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Posthuman Pedagogy

November 28, 2010 by Marie Leadbetter

An experience of Posthuman Pedagogy I recently had was Learning to Swim Using YouTube.

I sought this out as I was having trouble with breastroke. I felt initially that swimming lessons weren’t really for me, I just want to build upon my own existing knowledge at my own pace. I set my own goals, I have no pact with my teacher, he doesn’t even know he is teaching me. I watch a video online, then I go swimming and try to put into practice what i’ve learned.

This is problematic, in some ways, I don’t have an expert to give me feedback on what i’m doing. This ‘intellectual uncertainty’ could be a stumbling block if I don’t figure out how to get around it. I could contact him via his youtube page or website and ask for advice, and you can see in both locations that he does respond. I could try looking at other ways of getting the information I need (my main problem is that I can’t see what I am doing; I could ask someone to describe my movements..) However, as I have set my own goals (swimming a certain distance in a certain timeframe) I can measure success in my own terms. And, ultimately, it has worked; Next stop: Front Crawl.

I think it’s interesting to note why I chose this particular instructor, out of the hundreds that come up when you search Youtube for ’swimming breastroke’. I watched a few and found that some were too fast, some used a bit too much jargon (suggesting that i’d need more prior knowledge) and some just didn’t look right. The one I chose had the following characteristics:

Well paced
Good use of repetition (of visual and key points)
Authenticity: This was shown to us by Steven Shaw – a quick google search shows him to be an expert..; Also ‘Swimming without Stress’ is run by a swimming instructor; you can read all about him here.
Personality; a regional accent I identify with (not sure how much this was a factor in my choice, but it’s worth mentioning that i’m from the west midlands and this is where the tutor’s accent originates…)

On the surface this fits with lifelong learning as “a world of gathering things together and experimenting”. According to Edwards (2010) Posthumanism, technology and ‘how the information is gathered’ however, has made this more complex.

I still see Lifelong learning as still significant in a Posthuman age. The essence of Lifelong learning, for me, is the focus on the individual – something I see technology enhanced learning supporting hugely. I’m not just expecting to ‘be taught’ in my Posthuman Pedagogy example, but to structure my learning myself, according to my own needs; technological enhancement/ advancement serves to gives me many more options. I can see how Edwards (2010) notion of ‘Responsible Experimenting’ and the trouble of the fast changing pace of the world is important here, too; Lifelong learning seems perhaps too stable a term for such a chaotic world…

Posted in Uncategorized | 82 Comments

82 Responses to “Posthuman Pedagogy”

on 28 Nov 2010 at 3:41 pm1 Sue Grundy

Hi Marie
I liked your post – the video was quite soothing somehow to watch…almost sophorific… On a personal level it was interesting as I’ve been watching my 4 yr old son learning breaststroke today – he’s a natural apparently. Plus my own breastroke is very poor…I only managed to co-ordinate my legs recently! So the idea of it being a stroke of gliding was very beneficial to me.
The video reminding me of the Understanding Learning assignment where one had to learn a new motor skill – I chose juggling – which was very difficult to learn…it was a brilliant assignment for realising how hard it is to learn some things and once learned how easy it is to teach – to see what people are doing wrong.
I fully agree with lifelong learning being still significant – the thought that we reach a point where we don’t have something to learn seems unhuman and indeed un-post-human.
My own children are already learning so much more at a faster pace than I ever did – my 6 year old is learning to swim front crawl and even butterfly – which fills me with awe as it is a stroke that I cannot imagine ever mastering…but maybe I should put it on my own lifelong learning agenda and take inspiration from you and look for a video on youtube (but worried about getting the computer wet
on 29 Nov 2010 at 5:31 pm2 Noreen Dunnett

Really interesting idea for posthuman pedagogy. I find the whole idea of learning from Youtube fascinating. My daughter takes face-to-face piano lessons and can read music but she sometimes prefers to learn tunes from Youtube and plays ‘by ear’. What she learns ‘by ear’, stays in her memory and she can play these tunes any time, anywhere, whereas the stuff she learns from reading music is not so straightforward – no natural flow from ear to fingers!

I suppose the difference with your ’swimming lessons’ was that you didn’t have the video in front of you as you tried out the tips, the way that she did but maybe the mental process and internalisation was the same?

It’s funny that you as a human learning still need a ‘human’ with particular qualities to ‘teach’ you, even if it was a mediated message. You looked for the human who had a regional accent, a certain pace etc. Perhaps we’ll never truly be posthuman!
on 29 Nov 2010 at 9:58 pm3 Charmaine McKenzie

Hi Marie:

I’m with you and Sue on the matter of the continued relevance of lifelong learning. And I agree with Edwards (2010) on the need for learning to challenge us, at any level in fact, throughout life.

I can’t swim, shameful to say, as I had more than enough opportunities to learn but have always been petrified, thinking that I will just sink no matter what the laws of physics or whatever it is say. It just occurred to me though, I wonder if a swimming lesson in Second Life with my avatar doing it would work? When I have some time I’ll see if there is anything like that in SL.
on 30 Nov 2010 at 8:54 pm4 Jeremy Knox

Hi Marie,

I was very intrigued by this posthuman pedagogy post. The You Tube video seems to be an excellent example of a teaching cyborg organism, in that it is comprised of technology (non-human) and teacher (human). It seems to me that these human and non-human elements cannot be separated. The human is entirely mediated by technology, his voice (and regional accent) is digitised, the shaking of his camera hand is encoded in the video, his choice of shot has been influenced by the hardware of the camera and the interface of the video editing software. Conversely, the non-human video is a direct result of human thought processes and editing decisions – we cannot say that the video (technology) exists independently of the human. Moreover, I would include the bodies of the swimmers who are demonstrating the breath stroke in this cyborg teacher, as they have provided a physical demonstration of the technique, which supplies a visual stimulus for the spoken word. The learning that you undertake from this video seems therefore to be dependent on a hybrid of human and non-human.

I was also excited by your search activities, and thought this demonstrated further posthuman elements. Firstly the results of the You Tube search for ’swimming breast stroke’ must be partly based on the popularity of You Tube videos, and so it seems that others have influenced your decision in a small way. Is this enough for the ‘distributed cognition’ of Hayles I wonder? Furthermore the Google searches that you undertook for reassurance (a common practice I think) reveal the same community involvement, this time in how you came to trust the authenticity of the teacher (very important for learning I think). The visual aesthetic of web pages must also influence our propensity to trust. I wonder whether the comments on the video influenced your learning? Thinking about it, I can’t watch a video on You Tube without reading at least some of the comments, they seem to be an integral part of the experience, and influence how I perceive the authenticity of the clip.

The comments about personalised learning are interesting. I think this kind of technology almost creates a paradox. I view what you have described here as a demonstration of how utterly entangled your learning has been in ‘objects’ and other humans, yet I would also definitely agree that you have tailored the experience, from a range of variables, to what you are comfortable with. This is surely the questioning of subjectivity and agency that makes the posthuman such a controversial concept. Thought provoking stuff, thanks Marie.
on 01 Dec 2010 at 2:12 pm5 Marie Leadbetter

@Jeremy – thanks, I think you highlighted something really important there that struck a chord with me in Haraway, re: miniaturisation/ invisibility of technology, or it’s effects. Like you say, the medium – possibly even down to the make of camera, or the standard of equipment – has altered the delivery. And my way of finding it has been shaped by my own previous experience of searching. If it wasn’t so common, it could be considered serendipitous. It’s startling how McLuhan’s predictions about technology, people and society are still so relevant – in the 60s he foresaw some of the exact ways in which technology would shape and change us.

Re: Youtube comments – i did once post this http://xkcd.com/202/ on my blog as I find Youtube comments hilarious. I’ve never seen arguments like it! As I don’t spend enough time on Youtube, I don’t know who I can trust there…I thought that searching on Google would give a more balanced view. Although, I do forget that Google is primarily an advertising company and with the rise of ‘Sponsored Links’ should we trust it…?

I do have trusted sources on Twitter, too. If someone I follow posts a link, I tend to look at it and trust that it is true, that they’ve done the fact checking and would not have tweeted/ retweeted it if they didn’t know for sure. Now, quite recently Graham Linehan and Jonathan Ross, who both have thousands of followers, have tweeted, or retweeted things without checking. I guess they never asked to be experts, but people do come to expect a certain level of integrity from your web presence…

To quote McLuhan:

Character no longer is shaped by only two earnest, fumbling experts. Now all the world’s a sage.
on 01 Dec 2010 at 2:22 pm6 Marie Leadbetter

@noreen

That’s really interesting about learning the Piano! I have been doing the same on Youtube, but with much more difficulty!! I’ve never had a lesson though so maybe it’s as I have no real foundations…

I think learning to swim was much less complicated, it is just one manoeuvre with several small components. At the time, I wasn’t sure if I was failing or not; only really at the end and on reflection. I’d come back to the video, watch and think…oh, I don’t think I did that. Then next time, would concentrate on that for a bit…

@sue

You’re right about the voice, there’s something really soothing there. I read some blogs about people learning something for the Understanding Learning module, looked great fun. I bet it wasn’t, though!! The annoying thing is, I think, knowing how to do stuff is great. Learning it is not so much

@Charmaine

Funny you should say about SL – something weird I noticed is that the way people move underwater is kinda similar to flying in Second Life…
on 02 Dec 2010 at 6:02 pm7 Jen Ross

Marie, I’ve been thinking about your post for the past few days without being sure quite why it hooked me like it did. I agree with what’s been said above about the various layers of posthumanism it evokes. To add to them, I think the video instructions themselves are an invitation towards a posthuman subjectivity – the precise focus on the mechanics, the tiny pool with the swimmers launching and turning and stopping over and over, the analysis of the stroke as being about *not* working, about preventing instinct from taking over, about being at ease in a hostile environment. It’s quite captivating! It’s about the body as prosthesis (as per Ali’s point earlier this week), the discipline of unlearning and relearning a physical pattern. Anyway, I loved it, so thanks for this!
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