Abstract
In this chapter, our attention shifts from inscriptions and epistemic artefacts to the sets of tools and infrastructures in which such artefacts are produced. In particular, we use ideas about instrumental genesis to examine ways in which the qualities of tools and other artefacts combine with schemes for their use. We describe professional epistemic infrastructures as the basic material, symbolic and organisational structures that underpin various knowledge practices. The chapter reviews the status and functioning of tools in epistemic work and forges connections with schemes for their use – culturally shared but individually customised epistemic games. A key theme in this chapter concerns the dynamism of epistemic work – our analyses of passages of professional activity reveal rapid shifts back and forth between different assemblages of tools and different forms of knowledge and ways of knowing. Different intrinsic and extrinsic properties of the tools that constitute professional epistemic infrastructure have strong implications of how professional work is done and how knowledge and skills for such work can be taught and learnt.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The Learning Activity Management System (LAMS) is a system for designing and managing collaborative learning activities; Moodle is a learning management system used by many educational institutions for developing, managing and delivering online courses; a Wiki is a web-based application for collaborative creation of digital online content (e.g. Wikipedia); Notebook – SMART Notebook – is an application for creating interactive lessons for teaching with interactive whiteboards and managing lesson content, including storing and sharing lessons in online repositories.
- 2.
‘infrastructure’. Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved June 22, 2015 from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/infrastructure
- 3.
See also other papers in the 2012 special issue of the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning. Stahl (2012) provides an overview.
- 4.
We would also want to say that an artefact might be symbolic rather than (or as well as) physical. And what is said here about an artefact might also apply to a part of an artefact or a set of artefacts.
- 5.
More accurately, let us say that it is only in very unusual circumstances that individuals develop action schemes in isolation. We might call this the ‘castaway’ case.
- 6.
Håkanson (2007) argues that American technological industries succeed in theory , but isolate theory from tools , and thus slow down the rate of technological learning.
- 7.
See also Harry Collins (2010) on kinds of tacit knowledge in Chap. 4.
- 8.
This obliviousness to tool shaping and tool invention is not universal across the professions. For example, some areas of engineering and IT see this aspect of professional work as core business.
- 9.
A few nonhuman primates make simple tools; creation and use of complex tools, and sequences of tools, is (as yet) only found in humans.
- 10.
References
Baber, C. (2006). Cognitive aspects of tool use. Applied Ergonomics, 37(1), 3–15.
Beck, S. R., Apperly, I. A., Chappell, J., Guthrie, C., & Cutting, N. (2011). Making tools isn’t child’s play. Cognition, 119(2), 301–306.
Bereiter, C. (1997). Situated cognition and how to overcome it. In D. Kirshner & J. A. Whitson (Eds.), Situated cognition: Social, semiotic, and psychological perspectives (pp. 281–300). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Bereiter, C. (2002a). Design research for sustained innovation. Cognitive Studies: Bulletin of the Japanese Cognitive Science Society, 9(3), 321–327.
Bereiter, C. (2002b). Education and mind in the knowledge age. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (1999). Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Butler, S. (1912). The note-books of Samuel Butler. London: William Brendon and Son.
Clarke, A. E., & Fujimura, J. H. (Eds.). (1992). The right tools for the job: At work in twentieth-century life sciences. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Collins, A. (2011). A study of expert theory formation: The role of different model types and domain frameworks. In M. S. Khine & I. M. Saleh (Eds.), Models and modeling (pp. 23–40). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
Collins, A., & Ferguson, W. (1993). Epistemic forms and epistemic games: Structures and strategies to guide inquiry. Educational Psychologist, 28(1), 25–42.
Cowan, R., David, P., & Foray, D. (2000). The explicit economics of knowledge codification and tacitness. Industrial and Corporate Change, 9(2), 211–253. doi:10.1093/icc/9.2.211.
Cutting, N., Apperly, I. A., & Beck, S. R. (2011). Why do children lack the flexibility to innovate tools? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 109(4), 497–511.
de Souza, C. S. (2005). The semiotic engineering of human-computer interaction. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Derry, S. J., Schunn, C. D., & Gernsbacher, M. A. (Eds.). (2005). Interdisciplinary collaboration: An emerging cognitive science. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
diSessa, A. A. (2004). Metarepresentation: Native competence and targets for instruction. Cognition and Instruction, 22(3), 293–331.
Edwards, P. N., Jackson, S. J., Bowker, G. C., & Knobel, C. P. (2007). Understanding infrastructure: Dynamics, tensions, and design. Ann Arbor, MI: DeepBlue.
Engeström, Y., & Middleton, D. (Eds.). (1996). Cognition and communication at work. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Fenwick, T. (2012). Matterings of knowing and doing: Sociomaterial approaches to understanding practice. In P. Hager, A. Lee, & A. Reich (Eds.), Learning practice. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
Glick, J. (1995). Intellectual and manual labor: Implications for developmental theory. In L. Martin, K. Nelson, & E. Tobach (Eds.), Sociocultural psychology: Theory and practice of doing and knowing (pp. 357–382). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Goodwin, C. (1994). Professional vision. American Anthropologist, 96(3), 606–633.
Goodwin, C. (1997). The blackness of black: Color categories as situated practice. In L. B. Resnick, R. Säljö, C. Pontecorvo, & B. Burge (Eds.), Discourse, tools and reasoning: Essays on situated cognition (pp. 111–140). Berlin, Germany: Springer.
Goodwin, C. (2005). Seeing in depth. In S. J. Derry, C. D. Schunn, & M. A. Gernsbacher (Eds.), Interdisciplinary collaboration: An emerging cognitive science (pp. 85–121). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Greeno, J. G., & Hall, R. P. (1997). Practicing representation: Learning with and about representational forms. Phi Delta Kappan, 78, 361–367.
Griesemer, J. R. (1992). The role of instruments in the generative analysis of science. In A. E. Clarke & J. H. Fujimura (Eds.), The right tools for the job: At work in twentieth-century life sciences (pp. 47–76). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Håkanson, L. (2007). Creating knowledge: The power and logic of articulation. Industrial and Corporate Change, 16(1), 51–88.
Henning, P. H. (2004). Everyday cognition and situated action. In D. H. Jonassen (Ed.), Handbook of research for educational communications and technology (2nd ed., pp. 143–168). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ingold, T. (2011). Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description. Oxon, UK: Routledge.
Johnson-Frey, S. H. (2004). The neural bases of complex tool use in humans. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(2), 71–78.
Kant, I. (1964). Werke VI: schriften zur anthropologie, geschichtsphilosophie, politik und padagogik. [works 6: Writings on anthropology, philosophy of history, politics and pedagogy]. Wiesbaden, Germany: Insel Verlag.
Keller, C. M., & Keller, J. D. (1996). Cognition and tool use: The blacksmith at work. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Knorr Cetina, K. (1999). Epistemic cultures: How the sciences make knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Knorr Cetina, K. (2001). Objectual practice. In T. R. Schatzki, K. Knorr Cetina, & E. V. Savigny (Eds.), The practice turn in contemporary theory (pp. 175–188). London: Routledge.
Kuhn, T. S. (1981). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lampland, M., & Star, S. L. (Eds.). (2009). Standards and their stories: How quantifying, classifying, and formalizing practices shape everyday life. London: Cornell University Press.
Land, R., Meyer, J., & Smith, J. B. (Eds.). (2008). Threshold concepts within the disciplines. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.
Menz, M. M., Blangero, A., Kunze, D., & Binkofski, F. (2010). Got it! understanding the concept of a tool. NeuroImage, 51(4), 1438–1444.
Meyer, J. H. F., & Land, R. (Eds.). (2006). Overcoming barriers to student understanding: Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge. London: Routledge.
Miettinen, R., & Virkkunen, J. (2005). Epistemic objects, artefacts and organizational change. Organization, 12(3), 437–456.
Nersessian, N. J. (2005). Interpreting scientific and engineering practices: Integrating the cognitive, social, and cultural dimensions. In M. E. Gorman, R. D. Tweney, D. C. Gooding, & A. P. Kincannon (Eds.), Scientific and technological thinking (pp. 17–56). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Nersessian, N. J. (2006). The cognitive-cultural systems of the research laboratory. Organization Studies, 27(1), 125–145.
Norman, D. A. (1991). Cognitive artifacts. In J. M. Carroll (Ed.), Designing interaction (pp. 17–38). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Olson, D. R. (1994). The world on paper: The conceptual and cognitive implications of writing and reading. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Orlikowski, W. J. (2007). Sociomaterial practices: Exploring technology at work. Organization Studies, 28(9), 1435–1448.
Perkins, D. N. (1997). Epistemic games. International Journal of Educational Research, 27(1), 49–61.
Perkins, D. (2006). Constructivism and troublesome knowledge. In J. H. F. Meyer & R. Land (Eds.), Overcoming barriers to student understanding: Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (pp. 33–47). London: Routledge.
Perkins, D. N., & Salomon, G. (1989). Are cognitive skills context-bound? Educational Researcher, 18(1), 16–25. doi:10.3102/0013189x018001016.
Rabardel, P., & Beguin, P. (2005). Instrument mediated activity: From subject development to anthropocentric design. Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 6(5), 429–461. doi:10.1080/14639220500078179.
Rheinberger, H. (1997). Toward a history of epistemic things: Synthesizing proteins in the test tube. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Ribes, D., & Finholt, T. A. (2009). The long now of infrastructure: Articulating tensions in development. Journal for the Association of Information Systems: Special Issue on Infrastructures, 10(5), 375–398.
Ritella, G., & Hakkarainen, K. (2012). Instrumental genesis in technology-mediated learning: From double stimulation to expansive knowledge practices. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 7(2), 239–258. doi:10.1007/s11412-012-9144-1.
Roth, W.-M. (2010). Learning in praxis, learning for praxis. In S. Billett (Ed.), Learning through practice: Models, traditions, orientations and approaches (pp. 21–36). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
Roth, W. M., & McGinn, M. K. (1998). Inscriptions: Toward a theory of representing as social practice. Review of Educational Research, 68(1), 35–59.
Russ, R. S., Scherr, R. E., Hammer, D., & Mikeska, J. (2008). Recognizing mechanistic reasoning in scientific inquiry: A framework for discourse analysis developed from philosophy of science. Science Education, 92(3), 499–525.
Säljö, R. (1995). Mental and physical artifacts in cognitive practices. In P. Reimann & H. Spada (Eds.), Learning in humans and machines: Towards an interdisciplinary learning science (pp. 83–95). London: Pergamon Press.
Sattler, J. M., & Hoge, R. D. (2006). Assessment of children: Behavioural, social and clinical foundations (5th ed.). San Diego, CA: Sattler.
Schatzki, T. R. (2001). Introduction: Practice theory. In T. R. Schatzki, K. Knorr Cetina, & E. V. Savigny (Eds.), The practice turn in contemporary theory (pp. 1–14). London: Routledge.
Schwab, J. J. (1962). The concept of the structure of a discipline. Educational Record, 43, 197–205.
Scribner, S. (1997). Mind and social practice: Selected writings of Sylvia Scribner. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Seymour, W. D. (1966). Industrial skills. London: Pitman.
Stahl, G. (2012). Cognizing mediating: Unpacking the entanglement of artifacts with collective minds. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 7(2), 187–191. doi:10.1007/s11412-012-9148-x.
Star, S. L. (1989). The structure of ill-structured solutions: Boundary objects and heterogeneous distributed problem solving. In L. Gasser & M. N. Huhns (Eds.), Distributed artificial intelligence (Vol. 2, pp. 37–54). Pitman, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.
Star, S. L., & Ruhleder, K. (1996). Steps toward an ecology of infrastructure: Design and access for large information spaces. Information Systems Research, 7(1), 111–134.
Star, S. L., & Strauss, A. (1999). Layers of silence, arenas of voice: The ecology of visible and invisible work. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 8(1), 9–30.
Suchman, L. (2007). Human-machine reconfigurations: Plans and situated actions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Toulmin, S. (1953). The philosophy of science: An introduction. London: Hutchinson’s University Library.
Turnbull, D. (2000). Masons, tricksters and cartographers: Comparative studies in the sociology of scientific and indigenous knowledge. Abingdon, OX: Routledge
Vygotsky, L. S. (1930). The Instrumental method in psychology. Text of a talk given in 1930 at the Krupskaya Academy of Communist Education. Retrieved from http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1930/instrumental.htm.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1986). Thought and language (2 Revisedth ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Whitehead, A. N. (1925/1948). Science and the modern world (Mentor ed.). New York: New American Library.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Markauskaite, L., Goodyear, P. (2017). Epistemic Tools, Instruments and Infrastructure in Professional Knowledge Work and Learning. In: Epistemic Fluency and Professional Education. Professional and Practice-based Learning, vol 14. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4369-4_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4369-4_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-4368-7
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-4369-4
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)