What is learning in a knowledge society ? The question was raised at the UNESCO round table on “Education and Knowledge Societies”, during the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva (10-12 December 2003). The core changes brought by information and communication technologies (ICT) in society and in education, call for research on specific new forms of learning, along with methods and actions to harness the power of ICTs to advance human development, to enhance the right to communicate, to access, share and participate in the production of information and knowledge.
This book is a contribution to this effort for answering such questions that were once again at the centre of the debates of the Education Commission of the World Information Technology Forum (WITFOR 2005) in Gaborone, Botswana (31 August- 2 September 2005), resulting in the launching of a major professional development project to enhance competence of teachers for integrating ICT in pedagogically meaningful ways in schools and educational institutions in the south-east african and indian ocean region.
In the collective book Pédagogies.net edited by Alain Taurisson and Alain Senteni in 2003, an outline was given, building on the idea of communities of practice while restricting the focus to educational communities using ICTs for learning. Since then, the focus has shifted from didactics and pedagogy, to epistemological and philosophical concerns regarding how learning occurs and how knowledge emerges, beyond the borders of traditional systems of education, thus opening a creative space where learning, innovation and work can be integrated.
With communication as the backbone of evolutive and lively social structures, innovative learning and knowledge communities appear as a tool of major importance for developing countries, bringing about deep transformations in human interactions, in the working and learning processes and in the evolution of social structures. The central role played by communication in the educational process is not something new. At the eve of the XX-th century, the american philosopher John Dewey, a pioneer of the progressive movement in education in the USA, wrote :
“Men live in a community in virtue of the things which they have in common; and communication is the way in which they come to possess things in common. What they must have in common in order to form a community or society are aims, beliefs, aspirations, knowledge--a common understanding--likemindedness as the sociologists say. Such things cannot be passed physically from one to another, like bricks; they cannot be shared as persons would share a pie by dividing it into physical pieces. The communication which ensures participation in a common understanding is one which secures similar emotional and intellectual dispositions--like ways of responding to expectations and requirements.”
(Democracy and Education, John Dewey, 1916)
What is new is the potential of ICTs to enable capacity-building and to provide a framework in which communities that have limited or no access to traditional education channels can be trained and educated. Beyond simple access to knowledge, there is an urgent need to develop innovative educational approaches, that will contribute to knowledge creation and knowledge emergence, at the three levels of the individual, the group and the organisation. Technology-enhanced learning requires educational institutions to operate in a different way, based on concerted and continuous teamwork, according to new benchmarks of individual and collective performance.
In line with Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory (ANT), Nonaka’s and Takeuchi's model of knowledge-creation, Yrjö Engeström's expansive learning model, and Carl Bereiter's theory of knowledge building, innovative learning and knowledge communities participate in "the simultaneous reconstruction of social contexts of which they form a part”. In this respect, this research contributes to overcome the gap between the micro and the macro level of analysis cutting across most theoretical and methodological questions raised in the social sciences today.
Based on the principle of coevolution of social, material and technical factors, innovative learning and knowledge communities consider social and technical processes from a systemic viewpoint, in an evolutionary perspective of education and culture, allowing to build meaning and capacity through community development and networking. Capacity emerges only from a synergy between the availability of resources, the commitment to meaningful projects and the building of communities to bring these projects to life. We would be very pleased if this book should provide useful hints for emerging communities to participate in this paradigmatic change, putting at stakes learning in the knowledge society.
Professor Abdul Waheed Khan
Assistant Director-General for Communication & Information
UNESCO