Epistemology and conceptual resources for the development of learning technologies

Introduction

The use of new technologies in education would appear to offer a powerful alternative
to traditional formal learning and what is normally characterized as the transmission
mode of teaching. There are the possibilities that technologies open up for the
presentation of materials in a variety of forms and the opportunities for working on
materials rather than passively consuming them. However, the potential of technology
to enhance learning can only be realised if it is based on a secure foundation of a
robust understanding of learning, teaching and knowledge.

It is important to stress that education, as it is understood in this paper, goes beyond
the simple acquisition of information and certain capacities to follow rules or
procedures, and involves the development of the capacity of judgment; the capacity
not merely to respond passively to events but the ability to actively make decisions
appropriate to a variety of contexts.

Spelling out what a robust understanding of learning and knowledge entails is far
from straightforward. Here just one difficulty can be noted, namely that the study of
learning is not an established discipline as is the case for physics or chemistry. There
is not an established paradigm of learning in Kuhn’s sense of the term, that is to say
there is no agreed framework of thought in which ideas are communicated and
research is developed. The emergence of the „learning sciences’ in recent years is a
significant attempt to draw together a disparate research field (Sawyer 2006). In many

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