Norm Friesen - Being There: Information Technologies and the Phenomenology of Pedagogical Practice

(Presented at the 7th Annual International Phenomenology and Media Conference, May 12 - 14, 2005, in Cannon Beach, Oregon.)

Phenomenologically-oriented research into the educational use of information technologies has tended to underscore their limitations in augmenting or replicating pedagogical practice. However, the task of describing the precise ways in which this technology enframes and limits these practices is not an easy one, and has given rise to controversy. This paper will present a number of ways in which the limitations --and by implication, also the potential-- of these technologies can perhaps be more precisely delineated. The first of these makes use of Emmanuel Levinas' notion of pre-intentional or a-thematic awareness, suggesting that some of the pedagogical limitations of new technologies can be understood in terms of the attenuation of these types of awareness. The second of these means of delineation is based on Alfred Borgman's discussion of "focal practices." Starting from the premise that pedagogical practices display many "focal" characteristics, it puts into practice Borgman's claim that a focal practice, as a "final and dominant end which alone truly matters" can assign "all other things and activities their rank and place." The paper concludes by identifying a number of ways in which computers and Internet technologies can be understood as contributing positively to pedagogical practices, and as staking out places in which "focal" phenomena can be nurtured.