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Instrumental genesis in technology-mediated learning: From double stimulation to expansive knowledge practices

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Abstract

The purpose of the present paper is to examine the socio-cultural foundations of technology-mediated collaborative learning. Toward that end, we discuss the role of artifacts in knowledge-creating inquiry, relying on the theoretical ideas of Carl Bereiter, Merlin Donald, Pierre Rabardel, Keith Sawyer and L. S. Vygotsky. We argue that epistemic mediation triggers expanded inquiry and plays a crucial role in knowledge creation; such mediation involves using CSCL technologies to create epistemic artifacts for crystallizing cognitive processes, re-mediating subsequent activity, and building an evolving body of knowledge. Productive integration of CSCL technologies as instruments of learning and instruction is a developmental process: it requires iterative efforts across extended periods of time. Going through such a process of instrumental genesis requires transforming a cognitive-cultural operating system of activity, thus ‘reformatting’ the brain and the mind. Because of the required profound personal and social transformations, one sees that innovative knowledge-building practices emerge, socially, through extended expansive-learning cycles.

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Notes

  1. In particular, we refer to learning that involves the development or transformation – or both – of participants’ practices; roughly it corresponds to levels II and III of learning in Bateson’s (1972) taxonomy and to expansive learning (Engeström 1987).

  2. See also http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/14/marshall-mcluhan-analytic-thought

  3. See http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2004/04%20/new_version_of_.html

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Acknowledgments

The present investigation was supported by grant 1127019 (Academy of Finland). Hal White assisted in improving English language of the present manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Research on Activity, Development, and Learning (CRADLE), Institute for Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 9, Helsinki, SF-00014, Finland

    Giuseppe Ritella

  2. Department of Education, University of Turku, Assistentinkatu 5, Turku, 20014, Finland

    Kai Hakkarainen

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  1. Giuseppe Ritella
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Correspondence to Giuseppe Ritella.

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Ritella, G., Hakkarainen, K. Instrumental genesis in technology-mediated learning: From double stimulation to expansive knowledge practices. Computer Supported Learning 7, 239–258 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-012-9144-1

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