Abstract:

This paper explores the role of theory and interdisciplinarity in Technology Enhanced Informal Learning, and the research community. We consider Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) but we strongly feel that our argument has broader application to the use of theory as part of the intellectual ‘self-defence toolkit’ that researchers and practitioners in the critical TEL community need to consider if they are to ‘resist’ the crises arising from educational globalisation. Theory offers us the history, scope, power, and language, that we need to be reflexively aware of both our own interests and those of others who are actors in the settings in which we are working. The paper arose from our concern to provide evidence that our work in virtual research communities (in the Inter-Life Project) - to help young people pursue their own research agendas and find their research ‘voices’ - was actually effective in serving their interests as well as our own.

Our research revealed the centrality of learning space, community support, and creative/visual artefact production in the sustainability of these communities. We illustrate the interactions across these realms through selected examples from our Inter-Life findings. We explore how an interdisciplinary approach in TEL can support the creative confluence of learning in science and the visual arts, serving diverse cultural communities of learners. Finally, we consider resistance to the large-scale industrialisation of TEL, and its ideologies, that seems to us to be a key issue in TEL research. For example, we are concerned by the potential for surveillance and control that is contained in the whole learning analytics movement in which so many TEL researchers are becoming involved.

Keywords:

Technology Enhanced Learning, Globalisation, Cultural Historical Activity Theory, Art and Design Education, Interdisciplinarity.