Affectivity and Relational Awareness in Pedagogy and Education

In this article, we put forward the concept ‘relational awareness’ to describe a conscious awareness of the experience of relational responsivity and dynamics of change in stressful intersubjective encounters in pedagogy and education. This concept is inspired by phenomenology and cultural-historical theory. We introduce the theories of extended affectivity, embodied resonance and intersubjectivity and relate these to cultural-historical psychology in order to explore how people appraise and understand situations related to societal goals, motives, practices and mediating means. Relational awareness, which involves being consciously aware of embodied, pre-reflective relational responsivity, is specific to the cultural context, to the mediating means, and the lived experiences of the person. Relational awareness and responsivity can be objects of reflection and education when educational practices include deliberate work on embodied experience and mediational means to reflect on and change experienced intercorporeity. Relational awareness differs from interpersonal perception in that it involves embodied activity mediated by embodied knowledge and social means of language and discourse.Our conceptualisation of relational awareness is empirically driven by two qualitative studies of preschool teachers’ and teachers’ embodied practices to become presently aware during intersubjective encounters with children in stressful everyday conditions. The embodied practices in the study were inspired by exercises in mindfulness and compassion, which were adjusted according to how the participants experienced their significance. The flexibly adjusted exercises and discourses appeared to provide participants with the mediational embodied and discoursive means to become relationally aware in difficult encounters. Biesta’s conceptualisation of ‘moments of hesitation’ contributes to the discussion of ‘relational awareness’ in education and care.

Teacher Learning to Craft a Vision of Reflexive Praxis

In this chapter, the authors introduce research-based strategies to engage beginning teachers in learning as reflexive praxis, a continuous inquiry into teaching. They argue that mastery of such mediational means of reflection as verbal/visual narratives, artmaking, and dialog mediate the development of reflection as a tool-mediated action, reflexive praxis, and support teachers' transformation into agents of their praxis. The discussion concerns the development of teachers' visual narratives, from descriptive to critical, and their ability to engage in critical reflection of their practice. The cycles of verbal narrative, dialog, and visual narrative in a course of artmaking activity scaffolded the development of teachers' reflections from descriptions of the critical event in practice to critical reflection. The chapter includes a detailed protocol for a multi-media triptych activity that can be used by both teachers and teacher educators for developing teachers' reflexive praxis.

Information-related behaviour as meaning-making processes: a study of science centre visitors

Introduction. This paper studies the science centre visitor experience from an information behaviour perspective. The study contributes to the area of casual-leisure information behaviour. Method. The qualitative walk-along method rooted in ethnographic research was applied to study the in-situ visitor experience of forty-four families (seventy-four children and seventy adults) at a science centre in Denmark. An inductive content analysis approach was adopted focusing on three analytical themes. Analysis.The concept of mediational means was used to analyse how the different exhibit features facilitate visitors’ meaning-making processes. Results. Results from the study show how different exhibition features facilitate visitors’ information use and meaning-making processes in multiple ways providing rich opportunities for meaning-making. The results further illustrate, how visitors’ meaning-making processes become informed through a duality of cognitive and corporeal ways of knowing. Conclusions. In the immersive and highly interactive exhibition, visitors mainly become informed about the importance of movement and health through corporeal information that is experienced through the situated body.

Students’ multimodal knowledge practices in a makerspace learning environment

In this study, we aim to widen the understanding of how students’ collaborative knowledge practices are mediated multimodally in a school’s makerspace learning environment. Taking a sociocultural stance, we analyzed students’ knowledge practices while carrying out STEAM learning challenges in small groups in the FUSE Studio, an elementary school’s makerspace. Our findings show how discourse, digital and other “hands on” materials, embodied actions, such as gestures and postures, and the physical space with its arrangements mediated the students’ knowledge practices. Our analysis of these mediational means led us to identifying four types of multimodal knowledge practice, namely orienting, interpreting, concretizing, and expanding knowledge, which guided and facilitated the students’ creation of shared epistemic objects, artifacts, and their collective learning. However, due to the multimodal nature of knowledge practices, carrying out learning challenges in a makerspace can be challenging for students. To enhance the educational potential of makerspaces in supporting students’ knowledge creation and learning, further attention needs to be directed to the development of new pedagogical solutions, to better facilitate multimodal knowledge practices and their collective management.

Action logs as mediational means for teacher development

In this narrative article, I document my implementation of action logs as a tool for reflective practice and teacher development as I transitioned from working in a small eikaiwa (English conversation) school to working in a private international university. After providing a brief description of my contextual background and how I came to start action logging, I give examples of student feedback I received and their relevance to my reflective teaching. Finally, I explain the varied ways in which I feel using action logs aided me in improving the efficacy of my classroom practice and influenced my evolving teacher identity during a stressful transition between two markedly different professional worlds.

A Sociocultural Approach to Learner Autonomy in the Language Classroom

Approaches to understanding learner autonomy in language learning often contain dichotomous views: those that emphasize individual attributes and those that emphasize social influence. In order to articulate our understanding of learner autonomy, it is necessary to find approaches, which view a dialectic unity between the individualistic views and the social views. Sociocultural theory based on the concept of mediation is an approach, which has potential to offer a unique way to analyze learner autonomy. While using sociocultural theory as the main theoretical framework, this article attempts to understand how students take charge of their learning in the language classroom. Qualitative data indicate that interpersonal relationships between students work as mediational means for students to engage in their learning in the classroom. From this finding, it is argued that by understanding mediational means that students employ and are appropriate in the classroom, we are better able to track the students’ ability to take charge of their own learning.

Learning to Reflect: Teachers' Mastery and Development of Mediational Means and Psychological Tools of Reflective Practice

Authors conceptualize the notion of reflection as a higher psychological function from the perspective of cultural–historical psychology of Lev Vygotsky and discuss the development of teachers' reflective practice in the process of mastering and creating mediational means of reflective practice. In the current research literature the terms mediational means and psychological tools are often used interchangeably. On the grounds of the findings from the studies of teachers' reflection, conducted in Ireland, United States, and Russia, the authors distinguish mediational means from psychological tools, discuss their heterogeneity, and explore how the choice of mediational means transforms the process of reflective practice. Authors argue that teachers need to be educated to master meditational means of reflection to build their reflective practice and develop reflection as a higher psychological function.

Understanding the use of mediational means in academic writing

While the majority of previous studies on EAP (English for academic purposes) writing have been devoted to professional or academic writing at a more advanced level (i.e., PhD students and scholars) in ESL contexts, little attention has been paid to the academic writing of master-level novice writers in EFL contexts. From a sociocultural perspective, the present case study examined the writing strategies of a master-level novice writer – Alice in Macau context. Non-structured, semi-structured and text-based interviews were used as the primary source of data, with document analysis used for triangulation. The study identified two major categories (i.e., artifacts and community) and five subcategories of mediational means (i.e., journal articles and theses, languages, online writing materials, peers and experts) as significant in the novice writer’s academic writing activities. It also unveiled double-edged features of mediational means and recognized their interplay with the writer’s goals and relatedness to her situated context.