10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17447
Early progressive and sociocultural theories in education share unexpected similarities with recent research concerned with the sociomateriality of learning settings. Therefore, this scenario retraces the shift from learning as transmission and guided rediscovery towards a performative account of learning as translation. In particular, this paper elaborates the differences between conventional, sociocultural and sociomaterial approaches regarding the unit of analysis, the mediation done by nonhumans and the contemplation of more fluid forms of knowledge. While retracing conceptual links and developing a sociomaterial conception of teaching(-)learning, I argue that the recent line of sociomaterial research carries on what early authors have been aiming at with the idea of practice-based, non-reductive educational science. But, due to its alternative stance on common onto-epistemological assumptions, it opens up new possibilities of collaboration between Science and Technology Studies and educational sciences where the agency of things and the mediation of knowledge emerge as matters of concern.
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Michael Schlauch
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
zone of proximal development
Learning as a Matter of Concern. Reviewing Conventional, Sociocultural and Sociomaterial Perspectives
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Michael Schlauch
2019
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17447
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Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
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zone of proximal development
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Learning as a Matter of Concern. Reviewing Conventional, Sociocultural and Sociomaterial Perspectives
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10
                                                                           Scenario

Learning as a Matter of Concern
Reviewing Conventional, Sociocultural and Socio-
material Perspectives

Michael Schlauch
Faculty of Education, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano


     Abstract: Early progressive and sociocultural theories in education share
     unexpected similarities with recent research concerned with the socio-
     materiality of learning settings. Therefore, this scenario retraces the shift
     from learning as transmission and guided rediscovery towards a performa-
     tive account of learning as translation. In particular, this paper elaborates
     the differences between conventional, sociocultural and sociomaterial ap-
     proaches regarding the unit of analysis, the mediation done by nonhumans
     and the contemplation of more fluid forms of knowledge. While retracing
     conceptual links and developing a sociomaterial conception of teaching(-)
     learning, I argue that the recent line of sociomaterial research carries on
     what early authors have been aiming at with the idea of practice-based,
     non-reductive educational science. But, due to its alternative stance on
     common onto-epistemological assumptions, it opens up new possibilities of
     collaboration between Science and Technology Studies and educational sci-
     ences where the agency of things and the mediation of knowledge emerge
     as matters of concern.

     Keywords: sociomateriality; progressive education; sociocultural theory;
     learning transfer; scaffolding; zone of proximal development.

     Submitted: September 12, 2019 – Accepted: October 28, 2019

     Corresponding author: Michael Schlauch, Faculty of Education, Free
     University of Bozen-Bolzano, Regensburger Allee, v.le Ratisbona 16, 39042,
     Brixen-Bressanone, Italy. E-mail: Michael.Schlauch@education.unibz.it



1. Introduction

    Over recent years, a growing variety of research has been concerned
with learning and teaching while following a “post-humanist socio-
material tradition of ANT” (actor-network theory) (Sørensen 2007, 16).
Among these, we can count studies about the role of objects in classroom
interactions (Verran 1999; Sørensen 2009; Röhl 2012; Mulcahy 2012;
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Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
10 (2) pp. 153-172 - ISSN 2038-3460                2019
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Landri and Viteritti 2016), computer assisted instruction and e-learning
(Nespor 2011; Thompson 2012), workplace practice in organizations (Or-
likowski 2007; Mathisen and Nerland 2012), informal “everyday” learn-
ing (Aberton 2012) as well as detailed descriptions about the enactment
of prescribed curricula and teacher standards (Edwards 2011; Ceulemans
et al. 2012), educational reform (Hamilton 2011) as well as educational
assessment procedures (Gorur 2011). All these authors study a world
made of “concatenations of mediators” (Latour 2005, 59). Yet, the rela-
tively recent concepts of “relational materiality” and “performativity”
(Law 1999) in Science and Technology Studies (STS) also bear some re-
semblance to the following citations published many years ahead (empha-
sis added):
       As a result, the immediacy of ‘natural’ perception is supplanted by
       a complex mediated process; as such, speech becomes an essential
       part of the child’s cognitive development. (Vygotsky 1978, 32)
       [...] we introduce no knower to confront what is known as if in a
       different, or superior, realm of being or action; nor any known or
       knowable as of a different realm to stand over against the knower
       (Dewey and Bentley 1949, 136)
       Educational influence is diffused through all the surroundings,
       and persons, children and teacher, come to take their share, in it.
       (Montessori 1948, 95)
    Although these authors worked separately from each other and in dif-
ferent parts of the world, they all made early contributions for the recon-
figuration of learning environments. Their theories reshaped material-
discursive practices concerning learning. This is why nowadays there is a
recurring interest in progressive education practice and sociocultural per-
spectives of learning. Looking back at past work, some of their descrip-
tions may sound strangely familiar today. More specifically, considering
the importance of “prepared environments” (see Brehony 2000) and the
active role of materials in Montessori’s pedagogy, it was not necessary for
her to read about the “distribution of competences between humans and
nonhumans” (Latour 1992, 158) in order to state that the “work of edu-
cation is divided between the teacher and the environment” (Montessori
1948, 196).
    Dewey, Montessori and Vygotsky offer different, but overlapping per-
spectives on education that explore a non-dualistic alternative to wide-
spread mechanistic views on education at that time (Tolman and Piekkola
1989; Prawat 2000; Bodrova 2003). Indeed, progressive education, soci-
ocultural psychology and recent sociomaterial studies in STS share an in-
terest in the material circumstances and treat learning and teaching as
matters of concern (Latour 2005) rather than matters of fact. While
“starting from observations of real life situations” (see Lee 1984, 107), the
intent of most progressive education advocates was to offer a modern,
Schlauch                                                                 155
scientific method of designing education practice. Instead of being a
complete solution, Montessori (1948, 388) saw her schools as empirical
laboratories for ‘experimental pedagogy’. Or, for instance, Freinet
searched for a “pedagogical style based on intuition and observations of
young children” (Nowak-Fabrykowski 1992, 64). In a similar vein, Vygot-
sky has based his “experimental-developmental” method in psychology
on “experimental interventions and observation” (Vygotsky 1978, 14, 61).
    Similarly, today, many authors follow Law (2009a, 141) in treating
ANT as a “disparate family of material-semiotic tools, sensibilities, meth-
ods of analysis” (see also Nespor 2011; Gorur 2011) instead of suggesting
it to be a theory whose “centre has been fixed, pinned down, rendered
definite” (Law 1999, 2).
    From there, this article fits in with an effort to review how a similar
mindset in approaching teaching and learning has produced a variety of
influential concepts over many decades, in concordance with larger
changes in social sciences, such as the “practice-turn”
(Hager 2012; Grasseni and Ronzon 2004) and efforts “to develop non-
foundationalist and non-representational ways of researching the social”
(Fenwick and Edwards 2013).
    Sociomateriality, in this regard, is one of the latest developments con-
cerning practice. As Gherardi (2017) points out, ‘sociomateriality’ em-
phasizes the entanglement rather than the separation of the material and
the social and is linked to practice-based studies of organization. In its
current usage without hyphen, Orlikowski (2007, 1446) established it as a
way to “investigate the multiple, emergent, and shifting sociomaterial as-
semblages that constitute organizations”. In short, it underscores the con-
stitutive entanglement of the material and the social (Orlikowski 2007).
According to Fenwick and Edwards (2013), recent developments in ANT
as well as in cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), which builds on
Vygotsky’s work, qualify as sociomaterial approaches. The latter are char-
acterized by materiality, inseparability, relationality, performativity and a
focus on practices (Gherardi 2017).
    But, why should educational researchers adopt such a sociomaterial
perspective, and how can STS make use of existing links to educational
approaches? Hereafter, in an attempt to bridge the gap between existing
pieces of theory about learning, I outline a set of key concepts and con-
ceptual problems and how these can be dealt with from a sociomaterial
perspective. In Table 1, we see how key concepts about learning differ
with the change of perspective, which I will elaborate in more detail be-
low.
156                                                                          Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)




                      Conventional                Sociocultural              Sociomaterial
                       paradigm                     approach                   approach
                                              the learner’s commu-
Unit of            the mind of the learn-     nity of practice and        sociomaterial assem-
analysis           er                         zones (ZPDs) of joint       blage, actor-network
                                              construction
                                                                          no formal distinction
                   object viewed either as    acknowledged media-
                                                                          between human and
                   tool     (intermediary)    tion of objects in
                                                                          non-human        actors,
Participation      that extends human         learning, interaction
                                                                          every object (including
of objects         decisions, or as a cause   with objects in scaf-
                                                                          mundane objects) is
                   that determines hu-        folds and didactic ma-
                                                                          allowed to make a dif-
                   man performance            terial
                                                                          ference
                                              learning in prepared        relations unfold in
Spatial            classroom conception,
                                              environments, can ex-       multiple spatial topol-
configura-         learning spaces seen as
                                              tend beyond class-          ogies (e.g. regions,
tions              confined regions
                                              rooms                       network, fluids)
Relation           knower disconnected        knowledge related to        embodied knowledge
knower-            from    disembodied        skill, situated in prac-    inseparate from know-
known              knowledge                  tice                        er
                                                                          through materiality of
                                              learning as guided re-
Learning           transmission and ab-                                   learning, teaching(-)
                                              discovery in a similar
‘transfer’         straction                                              learning as transla-
                                              practice
                                                                          tion/propagation
                                                                          teacher/learner as ef-
                                              roles can be reconfig-
                   pre-existing roles and                                 fect, actors are per-
Agency       and                              ured, teachers as facili-
                   entities, teacher cen-                                 formed through en-
actors                                        tators of the student’s
                   trality                                                tangled     teaching(-)
                                              own learning
                                                                          learning

Table 1 - Theoretical perspectives on aspects of teaching(-)learning (own elabora-
tion).



2. Learning as Transmission, Construction and Participa-
tion

    According to Rogoff and Toma (1997, 474), most public schools fol-
low a ’transmission model of instruction’ with “basically dyadic” interac-
tions. They are most commonly structured through teacher-centered
whole-class teaching. From this perspective, the teacher is the one who
applies and displays knowledge, whereas the pupil passively picks up the
knowledge. Authors pertaining to classic progressive education, practice-
based research as well as sociomaterial studies oppose the reduction of
teaching “to narrowly specific prescriptions for what should be trans-
planted into the heads of kids” (Lave 1996) or where “the dignity of man
Schlauch                                                                     157
is reduced to the level of the dignity of a machine” (Montessori 1948, 17).
    Alternative teaching methods in education have been called “con-
structivist” as they emphasize the child’s own construction of knowledge
(see also Kamii and Ewing 1996). But, as Rogoff (1994, 212) points out,
original authors also distanced themselves from schools that reduced the
ideas of progressive education to be a simple reversal of control in the
classroom (see also Dewey 1938). Therefore, one must not understand
these approaches to be about leaving children to their own devices. One
tends to divide education into two extremes that either neglect the input
from the learners or from the teachers in a “pendulum swing between
control and freedom” (Rogoff 1994, 210).
    According to Montessori (1948, 197), the teacher “does nothing more
than facilitate and make clear to the child the very active and prolonged
work which is reserved for him” or her. This, however, is a constant, con-
tinuous effort comparable to that of a “guardian angel of minds concen-
trated in efforts which are to elevate them” (ibid.). In Dewey (1916/2001,
ch. 22) we see that authority does not disappear, but it is distributed as
‘social guidance’ instead of authoritative dictation.
    Thus, focusing on the theory of learning as a whole, constructivist
methods imply that new classroom configurations afford not yet another
form (or reversal) of transmission. Rather than isolated knowledge con-
struction, we have to picture learners as “active agents in the material
world” (Fenwick and Edwards 2013, 50) and focus on their interactions
and activities. To illustrate this point, a key concept is Vygotsky’s “zone
of proximal development” (ZPD) which he defines as follows:
       It is the distance between the actual developmental level as deter-
       mined by independent problem solving and the level of potential
       development as determined through problem solving under adult
       guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. (Vygot-
       sky 1978, 86)
    Thus, Vygotsky (1978) questions the notion of imitation and learning
as being “purely mechanical”. Rather, the ZPD signifies the child’s poten-
tial of development as the result of social interaction. Interestingly, we
can encounter the ZPD also beyond intentional instruction. We are able
to look at certain kinds of play that are “responsible for creating young
children’s ‘zone of proximal development’ ” (Bodrova 2008, 360). Vygot-
sky (1978, 102), for example, describes, how, in make-believe play, it is as
though the child was “a head taller than himself” and behaves beyond his
or her age. To underline the importance of the social and material context
of activity, Newman and colleagues (1989) identify the ZPD as a joint
“construction zone”. In fact, scholars of cultural-historical activity theory
have gradually widened their focus from cultural mediation (Vygot-
sky 1978) to collective activity (Leontiev 1981/2009) and to interconnect-
ed activity systems (Engeström 2001).
    In a more anthropological account, Tim Ingold (2001) promotes an
158                                                        Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

understanding of guided rediscovery in taskscapes where “knowledge
consists, in the first place, of skill” and “where every human being is a
centre of awareness and agency in a field of practice”. Thus, either by
learning in the ZPD, or through rediscovery in a “taskscape”, the envi-
ronment “is not merely a source of problems, of adaptive challenges to be
resolved; it becomes part of the means for dealing with them.” (In-
gold 2001, para. 25).
    Regarding the social environment, another relevant sociocultural con-
cept is learning as “an aspect of changing participation in changing com-
munities of practice” (Lave 1996, 151). In this approach, the community
of practice provides information, resources and opportunities for partici-
pation that enable learners to access membership in the community, i.e.
to change identity and to learn (Lave and Wenger 1991).
    Despite the different origins, Star (1995) shows that the “community
of practice” and the ZPD are linked to important concepts related to
symbolic interactionism. According to her, both the ZPD and the “ma-
trix” in grounded theory (Strauss 1993) “are created through shared
practice and co-constructed material conditions, both very local and high-
ly extensive” (Star 1995, 14). In addition, we can define the “social
world” as well as the “community of practice” as the main unit of analysis
for the organization of people’s collective learning (ibid.).
    Hence, without adopting a strict sociomaterial perspective, we have
already reached an understanding of learning with a broader unit of anal-
ysis, which allows us to look at the distribution of cognition (Cole and
Engeström 1993). In the account of distributed cognition by
Hutchins (1995), for instance, cognitive processes emerge from interac-
tions within cultural cognitive ecosystems. Such a cultural cognitive eco-
system “includes a shared world of objects and events as well as adaptive
resources internal to each member of the community” (Hutchins 2013, 4).
    In sum, we reached a common departure point for a sociomaterial
analysis that emerged from different directions. Concerning our widened
scope, according to Fenwick (2010, 111), sociomaterial approaches com-
monly “take the whole system as the unit of analysis, appreciating hu-
man/nonhuman action and knowledge as entangled in systemic webs”.
Another step would be not to “privilege human consciousness or inten-
tion, but trace how knowledge, knowers and known (representations,
subjects and objects) emerge together with/in activity” (Fenwick 2010,
112). To continue on this path, I next clarify the role of objects, or “non-
humans”, in relation to learning.


3. From Tools over Scaffolds to the Participation of
Objects

      Considering the importance of things and objects in education, con-
Schlauch                                                                       159
ventional research has been rather human-centered or (techno-
)deterministic. According to Waltz (2006, 52), over the years serious work
“has gone into the development and use of things as educational tools”.
Less attention, however, has gone into the theory regarding things. They
are either framed as “subordinate tools serving human aims or, by con-
trast, primary movers and therefore overdetermined agents of change”
(Waltz 2006, 54). Thus, drawing from ANT, a reconsideration of nonhu-
man actors can enrich educational research. Namely, it helps discern the
contribution of objects in shaping classroom interactions without falling
back to binary thinking.
    For this reason, I now explore notions of objects beyond the image of
mere tools of instruction. For example, in sociocultural learning theory,
another widely used metaphor for work with artifacts is “scaffolding”
(Wood et al. 1976). With regard to the ZPD, the notion of ‘scaffolding’
has been introduced to describe the process where a tutor helps some-
body who is less expert in the achievement of a problem solving task. In
this case, rather than direct usage, the teacher prepares materials for the
interaction with the learner in order to make the task more manageable.
According to Pea (2004), the employment of fading is an essential aspect
during work with materials and artifacts crafted specifically for scaffold-
ing. Similar to the dismantling of building scaffolds, the support of the
scaffolding or the participation of the tutor gradually fades away as the
child achieves autonomy (see also Newman et al. 1989). The term “scaf-
folding”, however, should not be understood as a “one-way” process
where the “scaffolder” constructs the scaffold alone and presents it (Dan-
iels 2007, 318). According to the critique of Newman and col-
leagues (1989), the ZPD is rather created through negotiation between
participants.
    Therefore, the discussion of “scaffolding” takes us one step nearer to
the consideration of the agency of things. In sum, we can understand the
construction of the ZPD in relation to a system of multiple contributing
human and nonhuman actors where the child moves actively using her
own creativity. To illustrate that point, we can rely once more on Montes-
sori, who explains the difference of her materials of development and
normal tools or “means of teaching” as follows:
       The profound difference [...] is that the objects are not an aid for
       the mistress who has to explain, that is they do not constitute
       means of teaching. But they are an aid for the child who chooses
       them himself, takes possession of them, uses them and employs
       himself with them according to his own tendencies and needs and
       just as long as he is interested in them. In this way the objects be-
       come means of development.” (Montessori 1948, 197)
   The teacher takes part in the performance of means of development.
She arranges and introduces objects according to the needs and ‘initiates’
the child “into the ordered and active life of the environment” (Montes-
160                                                        Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

sori 1948, 95). There is, however, an important difference to conventional
scaffolding. “Fading” is not employed by the tutor, but performed by the
child who looses interest. We can even go further and imagine scaffolding
in the absence of a “scaffolder”. One may consider, for example, “forest
schools” where natural (non-prepared) environments are known to stimu-
late the child’s creativity (OBrien 2009).
    In consequence, often the question of “who teaches” and of “who”
provides scaffolding cannot be answered clearly. In other words, looking
at human intentionality alone brings us to what Latour (2005, 45) calls
the ’under-determination of action’. This is why our focus has to shift
from the relations between performances of people towards the inclusion
of nonhumans actants as well.
    On that premise, it is necessary to highlight the meaning of objects as
mediators. For instance, while sociocultural accounts stress that human
action and learning is shaped by mediational means, these are often used
as synonym for “cultural tools” (Wertsch and Rupert 1993). But, the im-
age of cultural tools that mediate leaves a perplexity to resolve. Namely,
how can a tool, which usually is used by another acting person or group
(thus, passing their action along as an intermediary), simultaneously be a
mediator that shapes action?
    To shed light on this question, a crucial key to avoid confusion is to
distinguish between mediators and intermediaries. According to
Latour (2005, 39), an intermediary is “what transports meaning or force
without transformation: defining its inputs is enough to define its out-
puts.” Mediators, on the other hand, “transform, translate, distort, and
modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry” (ibid.).
Therefore, all mediators perform relations and thus contribute to the out-
come of situations, As a result, the question that underpins any analysis is
whether we are “talking about causes and their intermediaries or about a
concatenation of mediators” (Latour 2005, 62). Hence, when talking
about objects as mediators, this is done without reducing the rest to mere
intermediaries. As could easily be misunderstood, objects neither replace
humans as causes of actions nor they acquire human intentionality. Ra-
ther, in a sociomaterial conception, causes and effects are distributed
among heterogeneous actors. In short, “agency is not aligned with human
intentionality or subjectivity” (Barad 2003, 826). According to the con-
cept of relational materiality, the latter, along with divisons and distinc-
tions such as human/non-human are now understood as effects or out-
comes (Law 1999). This can be applied to the agency of scaffolds and cul-
tural tools, too.
    Looking again at Montessori (1948, 95), she talks about the educa-
tional environment as the “whole assemblage1 of things from which the
child is free to choose for using just as he pleases”. But, she gives also a
vivid description of what now can be interpreted as the agency of educa-
tional objects and their “voices”:
Schlauch                                                                         161
       The teacher superintends, it is true; but it is the things of various
       kinds which call to children of various ages. Truly the brilliancy,
       the colours, the beauty of gaily decorated objects are no other than
       voices which call the attention of the child to themselves and urge
       him to do something. Those objects possess an eloquence which
       no mistress can ever attain to: ‘Take me,’ they say, ‘see that I am
       not damaged, put me in my place.’ And the action carried out at
       the instigation of the things gives the child that lively satisfaction,
       that access of energy which prepares him for the more difficult
       work of intellectual development. (Montessori 1948, 119)
    At the same time, however, the teacher has a central role in this as-
semblage, she “is, in the main, a connecting link between the material
(the objects) and the child” (Montessori 1948, 197). To some, this formu-
lation comes as a surprise, as, in common language, we tend to treat ob-
jects contrariwise. They are, generally, the connecting link (intermediary)
between human actors. Yet, neither the teacher nor the environment
transport meanings without transformation, but are participants. Accord-
ingly, given these points, we are now able to conceptualize the agency of
humans and nonhumans alike, without neglecting a substantial part of re-
lations that are performed during teaching and learning.


4. Spatial Configurations and Forms of Knowledge

    Depending on the type of relations performed through teaching and
learning, we can imagine different forms of knowledge. In education, the
most common opposition between imaginaries2 of knowledge is consti-
tuted by representational knowledge versus situated3 knowledge. These
are linked either with a transmission conception of learning or a construc-
tive/discovery model.
    As Wineburg (1989) highlights, progressive education authors like
Dewey anticipate modern instructional approaches that account for situ-
ated cognition in communities of practice. Among the latter I count
teaching strategies such as “cognitive apprenticeship” based on “encul-
turation” (Brown et al. 1989), “reciprocal teaching” (Palinscar and
Brown 1984), “knowledge building communities” (Scardamalia and
Bereiter 2014), “anchored instruction” (Vanderbilt 1990) as well as other
kinds of situated, cooperative learning through teacher-guided discovery.
While the two opposite learning paradigms appear to be incompatible to
each other, it is possible to either claim all knowledge to be cognitive rep-
resentations, or, as Lave (1996) sustains, view learning in general as “so-
cially situated”, which would then also include all abstract knowledge
produced by “decontextualization practices”. Nevertheless, classroom
teaching, can benefit from a perspective on situated learning that also
values mental work on symbolic objects, which is why Bereiter (1997) ar-
gues for “the value of thinking of situatedness as varying along a continu-
162                                                        Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

um”.
     In other words, how we think about knowledge depends on the con-
figuration of knowledge-making practices we are trying to observe. Ver-
ran (1999) provides a telling example of this by confronting the teaching
of metric units in the western tradition and in Nigerian (Yoruba) class-
room practice. She concludes in highlighting the process of embodiment
of knowledge, seen “as a co-constituted embodied participation in collec-
tive acting” (Verran 1999, 149). Therefore, we are able to retrace how
children pick up public knowledge about quantification through embod-
ied processes in classroom practice.
     Given the importance of shared practice and embodied participation,
it is useful to look in more detail at the concept of practice from a socio-
material perspective. In ANT, Law (2009b) defines practices as “assem-
blages of relations”. According to Orlikowski (2007, 1445), practices per-
form sociomaterial assemblages that bind together a “heterogeneous as-
sembly of distributed agencies”. Similarly, Gherardi (2017) shifts from a
conventional understanding of practices as “arrays of activities” towards
practice “as a mode, relatively stable in time and socially recognized, of
ordering heterogeneous items into a coherent set” (Gherardi 2006, 36).
     Thus, if we analyze teaching and learning as parts of one sociomaterial
teaching(-)learning practice, we need to dis- and reassemble teaching and
learning, recognizing the patterns and “forms of presence” (Søren-
sen 2007) of its heterogeneous, sociomaterial assemblage. In the light of
this task, Mol and Law (1994) have established the possibility of multiple
spatial topologies to characterize the social world. Namely, they distin-
guish between regions, networks and fluids4.
     The first spatial configuration “is regional and homogeneous, which
distinguishes its objects by talking of territories and setting boundaries
between areas” (Mol and Law 1994, 659). According to Sørensen (2009),
the classical whole-class teaching set-up produces “regions” that separate
children from the knowledge represented by the teacher and the black-
board. On a closer look, materials of instruction such as the blackboard
“direct the gazes of the students” and configure students as “recorders of
a relatively stable and public knowledge that can be reproduced”
(Röhl 2012, 64). Thus, regional spaces perform boundaries and represen-
tational knowledge (Sørensen 2009, 102).
     With the network spatiality, on the other hand, one describes relations
“as composed of immutable mobiles” that have “invariable links between
them” (Mol and Law 1994, 663). These immutable mobiles (Latour 2005)
are actants that cross boundaries in time and space while being drawn to-
gether. As such, networks can produce resonance spaces where elements
acting as an “obligatory passage point” draw together material and hu-
man participants and form “communal knowledge” (Sørensen 2009, 109).
To illustrate this, a fitting example in teaching practice is “collaborative
knowledge building” in “knowledge building communities” (Scardamalia
and Bereiter 2014) that are focused on producing and improving
Schlauch                                                                  163
knowledge objects that can be seen as such passage points for communal
knowledge, without the prior provision of external “facts” or “truth”.
     Concerning the third spatial topology, i.e. fluids, social objects “draw
upon and recursively form fluid spaces that are defined by liquid continu-
ity” (Mol and Law 1994, 659). Here, objects aren’t well defined and do
not always have clear boundaries. Also, “there are mixtures and gradi-
ents” and “the world doesn’t collapse if some things suddenly fail to ap-
pear” (ibid.). Interestingly, stability is achieved by fluid continuity. While
networks risk to fall apart because “things that go together depend on
one another”, in fluid spaces “there is no ‘obligatory point of passage’ ”
(Mol and Law 1994, 661). According to Sørensen (2009), “liquid
knowledge” is formed through such fluid patterns of relations. The idea
of fluidity is recurrent in sociomaterial accounts of informal learning.
Aberton (2012) describes the material dimension of everyday learning
and its liquid form of local, uncodified and often invisible knowledge that
is not controlled, or “colonized” by a pedagogic authority. Similarly,
Postma (2012, 152) associates learning in fluid spaces with “invisible ped-
agogy” (see also Bernstein 1975). Arguably, the latter kind of pedagogy
fits in with aspects of alternative, progressive education efforts. There, the
teacher also takes the form of an “arrangeur” and the “control of the
teacher over the child is implicit rather than explicit” (Postma 2012, 152).
For instance, make-believe play among children performs learning in flu-
id patterns of relations, but can also be facilitated, or “scaffolded”
(Bodrova 2008, 366) and subsequently embedded in other learning activi-
ties.


5. From Learning Transfer to Translation

     How do multiple forms of knowledge relate to each other? In this re-
gard, a socomaterial approach can help us to clarify another conceptual
problem about learning, i.e. learning transfer. Sørensen (2009, 177) iden-
tifies learning transfer as “a crucial problem in theories of learning”.
From a cognitivist viewpoint, it is not clear how knowledge is transferred
into the heads of the students and then decontextualized so that it can be
applied at any time and any place. Regarding situated knowledge, too,
transfer may occur only when “constrains and affordances” are “invariant
over transformations of context” in different situations, as has been sus-
tained by Greeno et al. (1993) (cited in Allal 2001, 412).
     But, actor-networks that situate practices are not bound to single con-
texts. In a sociomaterial conception, Fenwick and Edwards (2011) stress
the importance of “observing the proliferation of practices and meanings
as different worlds”, where multiplicity5 signifies the “enactment of dis-
tinct and different, often overlapping, ontologies”. Thus, to explain situa-
tive/situated learning transfer we may also look at how different social
worlds overlap and are connected by “fluid objects” (Law and Single-
164                                                              Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

ton 2005) or by what we can qualify as boundary objects. The latter have
“different meanings in different social worlds, but their structure is com-
mon enough” to make them recognizable and inhabit more than one
world (Star and Griesemer 1989, 393).
    As Sørensen points out, the original conception of situated learning
takes a regional imaginary for granted. In situated/situative accounts of
learning, however, knowledge is not situated in the mind but in a multi-
plicity of practice (Sørensen 2009). In a similar vein, Mulcahy (2013) ar-
gues for a conception of transfer that “far from being transcendent” is
seen as performed “differently in different sociomaterial practices and ar-
rangements”. Thus, how learning connects to other entities is concerned
by what Sørensen (2009, 177) calls ‘the materiality of learning’:
      The materiality of learning must thus be understood as the achieved abil-
      ity of a growth in knowledge to connect to other particular entities.
    By viewing material relations, however, we see that transfer entails
transformation, which is why authors use the concept of translation (Cal-
lon 1984) as an alternative metaphor for transfer (Mulcahy 2013, 1278).
According to Sørensen (2009, 181), for instance, we deal with a multiplic-
ity of overlapping spatial configurations, where sociomaterial processes
such as bracketing, recording, or memorizing, don’t transfer, but translate
and thus change “knowledge from liquid to representational”. By the
same token, Latour (1995, 56) argues that cognition is studied best by fol-
lowing the “trajectories of modified representations”, as he describes
cognition as “propagation of representations through various media”.
Yet, the propagation described by Hutchins (1995) “does not mean
transportation without deformation, but a modification, a translation, a
shift” (Latour 1995, 57). Therefore, researching teaching and learning
with a sociomaterial perspective allows us to trace associations and rela-
tions among “the social, textual and material elements of multiply interre-
lated settings” Mulcahy (2013, 1287).


6. The Performance of Teaching(-)learning

    Having discussed the question of “who teaches” from the perspective
of transfer and knowledge representation, ANT rather asks the question
of “how it is that things get performed (and perform themselves) into re-
lations that are relatively stable and stay in place” (Law 1999, 4). There-
fore, we now shift from a representationalist to a performative account of
learning.
    As we have seen, the above mentioned problem of learning transfer is
linked to the imagination of a separate known and knower that have
nothing in between them apart from an “abyss between words and
world” (Latour 1999, 121). Notably, this has already been criticized by
authors like Dewey who rejects “the ‘no man’s land’ of words imagined to
Schlauch                                                                       165
lie between the organism and its environmental objects” (Dewey and
Bentley 1949, 136). In fact, Fenwick and Edwards (2013, 50) see Dewey’s
conception of learning emerging through transactions as the inauguration
of “a sociomaterial view of education”. Actually, both older (Dewey and
Bentley 1949) and newer criticism builds on the discussion of onto-
epistemological assumptions in quantum physics and its conflict with tra-
ditional representationalism. Introducing a more recent line of thought,
Barad (2003) offers a posthumanist performative account that she coins
‘agential realism’, in which boundaries between matter and meaning, hu-
man and non-human, subject and object are performed through intra-
actions. If we look at the moment of observation as an intra-action, for in-
stance, it is the observation that performs an ‘agential cut’ that produces
causes and effects. As Gherardi (2017, 41) acknowledges, Barad’s
posthumanist conception allows us to think differently about knowing:
       [...] the knower is not external to or pre-existing the world. Ra-
       ther, the knower and the ‘things’ do not pre-exist their interactions
       but emerge through and as part of their entangled intra-relating.
     Thus, we may think of the learner, the teacher as well as of the partic-
ipating environment as entities that don’t pre-exist. Rather, they emerge
through their entangled intra-relating in practice. At the same time, teach-
ing and learning can be seen not as two separate processes, but as parts of
a “unified teaching-learning continuum” (see also Zürcher 2015, 79).
Questions concerning agency, subjectivity and intentionality are thus dis-
connected from individual bodies. In consequence, one can retrace how
“the teacher” emerges out of a sociomaterial assemblage, how the teach-
ers’ profile, for instance, is stabilized and “black boxed” as a profession
(Ceulemans et al. 2012). On the other hand, however, we are also able to
provide a sociomaterial interpretation of Montessori’s “educational influ-
ence” that is “diffused through all the surroundings” (Montessori 1948,
95). In this light, I argue that teaching(-)learning (or teachinglearning6) as
one sociomaterial practice continuously translates, assembles and guides
the making of relations in a changing sociomaterial assemblage. This, in
order to qualify as learning, must enhance the learner’s ability to either
represent these relations as acquired knowledge (in a cognitivist perspec-
tive), or to participate in communities of practice (in a situated-
knowledge perspective).
    At the same time, depending on the type of spatial imaginary one uses,
different forms of knowledge, actors and roles result either as more evi-
dent or less visible. Consequently, in teaching(-)learning, we understand
teaching and learning not as actions of pre-determined human subjects,
but rather as the two ends of the same translation/propagation process.
Rather than two separate activities, teaching and learning are two per-
spectives towards one practice. From the viewpoint of teaching,
teachinglearning appears as continuous assembling effort. From the
viewpoint of learning, teachinglearning results in (partial) internalization
166                                                          Tecnoscienza - 10 (2)

(Latour 1995) as well as in participation, which results as the increased
ability to “connect to other entities” (Sørensen 2009, 193).
     All things considered, we have now moved across different interpreta-
tions of teachinglearning. To summarize the main characteristics of soci-
omaterial teachinglearning, we shall briefly reconsider Table 1. Departing
from a conventional or ‘standard paradigm of learning’ (Zürcher 2015), I
gradually passed to important sociocultural notions that prepare for a full
appreciation of sociomateriality. In the first row, we see how the unit of
analysis shifted gradually from the individual mind to the joint construc-
tion of the ZPD in a community of practice and eventually to the socio-
material assemblage that accounts for both human and nonhuman actors.
Accordingly, objects now participate as mediators, rather than being a
mere intermediary or tool of a teacher. As we see in the second column in
Table 1, this has already partially been the case with regard to scaffolds
and prepared environments. With this, we increased the range of possible
spatial configurations that can be taken into account. Learning relations
can be performed in regions, network and fluids and are not limited to a
specific environment or classroom. This also allows us to resolve incom-
patible claims about either representational or situated knowledge. As we
have learned, it is possible to abandon the notion of knowledge as a sepa-
rate entity in favor of a performative view where knowledge is embodied,
i.e. seen always in connection to who or what is in the process of perform-
ing it. Accordingly, learning transfer is made possible not by the transmis-
sion and abstraction of knowledge or by invariants among situations, but
as a result of translation and the overlapping materiality of social worlds.
Lastly, the roles of the teacher and the learner are seen as effects of per-
formed relations rather than being predefined. Thus, we see how it is
possible for the agency of the standard teacher to be distributed as educa-
tional influence among actors in the prepared environment.


7. Conclusions

    As we have seen, a sociomaterial perspective on teaching and learning
can be useful in the following ways as a theoretical foundation. First, it al-
lows us to shift from a transmission/construction dichotomy of individual
learning to the analysis of participation in material-discursive practices.
Second, it helps us to neither neglect nor misplace the participation of
mediating materials and scaffolds in sociomaterial assemblages of teach-
ing(-)learning. Third, we can account for multiple forms of knowledge in
relation to different spatial configurations, which allows us to
acknowledge less teacher-centered and more informal, fluid forms of
learning as well. Fourth, instead of hypothesizing learning transfer with-
out transformation and mediation, we are now able to situate learning in
a wider range of sociomaterial knowledge-making practices. This, for in-
stance, applies to situations where the contribution of objects is less visi-
Schlauch                                                                      167
ble as well as to practices that are held together by technological devices
over long distances.
    Yet, as the recent growth of attention may suggest, the agency of
things has not started to be a matter of concern since STS scholars began
to scrutinize the introduction of digital devices as well as apparatuses of
standardization in modern classrooms. Rather, as I have suggested in this
article, it started ever since progressive educators talked specifically about
prepared environments and included its related assembling efforts into
their conception of teaching. This, along with other parallels to past theo-
ry, gives rise to a new set of common issues that may broaden the path for
future collaborations among researchers in the education sciences and STS.


Acknowledgments
I am thankful to Attila Bruni, Alvise Mattozzi, Giacomo Poderi and Manuela Per-
rotta for their valuable suggestions and comments on previous versions of this pa-
per.


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    1
       See Law (2009a) for a sociomaterial understanding of assemblage as
“agencement”.
    2
      The epistemic meaning of ‘imaginary’ has been discussed by Verran (1998).
    3
      Authors such as Allal (2001) propose the term situative learning as an
alternative to render visible the participation of more remote objects along
“chains of actors” (Latour 2005, 173) distributed in time and space.
    4
      This list is not exhaustive, later Law and Mol (2001) also write about the
“fire” spatiality.
    5
      As originally described by Mol (2002).
    6
      As in the word sociomateriality, we may choose to remove the hyphen to
distinguish this new interpretation from classic ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’.
