standards. The knowledge produced by researchers and theorists 'passes through ideological screens as it becomes its new form, pedagogic discourse' (Bernstein, 2000, p.115). Recontextualising knowledge for teaching involves selection, translation, and filtering: emerging as a syllabus for 'physics 101' or 'sociology 300' etc. In the late nineteenth century, the establishment of state funded and regulated education systems established Official Pedagogic Recontextualising Fields (ORF) 'created and dominated by the state for the construction and surveillance of state pedagogic discourse' (Bernstein, 2000, p.115). Emanating from the ORF, the PBRF rewards contributions to the knowledge base (laboratory science, field work, theoretical writing), but not the production of its teaching texts, especially those used in schools. The recontextualising activities needed to reproduce and advance a discipline are devalued.
As a pedagogic device, the PBRF recontextualises government policies: they are summarised, translated, operationalised in handbooks, manuals, pro-forma, and seminars. Like any pedagogic practice, these are 'there for one purpose: to transmit criteria' (Bernstein, 2000, p.28). They define the system's evaluative rules and 'provide for acquirers the principles for the production of what counts as the legitimate text. The legitimate text is any realisation on the part of the acquirer which attracts evaluation' (Bernstein, 2000, p.xiv). The production of legitimate texts is a hallmark of academic life - essays, theses, journal articles, curriculum vitae, or promotion applications require mastery of recognition, realisation and evaluation rules. Recognition rules help identify contexts - a sociology class, faculty meeting, psychology journal, Evidence Portfolio, etc. Realisation rules enable textual production - written, spoken, visual etc. It is possible to recognise a context, but lack the realisation rule needed to speak or write its texts.
Bernstein argues that those working in a field of knowledge may feel 'threatened by a change in its classificatory relation, or by an unfavourable change in the economic context' (Bernstein, 2000, p.203). From the mid to late twentieth century, Educationists experienced continual shifts in the classification and framing of their subject/s, and these reconfigured the constraints and possibilities for collective and individual identity formation."
(Sue Middleton, 2006)
1). Middleton, S. (2006). Research Assessment as a pedagogical device: A Bernsteinian exploration of its impact on New Zealand’s subject/s of Education. Australian Association for Research in Education Conference Adelaide.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Design knowledge or design, communication and culture?
"The problem with any debate over design is that the intellectual resources with which the debate is typically engaged are themselves located within the field, and the competing definitions of design is the terrain over which struggles are fought and the resources used in those struggles. Each actor (or in this case, each designer) engages in these struggles and does so from a position within the field; each has a situated viewpoint and this viewpoint shapes the analysis of the field (Bourdieu, 1983). Thus, there is a need to be able to view the field afresh, from a perspective that is not associated with any specific position within the field but rather objectifies the field. This is not to argue for an 'ultimate-truth' perspective, but rather to suggest that, in order to be able to analyse the debates, one needs specific kinds of tools. Designers work with knowledge to 'do' design. When analysing the field of design the object of study has now shifted: it is not the design object but knowledge itself as an object that is being studied. For engineering a bridge, engineering knowledge is valuable; for designing a house, architectural knowledge is valuable. For analysing knowledge, a theory of knowledge itself is valuable."
(Lucila Carvalho, Andy Dong & Karl Maton, 2009, p.485)
Fig.1 Legitimation codes of specialisation Source: Maton (2007:97)
2). Carvalho, L., Dong, A. & Maton, K. (2009) 'Legitimating design: A sociology of knowledge account of the field', Design Studies 30(5): 483-502.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
