Designs for learning as a theoretic approach to understand learning and meaningmaking in a global world

In many respects the landscape of education and learning is changing, not the least due to increased migration and increased use of digital technologies. We seem only to be in the beginning of the transformation towards new institutional patterns and new communicative processes in society. The major shift in relation to learning is that the learner becomes a producer of information, compared to the hitherto dominated pattern of learners as consumers of information. Teacher and students, among others, will also become designers of their own environments, flowcharts and learning paths. A new epistemology seems to be needed if we want to be able to conceptually grasp how knowledge is formed and transformed in different social domains. Learning becomes a central aspect not only for formal institutions like schools and universities, but also for semiformal and informal contexts like museums and leisure activities. In my presentation a design-theoretic approach to learning will be introduced, and empirical examples from research projects (by the research team DidacticDesign) will be presented.

Staffan Selander, PhD and professor in "Learning designs and knowledge formations" ("Didaktik") at Stockholm University. Selander's research entails hermeneutics, the interpretation and use of texts, and multimodal designs of texts and other artefacts for learning. Selander has been the president of IARTEM ( www.iartem.no ) and is the scientific leader of the research team DidaktikDesign ( www.didaktikdesign.nu ). He is coordinating a new international project on informal learning at museums. Also see   "Designs for learning - individual and institutional formations of meaning" (with G. Kress) in Säljö, R. (Ed.) Information and Communication Technologies and the Transformation of Learning Practicies (Elsevier: Pergamon, in press) and "Designs for learning and the formation and transformation of knowledge in an era of globalization" ( Studies in Philosophy and Education , Springer, 2008).