Session Information
19 SES 14 B, Attention in Distinct Settings of Education and Learning: A Synopsis of Ethnographic Studies
Symposium
Contribution
Over the past few years, the notion of ‘attention’ as critical factor in educational processes and learning – beyond the context of the ‘attention-deficit-syndrom’ - is attracting incremental interest (Dinkelaker 2011, Kade 2010).
Within educational theory and pedagogical-empirical research attention is considered to be both a precondition and a result of learning. Primary pedagogical models of attention – often inspired by psychological, sociological, phenomenological, philosophical and newly culture-theoretical concepts – display an understanding of the phenomenon in regard to aspects of apperception (e.g. Herbart 1902, Waldenfels 2004, Crary 2002), of time (Anderson 1984, Berdelmann 2010), of inattention (Reh 2008), of classroom-related teaching and learning (Carroll 1963, Rinne 1984, Markowitz 1984, Prange 2005, Heymann 2005, Breidenstein 2006, Dinkelaker 2010) as well as of informal and non-institutional and self-directed learning (Knowles 2006; Tomasello 1999).
The symposium brings together several recent empirical and historical works on the issue, which have developed mostly independent from each other in Europe and Northern America. Although they focus on very distinct settings of education and learning and use different research methods they all share the basic consideration, that attention cannot be understood merely as an isolated and singular phenomenon that occurs within individual minds. Instead the approaches emphasize, that individual and collective attention have to be observed and understood in regard to the contexts, in which they are performed, as well as in consideration of the processes in which they unfold. Thus, attention appears as a processual and contextualized phenomenon. Some of the presented works specifiy this understanding of attention with the concept of joint attention (Tomasello 1999) and relating to studies in multimodality of face-to-face-interaction (Kendon 1990, Goodwin 1981). Others rely on theories of attention in media based interaction and social practices (Ingold 2000, Schatzki 2002). The symposium brings these different approaches together in order to open up a a disciplinary and international perspective on this issue of educational research.
The symposium will include three contributions:
Kathrin Berdelmann (Switzerland) and Sabine Reh (Germany) will analyse the construction of attention through social practices of different acteurs in open classroom settings.
Jennifer Jenson, Suzanne de Castell and Nicholas Taylor (Canada) report from a study about virtual learning environments, that is, computer-based media like games in educational contexts.
Jörg Dinkelaker (Germany) reconstructs the collaborative work of facilitators and learners in coordinating their foci and their shifts of attention in adult classrooms.
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