1. My Mobile ‘Education on the move’
Final Conference London - Friday, June 22
Institute of Education, University of London
Ben Bachmair
Cultural Ecology
and
Mobile Learning
Em. Professor University of Kassel, Germany
Visiting Professor Institute of Education, University of London

2. The issues of my presentation
2. Ecologies = holistic and critical system approaches
- Early media ecologies: Neil Postman = TV, the changing public
and socialization / Dieter Baacke = Media in the life world and
socializations
- Ecology of the resources of nature, energy and knowledge
- The mobile complex: mobile cultural resources in the running
transformation of society and culture
2. The key concept “cultural resources”
3. The concept of affordance in an ecology of culture and education
4. The affordance of cultural resources and education
- Learning, development and appropriation, the explicit educational
perspective to ecology
- Contexts: From stabile cultural products for appropriation to cultural
products by appropriation
- Social justice and participation: Well known tasks to be revisited e.g.
recognition of naive expertise

3. 1. Ecologies =
holistic and critical system approaches
Early approaches of a media ecology with
relevance for socialization
Neil Postman: Media Ecology = The disappearance of
Childhood, 1982
TV changes the public (see Jürgen Habermas), which
is a salient for childhood
Dieter Baacke: The life world with its typical media offers
spaces for socialization. The spaces are like circled
zones of ecology, which reaches from the near zone of
the family, neighbourhood and peers to the far zones.
These zones are entangled with the inner, subjective
world and the outer world of the media.

4. • Ecology of the resources nature and energy
• Creative knowledge society
Araya, Daniel, Peters, Michael A. (eds.) (2010).
Education in the Creative Economy. Knowledge
and Learning in the Age of Innovation. New York,
Bern, Berlin: Peter Lang

5. Analysis of the mobile complex: cultural resources in the running
transformation of society and culture
Structures:
- De-traditionalization of learning: Learning as a
context related social risk: At-risk-learners; learning
as meaning making
- User generated contexts and contexts (from the push
to a pull model) : Facebook and youTube. Contexts
for construction and generation as highly relevant
cultural artefacts.
Agency:
- Habitus of learning: Self-representation, playing,
target orientation
Cultural practices of learning:
* Increase of informal learning outside the school
* Curricular learning in traditional modes (driven by a
teacher and learning subjects) and in flexible modes
(situated, constructivist, collaborative)
* with at-risk learners as a feature of the individualisation
of risks.

6. 2. The key concept “cultural resources”
Pierre Bourdieu “cultural capital”:
- ‘objectified’ capital, like artworks; can be bought and sold.
- ‘embodied’ capital, in the form of habits and dispositions
of a person, such as knowing how to behave at the
opera – Habitus.
- ‘institutionalised’ capital, in the form of academic and
recognised professional qualifications.
Basil Bernstein: „restricted codes“ and „elaborated code“ in
the school (Class, Codes and Control 1973)

7. Examples for cultural resources

12. 3. The concept of affordance in an ecology of
culture and education
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance, 19. March 2012
“Affordance
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An affordance is a quality of an object, or an
environment, which allows an individual to perform an
action. For example, a knob affords twisting, and
perhaps pushing, while a cord affords pulling. The
term is used in a variety of fields: perceptual
psychology, cognitive psychology, environmental
psychology, industrial design, human–computer
interaction (HCI), interaction design, instructional
design and artificial intelligence.”

13. James Jerome Gibson and Eleanor Gibson
Ecology of perception
“The affordances of the environment ... are in a sense
objective, real and physical. ... An affordance is
neither an objective property nor a subjective
property; or it is both if you like. An affordance cuts
across the dichotomy of subjective-objective and
helps us to understand its inadequacy. It is equally a
fact of the environment and a fact of behavior. It is
both physical and psychical, yet, neither. An
affordance points both ways, to the environment and
to the observer.” (1979:129)

14. The relevance of the context in the perception
of an object
„The ambient stimulus information available in the sea
of energy around us ... is not transmitted, does not
consist of signals, and does not entail a sender and
receiver. The environment does not communicate
with the observers who inhabit it. Why should the
world speak to us?”
J. J. Gibson 1979: 63

15. Martin Oliver (2005). The Problem with Affordance. In:
E-Leaning, Volume2, Number 4, 2005, pp 402 – 413
Affordance in respect of media technology and media
design
= like „mapping“, „cultural constraints“ und
„conventions (p. 406)
Affordance “reflects the possible relationship among
actors and objects: they are properties of the world” (p.
406).
Affordance “conveys messages about the possible uses
and functions” (407).
Affordance as a cultural text, mainly the syntax of the
cultural text.

16. Making affordance concrete
for planning m-devices as part of formal learning
The focal point for m-learning
1. To integrate informal learning
2. To set up episodes of situated learning
3. To generate learning and media contexts
(A context is a frame under construction for optional combinations of actions,
representational resources inclusive media and literacy, virtual and local sites
or social sites like socio-cultural milieus.)
4. To construct conversational bridges/ threads
5. To support students as experts of media use in everyday life within the
school
6. To set up responsive contexts for development and learning

17. 4. The affordance of
cultural resources and education
4.1 Learning and appropriation, the explicit
educational perspective of a cultural ecology.

18. Dominant model:
the teacher guided instruction and assessment
Johann Peter Hasenclever
Hieronymus Jobs als Schulmeister, 1846 – Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig

31. The three main models of learning
(a) instruction as transfer of knowledge. Thy dynamic: out - in
(b) In the tradition of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778):
Supporting the personal development
The dynamic of development = bringing out the pre-given inside by
unfolding and educational challenges. Education follows the model
of the gardener.
New version: J. J. Piaget; J.S. Bruner et al./ Lev Vygotsky =
Scaffolding; Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger = Situated learning
In the tradition young Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767 – 1835):
Bildung and appropriation of cultural products
The dynamic for development comes from formative expression by
appropriation of cultural product. The curricular model is based on
the selecting and offering of relevant cultural object for
appropriation as learning
New version: George H. Mead, A. Leontjew / L. Vygotsky , Norbert
Elias, John Dewey

32. Transfer to the actual prerequisites of and
conditions for learning
Learning as formation/ construction of meaning in the society
of individualised risks
Lave, Jean, Wenger, Etienne (1991): Situated learning:
Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press
Lerning as Appropriation of Contexts
Dourish, P. (2004). ‘What we talk about when we talk about
context.’ In Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 8(1), pp.
19-30.
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/publications/2004/PUC2004-
context.pdf
Habitus of Learning in the combination of self representation,
playing and target orientation

33. Gunther Kress: L e a r n i n g a n d E n v i r o n m e n t s o f L e a r n i n g
in
C o n d i t i o n s o f P r o v i s i o n a l i t y . I n : B e n B a c h m a i r : (ed)
(2010).
Medienbildung in neuen Kulturräumen.
Die deutschsprachige und britische Diskussion.
Wiesbaden VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Pp 173-185

34. 4.2. Contexts, from stabile cultural products
for appropriation to cultural products by
appropriation
Dourish, P. (2004) ‘What we talk about when we talk about
context.’ In Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 8(1), pp. 19-30
Also available at: Available at:
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/publications/2004/PUC2004-
context.pd
The internet as a context
A context is a frame under construction
for optional combinations of actions, representational
resources inclusive media and literacy, virtual and
local sites or social sites like socio-cultural milieus

35. Examples for cultural resources
now as examples for contexts

39. T-shirts link to contexts

41. • Dourish, p. 5:
• “First, rather than considering context to be information, it
instead argues that contextuality is a relational property
that holds between objects or activities. It is not simply the
case that something is or is not context; rather, it may or
may not be contextually relevant to some particular
activity.
• Second, rather than considering that context can be
delineated and defined in advance, the alternative view
argues that the scope of contextual features is defined
dynamically.

42. • Third, rather than considering that context is stable, it
instead argues that context is particular to each occasion of
activity or action. Context is an occasioned property,
relevant to particular settings, particular instances of
action, and particular parties to that action.
• Fourth, rather than taking context and content to be two
separable entities, it instead argues that context arises from
the activity. Context isn’t just “there,” but is actively
produced, maintained and enacted in the course of the
activity at hand.

43. 4.3 Social justice and participation.
Well known tasks to be revisited
= e.g. recognition of naïve expertise
Bertelsmann Stiftung, Institute für Schulentwicklung (Hrsg.) 2012.
Chancenspiegel (barometer of opportunties). Zur
Chancengerechtigkeit (equal opportunities) und
Leistungsfähigkeit (efficiency) der deutschen Schulsysteme.
Verlag Bertelsmann Stiftung, Gütersloh
Rawls, John (2001, p. 60): Justice of Fairness
The institutional side of the “equity in the distribution of
resources” like rights, liberties and opportunities, incomes and
wealth, and the social basis of self-respect
Sen, Amartya (2009): The idea of justice.
Social justice and life accomplishment

44. Social justice and the resources of
educational institution (Mayerberg 2011)
„Durchlässigkeit“ als Ergänzung zur Selektionsfunktion der
Schule (S. 28);
„Kompetenzförderung“, „sämtliche Potentiale der
Schülerinnen und Schüler ausschöpfen und keine
systembedingten einseitigen Fördereffekte zulassen“ (S.
29);
„angemessene Zertifikatsvergabe“, „unter Berücksichtigung
der an die Zertifikate gestellten systemimmanenten
Anforderungen und ihrer systeminternen wie
systemexternen Vergleichbarkeit“, „Vergaben von
Anschlussmöglichkeiten“, die mit „Lebenschancen“
verknüpft sind.
„‚adult-initiated action and shared decisions with students“