The Materiality of Learning

Reviews / Votes

"Estrid Sorensen offers a deeply fascinating, new look on learning. She shows us how blackboards and notebooks, pencils and rulers, bodies and tables, PCs and virtual environments are profoundly implicated in learning processes in an ordinary classroom and an internet-based 3D virtual environment project in a fourth-grade class. Her introduction of science and technology studies into research on education inspires us to re-imagine and rearrange educational practices at a time when we are struggling with integrating new technologies in our schools."
-Ole Dreier, University of Copenhagen "Indeed a pathbreaking book on the conception of learning. For the reflective teacher it is a gold mine of inspiration for what to do to improve teaching and education. And for those who hold views on learning in resonance with the ones outlined in the book - e.g. cultural-historical activity theory, sociocultural perspectives, situated learning approaches - it is thought provoking and a challenge on how to get a grip of what we have only begun to explore: the socio-material activities that make up learning."
-Berthel Sutter, Blekinge Institute of Technology "The Materiality of Learning presents a refreshing and insightful account of technology in schools. Sorensen gives a rich empirical description of how several kinds of technology - from virtual worlds and blogs to more traditional educational tools - helped constitute activity in a fourth grade classroom. She uses her empirical case to push forward an important set of cross-disciplinary issues, illustrating how learning is spread across systems of people and objects and demonstrating the power of objects as equal participants in cognitive activity. The book will be useful to scholars across anthropology, psychology, and educational research, who can use a clear but complex empirical case of technology in the classroom that skillfully uses theoretical innovations from science and technology studies to analyze classroom learning as a material process."
-Stanton Wortham, University of Pennsylvania