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Children, on-line learning and authentic teaching skills in primary education |
Distributed Cognition |
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Education involves complex sets of purposeful activities undertaken simultaneously and over time by participants and contributors in the same and different locations. The activities are generally purposeful and considered and thus involve cognition. Like many other human endeavours education involved cognition that is distributed across people, times and places.
Pedagogy is a complex task. It involves both teaching and learning, not necessarily simultaneously but over time. A substantial part of the activity involved is thinking (cognition) about experience in order to gain insights that can be treated as knowledge (see action learning). The results of the thinking can then be made available to other participants as part of the ongoing process.
One of the challenges for those involved in teaching and learning is to achieve a satisfactory level of 'coordination' of their thinking. Different members of the group will have different experiences and information on which to focus their own cognition. The cognition involved is not located in a single member of the learning group. Nor does it move singly from member to member of the group. Rather it is helpful to think of the cognition involved (the processing of information) as being distributed across the group.
Perhaps this is illustrated by the counter example of a class in which the teacher was teaching at the blackboard and noticed a student staring out the window.
Distributed information and cognition 'Secret Santa' is a workplace arrangement where a group of workmates are each assigned the tasks of providing an anonymous small, low-cost gift for an allocated colleague. The allocation is likely to be done randomly or by an individual who remains the only person to know who is responsible for gifts to whom. The gifts are given at an end of year get-together. The system works well for two reasons, both associated with distributed cognition. Drawing on the distributed cognition within the group it is usual for well considered, clever and highly individual gifts to the result. Secondly the unwrapping of the gifts as they are received is usually enjoyable for all concerned since the gifts are likely to be related to certain incidents, interests or characteristic features of the recipient. The sharing enriches, extends, reinforces and makes explicit the distributed information available within the group.
Distributed cognition in the classroom In its simplest form teaching provides initial information to learners as part of a didactic approach. In a richer collaborative and constructivist pedagogy the boy would indeed be there to think, not only about the topic but also about how his learning was being constructed along with the learning of others in the class (including the teacher). That is, the information being considered and reconstructed would have many sources and the cognition (the processing the information) would be taking place often simultaneously in various members of the group. Thus information and cognition are both distributed across the group in a dynamic way over time and place.
In an over simplified example consider the possible distribution of information and cognition of the class below undertaking some local study (imagine a suitable topic, perhaps an investigation of litter in the local environment).
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